Quartile 2

Overall, people liked the course. It was well organized, clearly structured and it had a clear goal. The U, A and B assignments were good and all had the same level of difficulty. The extra media and skills assignments were sometimes unclear. Since there were so many different assignments, students sometimes had trouble with quantity and workload.

The projects were well handled especially given the circumstances. The course had to switch from offline to online in de middle but that was handled well. It was very nice that the course was offline in q1.

The media and skills assignments were less structured. The media and skills assignments were often unclear, especially the professional skills in the beginning. This can also be because of the amount of assignments can make things confusing. The AutoCAD sessions were difficult to follow on campus while the illustrator, photoshop and InDesign sessions were videos and they worked better. The drawing video were long but worth to watch.

Lots of people had trouble with the huge amount of assignments. The large amount can get quite chaotic.

Wednesday to Wednesday schedule was very confusing. May seem unimportant but can lead to serious problems.

The course was well organized. It had a clear structure and the students had enough time to go through every phase of the design process. In general, there were several issues with clarity concerning the projects and the media and skills training. The handouts were not that clear for some students, this would lead to some confusion under students. However, the help of the tutors and teachers fixed a large part of this uncertainty.

Media and Skills:
The handouts were short and minimalistic, this resulted in them not being that clear for some students. After getting some more information the handouts turned out to be pretty helpful. They did their core purpose namely explaining the assignment step by step. A good additional handout would be an AutoCAD handout since most students are not familiar with the program.

Projects:
Overall the study material was good. Especially for the U-assignment, the study material was very clear and students knew right away what to do. For the A-assignment were no real comments on the study material. For the B-assignment the study material could have been better, students found the study guide a bit messy.

Due to the fact that the final product was not stated in every study guide that clear, it was difficult for students to see if they met the end goals of the projects and media assignments.
Furthermore, the way of the examination was suitable for this course.

Students found the workload quite high, especially in the beginning. This is also due to the fact that students were not used to the way of education at the university. However, after this course, students were positive since this course provided them with the right work attitude.

The course is well organized and the level difficulty is challenging enough for the students to progress forward without feeling discouraged. However, some resources that are provided are only in Dutch, which makes it difficult for non-Dutch students to choose what information to use for their projects.
BAU studio touches on a variety of possibilities for future self-development. It should be noted that career prospects should be presented to students to help them choose the best track or mix of tracks for them.
General coherence between deadlines within the course as well as coherence between courses will reduce stress and enhance better results. The organization of different activities should be clearer.

A-project: The workload is different in the beginning and the end of the project. The deliverables were clearly stated.
B-project: The different tracks need better representation and distinguishing. There should be an emphasis on the possibilities to mix tracks and how mixing works together.
Digital drawing: Video materials need a bit of improvement. On the other hand, handouts were clear and useful. Maybe a quick guide for AutoCAD will help students with using the program for Building Technology. The assignments were diverse and allowed for freedom in the designs. Parallels between the programs and the projects will help students remember how to use the programs and allow for more creativity in the projects.
Hand Drawing: The scoring for hand drawing was well explained, however many of the files were not that well organized. The students may prefer a combined explanation for assignment and pre-assignment. Video materials were helpful and a good reference to base each person’s drawings on. More open classes would help students improve.
Professional skills: It gave insight to the students on what they should improve in order to work efficiently in a team. The planning assignment is a complex one, and students have to invest enough time to do it properly to avoid feeling overwhelmed. It helps the students understand that planning the contents of their courses is important. Teaches students to deal with problems independently and in a group.
U-project: There were clear and full explanation in the study guide. The professors and teaching assistants provided important insights. A general introduction to referencing in the beginning of the course is needed in order to make sure students reference all projects before their U-project correctly. The site visit was refreshing for students.

Scoring of the different project was sufficiently explained in the study guides. There were no clear criteria for all projects for digital media. Feedback for students is very important and therefore the grading forms should continue to be provided to the students after their projects. This helps with understanding how the grading works.

The project and assignments were not that hard to complete. The greatest difficulty came from confusion because of many deadlines of assignments and pre-assignments.

