I recorded a short explainer video for the course WB3135 Integrated Mechanical Systems this week. This was my second video recording with a script and prompter. It went much better already. I feel I’m relatively natural and well-paced in most of it. And making a video like this can be fast! Recording was over in – I think – half an hour, and editing is also less work when the flow of the text was considered and edited beforehand (no shit). Less than half a day spent on this.
Teaching
Yesterday was the second round of progress presentations for the same course (WB3135). We ask students to analyse a technological breakthrough or invention by comparing the alternative technologies, the various mechanisms or systems that were the ‘candidates’ for that disruption (e.g. VHS vs. Betamax vs. Video 2000). For these 3rd year BSc students, it’s incredibly challenging to set up a comparison like that. Every technological development is different, so they really have to frame and shape their analysis themselves. And we have far too little time to really coach them on it, with only roughly 15 minutes per group presentation. It’s a super fun course, and some groups come up with really interesting results. But it’s frustrating to see them struggle and nog being able to provide the right kind and amount of support…
Delta column ‘Exploring Futures’, which I had rather just titled ‘Architecture’, but the editors thought that was too boring. I wanted to get something down on the difference between engineers’ focus on causing/guaranteeing functionality and architects’ aim to make possible, to create (necessary but not sufficient) conditions (Cf. Taeke de Jong). It turned into something a little different, more on the question of what it means to practice design and/or engineering as an academic discipline. Not my best work.
Notes / Other stuff
Went to Antwerp on holiday. What a stony city. Hardly any trees.
First session with my ‘Climate & Transition’-themed cluster for IMS. Off to a good start. Great session. It makes for such a different class atmosphere when an assignment actually matters to students.
This week was the start of the large enrollment BSc course I’m teaching at ME this quarter (‘Integrated Mechanical Systems’). It includes a project that ends with a written report. In discussions beforehand, a colleague said we really can’t assess learning goals in the area of general analysis and evaluative, critical thinking with a report anymore, what with ChatGPT and all. But after the experience of administering the group formation for hundreds of students, I think we should realize that we were never able to adequately teach those sorts of things simply do to the number of students, the fact that we’re forced to make it a group project because of those numbers, and the very limited time we have to engage in actual discussion with students.
Tinkered
I played around with redesigning my personal homepage (bobvanvliet.nl). More and more often I wish I had a central online repository of my stuff to point people to. Ended up going with a barebones block of text for the time being, after also sketching out some more fun stuff (see below). Took too much work to make responsive, though, so I opted for just getting something out beyond just an email address (which was what I had before). I would like to find the time to prepare and publish more of my educational materials for reuse by others.
This week I read most of the 31 papers for the ‘Bio Inspired Design’ course. Lots of wacky designs as usual. But this year especially, it strikes me how difficult (or just not intuitive) it is for students (even at the MSc level) to separate the prototype from the actual design. Under ‘design improvements’, for instance, a good number of groups describe tweaks to the 3D printed version of their work, while the final design would be injection molded or even made of metal or something.
This was my first week working 50% at the Architecture faculty and to get a sense of the level and approach of their first year’s, we joined their presentations. The designs were much more complete and (sometimes) rich than I expected. Fun!
Also, many models displayed that same sort of naieve inability to make an abstract model or representation of a plan or design that I noticed in the mechanical engineering students’ work. Most of these were very literal, unsuccesfully trying to look like real grassland and stone with printed textures on everything, and with way too much detail in unimportant parts.
University/organizational
Responses to my column on the rector’s remarks about protest and freedom of speech on campus have kept coming in this week. I don’t think I ever had this much positive response to a column from staff and students.
Experimented with a new way to make feedback videos responding to student work. Instead of actively pausing/unpausing the recording, I filmed myself reading (and responding) to the work, and then used Recut to cut out all the silences. Now it’s a more accurate recording of my initial response upon reading. It wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped, but I think I’ll try it again. I just have to be a little more performative (and consistently loud) when voicing reactions. And I could also combine both features, for example to pause and collect my thoughts for final remarks/evaluation at the end.
Made
I printed the text of Ingrid Robeyn’s 2019 Van Hasselt lecture as a little booklet to gift to my faculty’s dean. Reminded me how fun it is to make simple little booklets/zines. I did a series of those a while ago. Perhaps I should do more of that again. Easy way to be creative.
Notes / Other stuff
Today was my last meeting as a teacher in the first year ME design project courses (because I’ll start to work part-time at Architecture starting February 1st). I wonder whether I’ll miss it. Probably. But it also felt like a good moment to step away.
YouTube video ‘Why you SHOULD be critical when brainstorming’. Made this one in a single day. Morning spent setting up and recording, edited the whole thing in the afternoon. Mostly an excuse to try my new teleprompter. Next time I think I should spend more time polishing the script, and to be more conscious of the tempo/rhythm of the video. It goes from hasty to slow and back again a few times now.
Learned
Discovered BlackMagic’s Resolve lessons and followed ‘Introduction to Editing’. So many little things I would never have figured out on my own.
Notes / Other stuff
Submitted Comenius grant application this week. Reasonably happy with the project proposal, in the end. We’ll see.
Thursday was my very last afternoon coaching first year Mechanical Engineering students! I wonder whether I’ll miss it. And looking back I’m struck by how difficult students seem to be finding things this year. In previous years, we got much more in-depth with modelling (even Python scripts) than this or last year. Way more tinkering and way less engineering that I remember from earlier years. Then again, the end-results were always dodgy so perhaps I’m misremembering… In any case, I find myself thinking I would change so much if I were the boss of these courses (do less better). Which means it’s good I won’t be doing it anymore, as I’m not in that position.
So yeah, I think I might try to do weeknotes weekly-ish for a while and see what they bring, inspired by Russel Davies‘ book ‘DO Interesting’ that I read but never did anything with before.
