Course Reflection - Chris Sager

Just like the opening statement on Blackboard says “This is a class in which you’ll get out of it as much as you put in”. This course was extremely beneficial to me because my area of study is in Digital Building Design. Intelligent buildings and the topics associated with them play such a big role in what I am trying to study. A lot of the topics we covered in this course I had heard of before, but I did not have a true understanding of them. Dr. Mitchell along with the rest of the class did a great job in explaining these topics and why they matter. We really took the time to create a shared understanding of what Intelligent Building means. I was impressed by the number of topics we were to cover in the 10 weeks we had. My top three would consist of BIM Tools & Concepts, Databases, and Data - CAD; BIM. 

My favorite aspect of this course would have to be the weekly blog posts. I liked them because each week we were able to explore a topic in depth and write about it in our own words. We were not penalized for not understanding a topic but rewarded for taking the time and studying that topic and its effect on intelligent building. As long as we took the initiative we benefitted. The ability to get feedback from other classmates as well as Dr. Mitchell made writing more enjoyable because you knew your work was being seen and commented on by a number of individuals. 

In terms of the Assignments we were required to complete throughout the term, The Revit assignment would have to of been my favorite. It gave me a chance to run through the important features of Revit again and create an all around proficient end result. It was also my first time using families within Revit. I gained important knowledge as to why these families are important and how useful they come to be when working in different projects. 

I liked a lot that we had so many topics and methods to choose from for the final project. You had the ability to work on anything that really interested you in terms of intelligent building. If you did not wish to work with a partner you didn't have to either, which I appreciated. I normally work well independently on most things. Being able to provide Dr. Mitchell with a draft of the project halfway through the course was also beneficial in staying on track and acquiring comments from him to improve on the final result.

I must say a large part of the success I had in this course was due to the professor, Dr. Mitchell. He was very knowledgeable in the topics we discussed. I was very impressed with the amount of work he required from us and his ability to stay on track as well as get back grades and comments proficiently. 

Peer Comments

Maissoun Ksara (click here) - You did a nice job covering everything we experienced in this course. I also agree, the ability to listen to and interact with professionals in our field from week to week was exciting. Like you, I also enjoyed working on the Revit and Database projects. I could also see how MS Access and the ability to create databases within the software can be a great resource when it comes to organization and presentation.

Drew Hovy (click here) - Like Drew, I also enjoyed the presentation in relation to Navisworks the most. Being able to have a first hand look at those individuals working with intelligent buildings and the software designing them is really interesting. 

Brandon Mengel (click here) I definitely agree that the personalization throughout this course we were able to provide ourselves was nice when it came to the final project. I went into my project not knowing if what I wanted to do would even work and the professor understood this. I do not think you are being dramatic  in stating the idea that jobs will steadily be stolen by computers in years to come. Its definitely a scary though and its good we are discussing it now rather than later.