Online materials were very helpful; however, future improvement can make them even better. The different study guides go in depth on different level. Most video materials were short and understandable.

Organization
The course improved substantially from last year, according to students who retook the course . Overall, the course got many good remarks from the students.

Language
Great use of English in the lectures, homework, and all the course content. Nonetheless, some students wonder why they couldn’t make use of a dictionary in the exam because it is their first time doing physics in a language other than their native one. It is worth mentioning that other courses allow translation dictionaries which facilitates this particular problem.

Previous knowledge
The general consensus was that the course was easy to follow once you got the flow of it. However, for some students without previous knowledge following the course was a challenge. In calculus, for example, the students were given basic exercises to work on and study before starting the course to be prepared and up to the level that they are expected to be. We believe a similar approach for this course could solve this problem.

Formula sheet
The formula sheet was not well formulated or well structured. There were extra unnecessary formulas while some of the important ones were missing. The order of the equations in the exam was different to the template provided on canvas which made it confusing.

Symbolic questions
There was confusion with these types of questions. In many occasions it was not clear to what extent the students had to “solve” these problems (how simplified the answer had to be).

Live streaming
The livestreaming presented no problems. High number of students watching.

The lectures received a positive feedback. Students thought it was clear but more than that, it was enthusiastic and students felt supported and motivated.

Intermediate exam

This exam was a clear shock. It was initially met with anger because many people thought the number of questions were too much for the time given. Also, it was way harder than the online tests and homework exercises, leaving many students unprepared.

After the lecturer explained the problems, students felt that the exam wasn’t unfair and agreed that the topics were explained previously.

Final exam

Students were much happier with this exam, it was a lot more fair and the content met student’s expectations.

Homework

The homework helped a lot of students, but we got complaints about detailed solutions not being available until very late. We were told that the answers weren’t available as to discourage students to ‘copy’ answers. However, this measurement hinders students who want to learn and take out valuable time from the tutor sessions. The answers are very valuable to students and they are relevant for the self-studying time. The lack of answers also encourage making mistakes because there is no way to check them. The homework is also not graded, therefore there is nothing at stake.

Online tests

One of the issues that arose concerning the online tests is about answers being considered wrong if they weren’t written in the exact way the computer understands, even though they were correct, which made some students lose points unfairly. About the copying issue, it comes down to personal responsibility to not copy and use the tests to study the topics yourself.

Tutor sessions

There were mixed reviews regarding the tutor sessions. Some people had very supportive tutors while others had lousy ones. The method used for the Statics of Structures tutor hours is a very good example of a well-organized class. Given that the groups are bigger, there are less needs for tutors and therefore a better filtering.

Organization
The structure and the organization of the course were relatively good. A problem that occurred in the planning was related to the hand-in homework’s and the online tests, which will be explained further in one of the following chapters.

Previous knowledge

Formula sheet
The formula sheet was well formulated and structured. However, there were many extra formulas that were never used.

Symbolic questions
There was confusion with these types of questions. In many occasions it was not clear to what extent the students had to “solve” these problems (how simplified the answer had to be).

In the opinion of people who have taken the course a couple of times the workload is increasing significantly.
Homework and online tests
In terms of organization it was quite confusing when the deadlines for the hand-in homework and the quizzes were changing every now and then. Furthermore, it did not make sense for the students to have a deadline at 8:00AM. Also, the deadlines were two days (day and a half) in the advance of the next tutorial. Therefore, this might be reconsidered and thus to be given more time to the students for these assignments.
The hand-in homework was graded without any fixed criteria, and as a result many people got completely different grades for the same type of correct solutions. Many said that they have even solved the task in the tutor hour and after the submission of the identical solutions the grades varied from 6 to 10 which seems a bit unfair.

Overall, students liked the course. It was well structured and there were good assignments. The tutors sessions were less useful online since sometimes the markings were not clear readable. Last remark about the course is that the communication around the final test were unclear.

The lectures were clear and useful. Most students watched the lectures.

