hi it's a beautiful spring day and I'm
on my way to work from my living
apartment to my work apartment and I
thought that I'd record the video on my
bicycle to try to save time and just to
have a little fun
so last night about 160 emails arrived
in the fluidmech inbox for the first
homework assignment and I'd like to say
first how incredibly honored I am that
so many of you participate in this
how much work you all put into this it's
very honoring and I'll try to live up to
that so thanks so much for your
participation now the main question I
get when students participate in this
kind of assignment is uh why should
other students grade me why don't you
grade me Olivier? I don't want to be graded
by students I want to be graded by a
teacher a professional and there are
several elements to the answer the first
answer is that there is no time for me
to grade 160 papers four times during
the semester plus the final exam there's
not enough physical time it's not
possible for me to do this we designed
this whole program homework program with
this in mind that it's only possible to
do if students grade themselves grade
their own peers and so it's just not
doable there is already not enough time
for me to just spend time answering one
email per student every week so there's
no way I'm gonna grade a whole a whole
bunch of homework papers second an exam
a traditional exam where you have a
question you put an answer and the
teacher grades you this is not reality
and so you will have to put in effort in
your work when you work for a company
in just a few months you will have to
work with colleagues and some colleagues
are having a good day some colleagues
are having a bad day some colleagues
like you some colleagues don't like you
this is the actual reality of the
engineering job and so this assignment
prepares you a little bit for that by
taking to account that you are graded by
peers not graded by a super-duper
expert and finally I think that the
opportunity to grade your peers is
helpful it actually forces you to think
a little bit about the assignments and
try to debug papers identify
errors try to quantify the points for
each question so I think it's a very
good thing that students can grade
themselves and that it's not the top-of-
the-mountain know-it-all teacher who is
giving students points but the students
themselves okay so there are three
categories for grading the papers the
first category is giving the general
expression and this is the most hated
category the most hated rubric in
general by students because it's very
difficult to write the general
expression the general expression is the
answer without any numbers in it it's
just a one line or two lines expression
where you have the complete final answer
that people are looking for but with no
numbers it happens very often that this
component is spread all over the paper
in little bits and pieces with this very
bad if the customer comes to you and
tells you oh what if I change the
parameter X how does that affect the
result you don't want to be saying oh oh
I have to do everything back again— back
from scratch again you want to
be able to tell them oh sure let me
just update this value actually let me
let me make a graph that shows you how
your input parameter affects the final
result and so this general formula that
you have is the best tool to do that so
you should give points in this rubric
only if you have somewhere clear in a
clear way written the general answer to
the question 2nd rubric is whether the
correct numbers I put in
somebody's on the way the recovery team's
on the way to an engineer who didn't put
the correct final results in the second
rubric you assess whether the correct
numbers are put into this general
equation and this is mostly about
putting the correct numbers with the
correct units as an engineer you should
not mess up radians
with degrees m/s with kilometers per
hour and so forth so that particular
question that particular rubric assesses
whether the correct numbers are put in a
general equation even if the general
equation is wrong you can put all points
in this rubric if all the correct
numbers are put in there and the final
rubric is whether the final result has
the correct unit and makes sense check the
units very carefully and check whether
the results generally make sense it has
some physical meaning by this I mean it
should not be more than 10 times too
high or 10 times too low the engineer
should always check that the result
makes some kind of sense you don't want
to be calculating a thrust on the rocket
that's six million times too high or six
million times too low you don't want to
be calculating the mass of an object
that is six times the mass
of the earth so every time you write a
result something in your mind
should be telling you does that make
sense is it realistic or not and this is
what you assess in this final rubric so
even if the result is wrong if it has
the correct units and if it makes sense
then I want you to put full
points into it then finally you have a
little rubric where you can remove
points arbitrarily for presentation and
cleanliness and where you can put
comments should you remove points into
this the answer is you should remove
points
if you feel this is not a professional
document your colleagues in just a few
months when you enter a company will
send you documents and you will send
your colleagues documents you're not
expecting a perfect absolutely beautiful
answer you're expecting something you
can work with something where when there
are mistakes you can fix them you
can identify them you can fix them
quickly and efficiently and so if the
document is very poorly formatted if
it's super ugly if when you open it you
feel like ah why do I have to read this
then you should definitely remove points
I will not question that this is your
own personal decision finally for the
comments what kind of comments you put
in there well what do we want in this
thing remember we do not want students
to produce documents that are absolute
perfection we do not want masterpieces
we want professional quality documents
documents that help people work this is
the goal help your peers get there so if
the document is useful it is easy to
read it is easy to debug even if it's
wrong then you should comment on this
and you should congratulate the students
for that if however we are not there yet
let me slow down a little bit so I don't
bump into people don't wanna fall off
my bike on the video if the student is
not there yet then be constructive and
tell them what you would expect if you
were in a professional setting if they
were your colleague why you would expect
to receive in an email so that you can
see the customer the next day and be
confident about it so this overall I
hope gives you an idea of how to handle
grading your own peers I look really
forward to seeing all your comments and
all the grades and to answer any
questions you have in Q&A sessions on
Friday and Zoom so take care and
see you later
