Quartile 3

It is a very nice course, but some people from the real estate or B directions disliked it. It is a basic course, only in the bachelor urbanism and design. A focus point is needed to give structure the broad subject of the course. Everything has to be done in 8 weeks, that also makes it more difficult. More than 200 students from different disciplines can not all be made happy. It can help if students are made aware why this knowledge is important.
The teachers were quite good.
Schedule for the tutoring sessions was always in the week itself, it would be nice to have a set time for each week, so the student can be take it easier into account for their planning.
The seminar part was explained with 2 parts: a reader and a study guide. An inconvenience was that information that was on the study guide was not the same as in the template. This caused some confusion. The study guide for the lecture part of the course should be replaced by a pdf document. Currently, it is in powerpoint format. This makes it less easy for people to find a clear overview of the course and what is expected of them. Making a clear pdf document like the one from the seminar part of the course, can help also for the students of the Real Estate and B direction to get them more motivated.

Seminar: The seminar was good. The only comment was the one previously given: the information in the template was not the same as in the reader.

Peer review possibility: A peer review can lower the threshold for students to communicate that they are having problems. However, a peer review is a form that needs to be filled in and this should be evaluated. There will be too much forms. The problems with peer reviews is that it would be too much work for too little information.
Normally if you are experienced, a tutor can sense if the collaboration is not going well. At this point, there could be some kind of communication. Another solution can be to encourage the tutors more to ask about problems in the groups. A simple question by the tutors can work. It is also encouraged in the first lecture, this is very nice.

The assignments are based on a rubrics, an announcement can be made on this to explain it. It should be noted that the work is compared to other works. During the course, you can get harsh feedback, even though you can be very good. The key was comparing between the groups.
There is not one book that is being followed. Maybe the books can be more encouraged/advised to get, because the tutors of the seminar asked after it. However, only few students had it. The book that was asked after a lot was The Dutch Urban Block and the Public Realm from Susanne Komossa.

In general, the course scored quite well. The organization of the course was very clear and the good communication, done by the student assistant, was very appreciated.
For the seminars, new programs like Adobe Illustrator had to be used. Because some students did not know how to use them yet, it felt like being “thrown in at the deep end”. But this forced them to learn these new skills very quickly.
Unfortunately, there were also some improvement points.
There was not always enough time for each group at the seminars. At the final meeting before the presentation, there was only time for a short 10 minute talk. Perhaps it could be an idea to join groups with the same neighbourhood, as they sometimes have the same questions.

The seminar part of the studyguide was also not always clear, as it did not explain what was meant with each layer or subject. A small explanation would be useful.

For both the lectures and the seminars, the teachers were very enthusiastic and helpful. The lectures were experienced as interesting and clear. Also the explanations underneath the slides were very useful.
The connection between the lectures and the seminars was very good. The theory given at the lectures could almost immediately be used in practice at the seminars.

The examinations for the seminar part were fine, as it was clear what had to be delivered and the deadline and workload were doable.
The examinations for the lectures on the other hand were not. The midterm assignment was a bit unclear and felt unnecessary. It had little cohesion with the total course. It also had a very short deadline. Perhaps the assignment could be hand out a week earlier, so students can put more effort in them.
The questions on the final exam were a bit unclear. There were many spelling and grammar mistakes in the questions. This made them harder to read and sometimes even not understandable.
The questions about the books were quite literal. They required little insight but more specific knowledge and memory of the book itself.

Especially the seminar part was quite labour intensive. Almost every student spent more hours than the corresponded 140 hours. For some students this felt unfair, as the seminar only counted for 50% of the grade.

Project was received positively. Most students liked that there was only 1 tutoring session a week. It gave the students more time to prepare and there was less pressure to produce. Some missed the second moment with the tutor. However, students could have more actively picked this up and met with others.
Because students had 1 tutor instead of 2, if there was no click with the tutor there was no one to fall back on. However, many students received having 1 tutor instead two as more positively. They found it less chaotic and it was clearer what was wanted from them.
The announcements overall were very nice on when parts had to be handed in. However, for the final hand-in the announcement gave a different time, that was almost a day earlier, than what was in the study guide. Confusing a lot of students.
The study guide was very detailed and clear. It was a bit less detailed than earlier study guides. This was fine for most students, since they enjoyed the freedom it gave them, however some found it a bit bothersome.

Overall the tutoring was nice, it differs a lot per tutor so it is a bit difficult to judge. A more general aspect of the tutoring is that the book was not really discussed by many tutors. Large differences in how tutors do this. More actively engaging with the literature could be nice. However, it also makes sense to not want to control the tutors too much.