The assignments were a lot. Since it was online, it was harder to work together and to do the assignments together. The online environment made it difficult to read the marks that the tutors drawn on the drawing. Yet, it was useful to upload the drawings in the program so that everybody could access the drawings. Also, the difference between the tutors in the tutorsessions were big. Some tutors took the time to check all the drawings while other did one example drawing.

The communication around the final test was unclear a lot of times and can be improved. The final test was different then other year but in the circumstances, it was good.

The workload for the assignment was big especially if your groupmate quit the course.

The course was built up very well, and the relevance was high. It was well received by students. Only students don’t have enough prior knowledge with respect to technical drawing. This year for the first time, the teacher did not give a lecture on technical drawing. He put up a file on canvas instead. Students might not have read this file. A live lecture would give better information to students, then a file.

In general people were satisfied with the lectures and projects. The lectures and drawings related well to each other. There was enough time to ask questions, and a nice atmosphere all around.

Dutch images and videos: The teacher recieves this complaint every year, he will check if there are English videos available.

Random breaks: Next year, there will be a vote for whether to have random breaks or not. The teacher states that people lose focus when they have to follow a lecture for a longer time. That is the reason he does these random breaks.

More feedback on drawings: Students want more feedback on their personal drawings. It was not clear to students, that there was a possibility to ask the teacher or any other tutor for personal feedback. According to the teacher, there is not enough time to make remarks on the drawings of every student. Next year, the teacher will start sending mails every week with commonly made mistakes on the drawings.

Smaller feedback groups: There was insufficient time to ask for feedback because a lot of students wanted feedback at the same time on Friday morning. A solution would be to organize the feedback as with Architecture and the city (have smaller groups rotate over the morning). The teacher thinks it is a very good idea to let the students do the sketches as homework before Friday (if there is time available), and let them have feedback in smaller groups during the morning.

More instruction hours: See above, students get better feedback from the new feedback system.

Students want to see the perfect drawing: The teacher says that a lot of correctly drawn parts of the drawings are already present in the slides. The teacher also shows a lot of good drawings made by other students during the first few minutes of the lectures. Also, when there is more feedback, they can get a better picture of the perfect drawing.

The content of the exam was clear from the start of the course. The online practice questions were useful for learning.

Theory question answers: the theory questions were graded incorrectly according to some students. The teacher says that he wants to check these cases himself, because most of the time they miss something crucial in their answer.

Drawing part: The teacher says there was a lot of discussion during the inspection. He graded the drawings on general impression of the drawings. People would get points for the more challenging parts of the drawings, not for the easy parts of the drawing. The teacher will make clear to students that the drawings will not get graded on what is present and what not, but on general impression. The teacher is also willing to provide the perfect drawing after the exam.

On average 140 -170 hours were spend on this course per student. There was a good balance between theory and practice exercises. However, students would want more time to submit the assignment. The teacher has organized a week for every topic, and does not want overlap between subjects, so students don’t get confused.

The teacher agrees that the inspection was a mess, and should be organized better. The teacher agrees there should be a subscription for the inspection next year, and he will arrange it. A good thing was that, for students who barely failed the course, the teacher was willing to give some extra points because a lot of the exam was based on interpretation. The teacher also agrees that they should have gotten better feedback, which will be provided next year because there will be less students and a better organization.

The course was well organized and was helpful to learn about the basic structural information’s. It was a bit time consuming, but it was helpful.

In general people were satisfied with the lectures and projects. The lectures had to be online due to this it was quite hard to follow and focus for most of the students since this is a course which requires great deal of attention. Supervisions helped a lot, but some students were lost and did not know what or how to do the drawings before the supervisions it was quite a struggle. It would be much easier to have few examples or more detailed explanations about the weekly assignments because explanations in the assignments were a bit confusing for the most.

The examination consisted of few drawings which is different for every individual. It was a little perplexing for some students. The exam took up a lot of time during the exam week because the assignment demanded a lot of attention to detail. It is doable if you understand the weekly assignments and consider the supervisor's feedback every week.

Workload was a bit more than expected but everyone had a partner, this situation caused few problems because not everyone was really focused, and the teachers couldn’t see the workload on everyone. In general, this course is a bit time consuming but most of the student found this course effective and informative.