Welcome to the end of the semester

Congratulations, all -

We have successfully completed our CIIPS semester, and all of you have passed. Congratulations to the graduating seniors.

I'll be turning in grades later this morning, and you may pick up your finals outside my office. My encoded comments on your papers are very sparse, but I'll be happy to talk with you about your work if you would like. I graded each problem with a P(oor), A(dequate), or C(ompetent), and maybe some plusses and minuses, and then I converted these to a numerical score: C = 8, A=5, P=2. The max score possible was 36.

Good luck finishing up the rest of your work for the semester, and have a good summer when you get there.

Web discussion #5 now posted

It's over on the thing. I've turned the "laws homework" into a web discussion, so there will be no separate "laws homework" assignment (check on your syllabus).

I'm hoping to have a final exam for you to start on this week. Only three weeks of classes left...!

Glass contest

The Glass Contest I mentioned in class is now available in PDF form in the class notes folder.

I expect one or more of you to win this.

Thanks to Julie for the info.

Assignment for April 3rd posted

It's over at "the thing." Have at it.

Those funny codes

I have posted the quiz grading codes in the same file that holds the class notes. Feel free to email me or come by my office hours with any questions about the quiz.

homework for Thursday

Here's the list of problems. Pick three, and for each of the three, choose a primary function (PF) and make a simple TOP model. What is the main tool? Auxiliary tool? Are there cases when the tool shouldn't be designated as main or auxiliary?

We'll have you at the board Thursday to draw and explain your models.

1. A folding director’s chair has a canvas seat and back that are comfortable but deteriorate in sunlight.

2. A paperclip is easy to put on to a few sheets of paper, but slips off too easily.

3. Books on a bookcase are in view and accessible, but accumulate dust.

4. The battery in a cordless phone suffers a reduced lifespan when the handset is left in the cradle before the battery is completely discharged.

5. A towel rack can be mounted into drywall easily, but can pull out under load, damaging the drywall.

6. Streetlight bulbs are hard to replace when they burn out, because they are mounted so far above the ground.

7. Patches to Socorro potholes are usually not level with the surrounding road.

8. Using Socorro water in a coffee maker leads to mineral deposits and arsenic ingestion, but using bottled (reverse-osmosis) water leaves the coffee with a flat and uninteresting taste.

9. Most pens’ ink smears when a left-hander is writing.

10. Draining swamp coolers at the end of the summer commonly leaves a large hard water stain on a roof.

11. The windows high up on the front of the Fidel Center are difficult to clean.

12. The sprinklers on the athletic field overshoot the field and water the sidewalk and street (and unwary passing pedestrians).

Take-home quiz

For your convenience, I have uploaded a PDF of the take-home quiz that is due on Tuesday, February 27th (as listed in your syllabus). The PDF is in the folder containing the class notes:

http://www.nmt.edu/~ddunston/CIIPS_notes/

web discussion topic #3

I have posted topic #3 "the thing." As before, feel free to email me directly with questions. Good luck!

Class notes now available

Sometime after each class period (usually within a couple days), I'll post my notes in RTF for your convenience. You'll be able find the notes at: http://www.nmt.edu/~ddunston/CIIPS_notes/

So far, I've posted my notes from the first five class meetings.

...and we're off!

I have posted web discussion topic #2 over at the thing. I urge you to get an early start, so you can get some good feedback from your colleagues.

Extra note: at this point, I am expecting to be in class (physically, in person, synchronously) next Tuesday. I will post on the blog here if that plan changes.

Possibility for next week

Good evening, all. There is a chance I will not be able to be in class for part or all of next week, owing to an ongoing family medical emergency. This weekend, I will spend some time trying to figure out how I might coordinate our class remotely (and perhaps asynchronously) for part or all of next week, if necessary. Thank you for your understanding and flexibility.

If it looks like my absences may have to extend beyond next week, I'll look into other solutions -- I'll work not to leave you in the lurch.

In the meantime, I will see you tomorrow (Thursday the 1st) in class for more problem-solving.

Regrouping this week

I'm back in Socorro -- I'm sorry I had to abandon you last Thursday, but I had a family emergency.

Some general business first: I'd recommend that you subscribe to this blog; this is where I'll post course news and other tidbits. For example, if you are a subscriber, you're one of the first to learn that we'll meet on Tuesday as scheduled and pick up where we left off, and that I'm modifying the syllabus slightly: we'll cover the 25Jan material this Tuesday, and we'll cover the material originally listed on the syllabus for 30Jan AND the material originally listed for 1Feb all on 1Feb. (I'll just have to talk less in class, that's all.) (Phew.)

Many interesting comments on "the thing" for our first go around - it seems we still don't have the threading thing down pat, but the discussion tripped along more or less successfully, anyway. Next time, for your primary response, make sure my question is selected in your main window and click "reply." And for responses to other students' comments, make sure the comment you are replying to is selected (again, in the main window - you should get some visual feedback from the interface to tell) and click "reply." You should be able to set your display preferences to show a threaded frame on the left part of your screen, unless your browser is particularly curmudgeonly.

It's clear from what you wrote that we're not ready to say "trial and error" is a straightforward method that can be employed or not at will. Having a vision (design goals) and getting there are interesting things to talk about in their own right, but just where "there" is -- the place we're getting to -- is not always (or even frequently) perfectly and permanently specified in advance. When solving a problem (rather than an exercise), we have to leave room for learning. And learning can sometimes mean the "final" goals evolve.

--

For Tuesday's class - on pages 25-27 there's some talk of DVA's. I found this site to be particularly informative: http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/absorber/DynamicAbsorber.html

See you Tuesday.

First web discussion topic up

I've posted the first web discussion topic over at the thing. Please email me with questions or technical problems (the sooner, the better).

The thing

"The thing" is the temporary nickname for our discussion group. The thing's website is: http://groups.google.com/group/nmtdesign

To be able to post on the thing, I believe you must have and be using a Google ID. These are free to create. Mine is ddunston@nmt.edu, for example.

If you've gone through my instructions on the previous post, been invited, thought you've joined successfully, but are having problems from that point, it may be that you're not using a Google ID. In that case, use and/or create a new Google ID, and email it to me along with your name (so I can keep the addresses straight), and we'll try again.

Use the subject line "trying again" so I know what's going on.

Welcome to cyber CIIPS

Creativity and Innovation and Interdisciplinary Problem Solving
Acronym: CIIPS
Pronunciation of acronym: cheeps?

When ChE 489/ES 489/SS 489 starts up this month, some of the class discussion will occur outside of "class." Much of the work we'll be doing will take the form of sharing - we'll be giving away as much information and insight to each other as we can. The patents and profits (quick quiz: how many patents lead to net profits for their inventors?) will come later.

We're going to start with every participant in the course joining a Google Group associated with the course. I say "we're going to start," because if we figure out a better way to do this ("this" being run a class-network with hyperlinked discussion), we'll do it. But this is our starting point.

Please send me an email with your full name, the email address you will be checking during the spring semester, and one of your pet peeves having to do with design (or lack thereof). If I type your email in correctly, you'll receive an email invitation to the Google Group with some additional instructions.

Grading. I don't know to what extent participants will want or need this little incentive system known as grading, but here's the general idea: the quantity and quality of your posts and comments on each other's posts will determine your grade for the "web discussion assignments" part of the course. I will be assigning some discussion/posting topics and providing some frameworks as far as deadlines, quotas, and expectations of good behavior, but you are welcome to use the Google Group for other course-related discussions in addition to the assignments. You will be responsible for reading what your colleagues write and writing in response. More (much more) on this later.