Multidisciplinary project 1
7NN8X0In general, the multidisciplinary project was graded with a sufficient. Students indicate that this course has a high relevance for the program. The project location came from a company. This caused the project to be practice oriented and increasing the relevance for the program. Another reason why the relevance of this project is very high may be due to the fact that students learn to work in multidisciplinary teams. Students need to learn to compromise their designs in order to find one good solution. It is new for students to work in one group to find in one design and to work in groups of multiple disciplines. This is not taught in another course before, and therefore, this is one of the biggest plusses of this course. This is also the main learning goal of this course and students indicate that this course is very learn full.
The organization of the course scored very low. This was mainly due to the fact that there was a lack of communication. A lot of information came late and was unorganized. The teacher realized that this was a problem during the project. He is currently working on a script for the student assistant which contains which mail needs to be send when. He has also indicated that he should guide and help the student assistant more. This is especially important as there will be more groups next year.
Students did not feel that the monitoring meetings were useful. A proposition is made to create agenda’s for this meeting so students know what to expect from the meetings. A few points of the agenda could be: planning, the amount of hours spent, and multidisciplinary problems. In this way, the monitor can keep track better on how the team is doing. Also, students have a place where they can ask help for their multidisciplinary problems.
Students have given the course a high grade on quality of the teachers. The teachers know a lot about the subject matter and helped students with it. This also caused the project to have a high score on having enough depth within the course. The course was also not too complex as students have indicated that they have enough prior knowledge for this course. So a nice balance was found in having good depth, without it being too complex. However, some tutoring sessions were considered too general and were not encouraging the multidisciplinary aspect.
The goal of the workshops in the beginning of the project is to help the students start with their project. This could be very useful, however, the workshops could be more structured. Now it was unclear that it was the basis of the project. If the researches fo the students would be shared via Canvas, the function of the workshops could also become clearer.
Rubrics were sent too late. The teacher indicates that it was the first time that they had it, and that it works better now. Another problem was that the rubrics and the study guide’s deliverables did not match. He has indicated that he is going to check this.
Another problem with the grading was that feedback came relatively late. Especially after the midterm of quartile 1. This caused the groups to miss one week. A way to improve this is by scanning the rubrics with the notes of the teachers and sending it to the students. In this way, students can already start working with the feedback. Also, the grades were given too late. The teacher was aware of this.
The PRV’s scored all insufficient. This could be mainly due to the fact that the students do not get any feedback. In this way, students scored a mark without knowing how to improve it. Therefore, they were not able to learn from it. With regards to the presentation skills, the feedback session was useful. However, the grader of this prv was not part of the feedback session and did not know what focus points there were.
Another point was that files got lost with the handing in of the final deadline. The teacher is going to reintroduce having the student assistant present during the deadline. In this way, the deliverables are checked immediately on presence.
The workload of the project was quite high. This is mainly due to the week before the deadlines. In this week, students work a lot. This could also be improved by the agenda’s for monitoring meetings as the progress of every week will be discussed.
The models become quite expensive and take up quite some time, but this should not happen. The teacher is looking for solutions such as giving a maximum budget, reserving x hours at Broeinest, and by looking for sponsoring at the project locations. However, it is not yet certain whether he would be able to help with this problem.
Students have indicated that the BPS part of the project was sometimes a little bit chaotic. This was mainly due to the fact that the teacher was new. The main teacher has indicated that the BPS teacher scores better with the students now and that they want to try to have a second teacher for BPS in the next semester.
Some problems occurred when the exposition had to move to Arnhem. The teacher admitted that he should not have done the exposition on such late notice and that he should not have send the obliging email. The late notice was mainly due to the fact that the company decided to do this exhibition very late. However, he also indicated that he missed enthusiasm from the students to be part of this opportunity. On the plus side, the students who were present at the final presentation at the project location indicated that this was a very useful experience as students were in contact with the clients. In this way, students got to learn what the important aspects of a project are.
