STUDENT REP MEETING

Hi All,

We discussed a wide range of issues at the first student rep meeting yesterday ... below are my notes from the meeting, and some of the actions I'll take in response.

1. Additional learning support for SketchUp was a topic of interest to all of the groups. There are a few things I can assist with here, they include: investigating the recording of Jeremy's lecture tutorials, establishing a thread on the forum for "SketchUp Tips and Tricks" (including a list of useful plugins, blogs and youtube channels that have good tutorials), investigating if the "Architecture Society" is available to offer advice (if they are actually still going!) and finally, I'll ask if the faculty can support out of class "drop-in" tutorial sessions.

I notice Nick Bucci has already posted a link to an ARCH1101 facebook page; thanks Nick.

2. Two things were an issue regarding the lectures; the volume of my voice and the level of illumination. I'll turn up the microphone to solve the first one (but please shout out if you cant hear at the back, or if it's too loud). I'll contact the university AV people to see what can be done about an intermediate light setting ... currently its all on, or all off. All on is easier for taking notes, but the image quality of the slides suffers a lot so hopefully they'll come back with a solution.

3. There was a request to show more examples of previous student work in the lecture. I'll do this. You can also see all the student work you like from previous years by replacing the 2013 in the blogspot address to 2012, or 2011. Keep in mind the course has changed in a few significant ways over the past three years ... but there are similarities (especially in the drawing and experiment one). I'd also remind you all that plagiarism is taken very (very) seriously at UNSW, so if you see something you like be inspired, don't copy it.

I'll show examples of the best work in the lectures ... so rather than tell you what to look at on the previous years blogs I'll let you decide that for yourselves. It's a good learning opportunity to develop a critical eye.

4. It was felt that the discussion of the Task for Today in the lecture was worthwhile; so I'll extend this to a brief discussion of the Independent Study also.

5. One student rep noted that students who had arrived after the first week (or who had missed O-Week) had/were struggling to find the information they needed regarding course information. Hopefully they have found it now, but to help I'll ask the tutors to go over the course website, blog and forum locations for ARCH1101 in next weeks studio. I'll raise this with the first year coordinator, Paul Hogben, as well.

6. Getting stable access to the internet via uniwide was particularly bad yesterday. A few groups brought this up. Some others weren't affected at all. This is something we need to deliver the course ... so it's critical to us too. I'm going to follow this up with our local IT support (BECU) and the university IT people.

7. Breaks! I'll ask the tutors to ensure you all have a 20 minute break at some point in the class. Our thinking in the meeting was that this should happen for everyone at 4pm. But on reflection I think it's probably best for each tutor to negotiate the best time with their class ... something that suits their group best. I'll also ensure there is a 10 minute break between the end of the lecture and the start of studio (in other words if the lecture finishes at 2pm, studio will start at 10 past). This gives you a chance to grab a snack, or coffee before studio starts.

8. I brought up an end of year "party". We'll talk more about this towards the end of the session.

I think that was everything; but if I've missed something please leave a comment below.

Cheers