Derek Snover

Reflection

ABET Outcome Survey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AE 481W / 482 Course Reflection

AE 481W and AE 482 are a culmination of the previous five years or six in my case. This year long endeavor is designed to allow the student to both test as well as showcase thier abilities to take an existing construction project and to analize it, report the current conditions through a series of technical assignments in 481W and then to "think outside of the box" and offer improved suggestions to make the project more cost effective, reduce construction schedule, design two breadth topics in options other than construction management and compile a final report in 482.

AE 481W allowed me to gain valuable information to be used later in 482 through a series of technical assignments. I wish I had dug a little deeper while doing this though because I felt that I needed to know my building a little better when I ended up starting my work for 482. 481W allows the student ample time in order to complete all the assignments as long as you stay on top of everything. I had let myself slip behind a few times and thus produced some sub-par technical assignments, mainly in the beginning.

AE 482 is all about time management and keeping yourself on a schedule, which I believe is something that is very important to be learned for the future. We are required to make a schedule that we will abide by during the semester in completing the various sections to be included in our final report. 482 also allows the student to really show what they can do and lets us "think outside of the box" and produce the most interesting proposals to showcase everything that we have learned. I like that 482 required me to do breadth topics because it is important to showcase that you can be versatile and not just focused on the option that you are in, me being Construction Management, but I think only one breadth should be required allowing us to focus more on the CM side of the report.

CPEP and Discussion Board Reflection

The CPEP website is a useful tool to some extent allowing the students to check for information in an online format. It was very helpful at the beginning of the year in 481W offering information on when current technical assignments were due, outlining what was to be included, as well as provided me with various templates for designing this website. The CPEP board also allowed me to check the designs and reports of students from past years allowing me to make a more comprehensive website as well as better prepare my reports. Where I believe the CPEP website falls a little short is it hard to navigate at times and the search tool is not very effective. I would like to see more of the items that are discussed to be put online during 482 because there is a link for information to 482 topics but is not currently being used or updated.

The Discussion Board in theory looked good and I am sure many other students found it useful, I however did not. I posted a question on the board to try and get some feedback and never received a response, as well as many other students that I tried to check in order to answer some other questions that were already asked. Maybe I didn't pick a topic that was able to be answered by the design professionals or didn't ask the right type of question, but my experience with the Discussion board was very unuseful.