Building Physics and Building Services Engineering
7S4X0The course was composed of an assignment (30%) and a final examination (70%). Every week, there were two lectures about either heat, light, acoustics, air & moisture, psychometrics, air distribution or FSE given by different lecturers.
Overall, the course had a good organization such as a clear canvas page, a complete study guide, the assignment fitted to the course and the examination was on the level of the assignment.
The PRV was composed of use of language and structure of the assignment which was very useful. Although it was a shame that everybody passed the PRV even when they did not hand in the assignment.
The lectures were clear although sometimes difficult to follow because the lectures were 4 hours long and online. The lectures made a real effort to create some interaction in the lectures.
The project did not have any explanation although you could ask questions in the lecture and the level of the assignment was in line with the course so the answers were practically given in the lectures. There was some confusion about the grades of the assignment. Students were confused where the grades were based on. Henk Schellen showed this to Wies and Quirine after which the grading seemed like a good method. Henk Schellen will try to make sure that every student can see the rubrics.
The examination was on the level of the study material.
Aside from following the lectures, you did not have to do much. Therefore, the workload of the course was evenly distributed and did not contain a lot of time.
An improvement for the course could be handling less subjects so the course can go more in depth. Hopefully by the evaluation of the bachelor for 2022-2023, this will be taken into consideration.
In general, the course was executed well. However, in the study guide there were some things missing, like the midterm and registration requirements. The planning in the study guide could be a little more detailed.
The assignment was really useful to learn the basic calculations, and
calculate in reality if it works or not. Furthermore, it made it really amusing to
do because you had to do the calculations on your own house.
The assignment provides a clear view on the reality of BPS!
Larger assignment than expected for a lot of students.
Some programs which were needed for the assignment were in Dutch.
The information for the assignment was placed on an unordinary place on
canvas: in the assignment page where you mostly only have to hand in the
assignment. It would be more clearly to have only one PDF file with all the info
for the assignment in it than half in a PP an half in the assignment page. This
file will be made next year.
The lecturers were really enthousiastic.
The theory was very clear.
There could have been more worked-out examples in the lectures and
readers, maybe also with some interaction during the lectures (or an extra
working hour) This for we learn via doing and not only via seeing.With learning it would also be very beneficial to add this.
There could have been a clearer structure on Canvas per week/topic of the lectures, for now it was quite vague which lecture belonged to which week.
There were too many readers, sometimes they were a bit overlapping or some less important info could be left out (for some topics were already discussed in IBMP/not handled in the final exam)
The intermediate exam was really useful to know if you are on track for the course.
The final exam was quite easy compared to the theory and a lot of questions were from old exams.
There were Dutch diagrams in the exam.
The assignment took more time than expected. Furthermore, the time was irregular divided over the period.
Students were very happy about one teacher, he had an enthusiastic and interactive way of lecturing. Another teacher had improved greatly on his English compared to last year. A general conclusion, with exception to one, is that enthusiasm was not really visible from the teachers. Also, the content was not always as exciting. Usually lecturers limited themselves to the content on the slides, some trivial content that is still significant to the subject might make a lecture more interesting. Students said that they skipped some lectures because they thought the content was not useful for them, especially for lectures of the final weeks. The teacher thinks that this is a choice of the students themselves.
There were many opportunities to consult a teacher about the assignment. A teacher was present during these sessions and helped students well. However, some students said he didn’t really put too much time in individual calculations at all times. The reason for this is unclear.
The final exam contained some mistakes. They were not checked beforehand and caused a lot of confusion. The teacher was aware of this right after the exam and already went after it to make sure it would not happen again. Also, some exam questions resembled old. The responsible teacher thinks this phenomenon cannot be avoided since questions will become too far-fetched and difficult or irrelevant.
Sufficient. Dutch teachers have a tendency to mix in Dutch words when they can’t find the English one. This made following the lecture harder than it needs to be, especially for nonDutch speakers. As mentioned before, one teacher has improved a lot.