P3–Term Project Draft–Comments

I’ve completed the grading of the term project drafts. 

• For those who provided Word documents I returned the marked-up draft with my comments at the end, and often pasted into the VBB comment box if they weren’t too long. 
• For those who submitted as PDF, I only pasted my comments into the text box of the grading form.

Overall Comments

A few students took a specific idea and pursued it in depth, providing information about the sources and drawing a specific conclusion(s). 

A number of you, however, had problems that I identified in the comments, with at least one suggestion of how to correct the problem.  The kinds of problems I identified included:

• Staying far too general in what you’re saying.  In several cases the papers read as though they could have been prepared without the benefit of anything we’ve discussed in this course.
• Not developing a logical argument leading to a conclusion.  It’s important that your paper first identify and then develop an idea, providing supporting (or sometimes contradicting) evidence for it.
• Not providing evidence for your assertions, either experimental or citations of sources.
• Not taking seriously into account the material that we’ve addressed in this course so far.  This was particularly important for those dealing with BIM issues.  Some of the papers read as though you’d had no experience with BIM and were just reciting manufacturer’s claims.

For those of you addressing the implementation of an “Intelligent Building” in some way I would have hoped that you’d consider the definition that I gave early in the course.  Only one group did so.  It’s not that you have to agree with my definition, it’s that it exists and should be considered, if only to be rejected.