For the examination it is often that students who have a good overall product also get a good grade for the process. However, these elements do not necessarily have to be connected this closely. We notice that many students are afraid they will not be able to deliver a good product if they try to learn a new skill or program during that project. Which results in large differences with students in amounts of drawings skills they have. By making the students give clear goals of skills they would like to learn over the course of the project in the beginning. It could make it easier for them to start learning new programs as well as judge the process more separate from the final product. Since, some students can grow a lot over the course of a project, but begin at a lower level, resulting still in a worse product than students who use the same technique each time.
At Industrial design they already do something similar. Which helps with the personal development of the students and their design process.

The workload was experienced as a bit less than other projects. This was for students largely due to the one meeting moment a week, instead of two, and not having to make any models.

Studiorefs website – is used largely for reference projects. During project 3 it was not used too much, but for project 4 more people are using it.
Students experienced the first two weeks of the project as separate from the rest of the project. Is done this way because of the complexity of the assignment and the amount of analysis that needs to be done. But the project needs to stay an individual project, therefore it is only the first two weeks.

The course was generally very interesting. The project was very nice and dealt with many issues that are important in many building projects. The site visit gave nice additional insights in the location. A very big compliment needs to be given to the flexibility and the adaptability of the course during the corona times. Generally the quality of the course was not reduced because of corona and the modifications of the course caused a lot of stress relief among the students. The large changes that needed to be implied were difficult for everybody (both students and teachers) but were reduced by the flexibility of the course. Generally talking about the course, some tutors are better than others in terms of providing feedback and clarity of the project (1). Furthermore the peer review was very nice. When performed adequately a good insight was given in the workload of a student which resulted in a fair assessment.

The lectures that were given were very interesting. Maybe a little bit more insight towards the shown projects could be given. Sometimes the stories of the lecturers were a bit wordy and not very clear which could make it difficult to be concentrated during the lectures. Some information that was provided in the last lecture could maybe be provided in an earlier lecture.
The project was structured very good. It was clear what kind of drawings were expected. The tutors were always available and in my group the communication was very good. The models that needed to be produced were very interesting and helped with decisions for the final design. I would like to mention that the second model was quite large in workload (2). The communication about the project could have been better. Among the different tutors, different communication was provided which caused a lot of chaos resulting in some unpleasant situations.

A large compliment needs to be given towards the new examination. Of course it was a pity to lose the possibility to present your project, because this an important learning skill, however the new way examination was beneficial for most students. Because most students had difficulties adapting to the new schedule and the new learning environment therefore this was a great solution. The communication around the examination was different among the tutors which caused a few problems that need to be addressed.

The workload was probably slightly higher than the expected workload (around 20 hours a week). This workload was during the entire process the same with the deadline as exception. However, the workload was different among each tutor group.

A very pleasant thing about the course was the logbook that needed to be tracked. Maybe it is an idea to implement this in all the other projects as well. This will give an insight about the amount of work that students put in a project and where most students have the biggest problems. There are large differences among the students, an indication about the biggest struggles can give insight in the correct ways to support students during their process. The time schedule is also a positive way of providing feedback

It was a very interesting and challenging project. This was especially due to the fact that you had to think about elements like light for the art pieces and routing. Another nice thing was the openness of the project. You could really make it your own project.

The tutoring was of a sufficient level and you were always welcome to ask questions. However, one supervisor was more specialised in the B direction and could not always give immediately answer on questions related to architecture. This caused a delay in the planning. For the tutoring, it might also be a more effective way if the tutoring is done in smaller groups of 3 people instead of the whole group. By doing this, you still learn something from other students but you also have a chance to make some changes to your design already.

The amount of drawings that needed to be delivered at week 8 were sufficient and achievable.

The workload was equally distributed through the quartile with the normal peak moments before the deadlines.

The importance of the reference project is different interpreted by the tutors. Some small guidelines of the use of it for next year could be an improvement.

The course consisted of a project which was done in a period of 8 weeks. The project was about the Structural Design of a newly designed building. The focus therefore was on the structure. The students were divided over three tutors (Gabi Bertram, Hilde Ruelens and Arno Pronk). There was first an introduction lecture in which the project was explained and examples of previous years were shown. After this, there was a weekly meeting with your tutor in which you showed your project, received feedback and got your questions answered. Each tutor organized this weekly meeting a bit differently. For example, in some groups there was more of a general meeting with all students in other groups; it was only with the tutor in a specific time slot. The students did mention that seeing the other projects of other students helped them with their own difficulties. Therefore would this be advised to do in the future years. The general information was communicated through Canvas and the more specific information was mainly communicated through email. A difficult part for some of the students was the part in which Technosoft needed to be used. However, when this was noticed by the teacher, there was an extra workshop organized to provide an explanation. The studyguide was up to date, however the planning which was included was interpreted slightly differently by each tutor. All in all, the project was experienced as a good project with possibilities of learning more about structural design.

For most students the project went well. Most topics were clear and understandable. If there were things unclear the teachers were trying to help you out with it. There were many topics of SD included, such as general rules of thumb, weight calculations, stability and structural details. There was a midterm presentation and final. In the midterm only the work of the first 3 weeks needed to be presented, however the actual content needed to be shown can be specified a bit clearer in the study guide. The students were set together with one other group during the final presentation. This gave the opportunity to also receive feedback from another tutor.

The workload was in principle good. However for some students it became a bit more work since they needed to start over with the designing part. This was sometimes due to bad communication with the tutor, but could also have been a misfortune from the student’s side. The Technosoft part did however let some people run behind, since this part was difficult for some.

The students were positive about this course, it was well organized and everything was explained clearly. The interim presentation was moved from the usual week 4 to week 3, this was beneficial for spreading the workload more evenly over the quartile, and it gave more time to work out the final concepts. Students found it relevant for their education, for example because theoretical knowledge from the previous course ‘Dimensioning of Structures’ could be applied. The studyguide was also very useful, with a clear description of tasks per week.

The group size was good for this project. Students could learn from each other, while still getting sufficient personal feedback from the tutor. The feedback sessions were overall quite positive and well organized. However, they could sometimes be a bit long, so the time could be used more efficiently.

Between the two supervision groups, there were some differences in materials that had to be delivered for the presentations. This caused some confusion, and could have been communicated more clearly. It is the intention that different tutors expect similar deliverables, so this could be improved next year. Furthermore, the professional skill presenting was implemented in this course. It was quite unclear how this would be assessed, and what the feedback from the interim presentation was. A point of improvement for next year could be a short explanation on how this will be assessed. Lastly, a positive thing was that the assessment forms for the interim and final presentation were included in the studyguide. This made it clear what deliverables were needed for the presentations.

The workload was a bit high for this project, but certainly not more than for other projects. As a result of the clear week planning in the studyguide, the workload was spread evenly throughout the quartile. The interim presentation being in week 3 also helps in spreading the workload. This gives students more time to work out their ideas, and also creates the opportunity to work everything out in depth.

It is a good course, it was organized well. Working online was difficult for some of the groups. The fact that there were two tutoring moments were nice, however maybe both could become mandatory. Since, now it was difficult for students if they were the only one in the group who would like to join.
Tutors: For the report and assignments it was sometimes difficult to see what exactly needed to be done from just the modules. Having the tutors be a bit more clear could have helped.
Communication: Very clear, announcements helped. The communication in groups was sometimes difficult for students. Having an individual peer review could help students that don’t feel happy with their group.
Study guide: The study guide was also very clear. The general assignments might be a bit unclear. Since, communication can be quite hard when everything has to be done online.

Nice that the tutoring was with another group, which helped a lot in seeing how everyone did. The tutors guided everyone quite well.

Nice that there was a peer review for the other groups as well. For the presentations sometimes the comments of the tutors were in contrast with the comments that came with the final form.

A fair amount of workload, it was really needed to divide the tasks and communicate with each other.

The last assignments you have to come up with floor plans, some students found this a bit too much of an A direction. But in the end you get an Architecture … bachelor, so you need to be able to judge the overall spatial quality. Furthermore, some students would have liked to have a bit more theory in the project.

The students were very enthusiastic about the course and graded it with a 7,5. Especially, the specific case of the project was a large advantage. De location and the building were very interesting to work with. Besides, there was a lot of freedom to choose your vision. The communication was excellent. A very fast responds on emails with a clear answer.

The project had enough tutoring moments and the tutoring was of a sufficient level. There was enough time to discuss all the questions and problems of the project. However, sometimes the tutor hours seemed more to be a question hour instead of a feedback hour. Tutors should give more tips or point the students in a direction for further research.

The workload for this project was normal and equally distributed through the quartile. Most students spend around the indicated 140 hours on the project.

An advantage but on the other hand also a drawback of the project was that every week an assignment for that week came online. With this structure, you stayed exactly on schedule. However, it takes away your own influence and interpretation of the project. You only see the assignment for one week so you don’t really know what to do for next week.