Report on the Course Delivery and Assessment of CIVN2013 in 2016 Date: May 9, 2017, Time: 8:00am, Venue: H105 Present: Prof Geoffrey S. Simate, Associate Professor, School of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering, Prof Akpofure Taigbenu and Dr Precious Biyela. This report addresses the following issues: 1, General dynamics of the course delivery and students’ responses. 2. Course outline: how it relates to the syllabus in the FEBE rules book? 3. Did the supplementary examination of January 6, 2017 cover the course material for the entire semester? 4. Was the mark distribution of the supplementary examination of January 6, 2017 a correct reflection of intellectual demands from each of the questions? 5. Accusation that Reaction Kinetics and Chlorine disinfection were not taught by Dr Biyela in 2016. 6. Accusation that Question 2 of the Supplementary Examination paper of January 6, 2017 was from Part B of a question in a text book, and that, as presented in the examination, it required the solution from Part A which was not provided in the examination. As such Question 2 is unanswerable. External moderation of the examination question papers Style of asking examination questions. Any lessons learnt? Any remedial actions for course delivery and assessment? 1. General dynamics of the course delivery and students’ responses Dr Precious Biyela narrated the history of the course since she joined the School in 2012, first as CIVN2006 (Introduction to Environmental Engineering, Health & Safety) and later in 2014 as CIVN2013 (Introduction to Environmental Engineering). Over the 5 year period she has transformed the course from one that was a pale shadow of environmental engineering to a proper course that addresses all essential elements of environmental engineering. Precious highlighted the time and efforts she has put to developing the curriculum which was first presented in its current format to the students in 2015. She indicated that the 2016 cohort of students was more responsive to the course than the 2015 students, and she attributed this largely to the support received from the Academic Development Unit (ADU). Particular mention, in terms ofSupport received, was made of Mr Givarn Singh, a part-time lecturer in the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering (SCEE) till December 2016, and Dr Rodney Genga and Michael Phala of ADU. Dr Biyela lamented the extent to which most students upon enrolling for CIVN2013 are simply not prepared for second year academic work. These students lack many of the basic competencies necessary for CIVN2013. These competencies include, but are Not limited to basic integration, logarithms, and balancing chemical equations. Dr Biyela also mentioned that she has taken time to interrogate the entire suite of first year courses offered to Civil Engineering students, and lamented the inadequacies of the Chemistry course (CHEM1033) being offered to the first year students in the School, Prof Simate concurred with Dr Biyela on this, stating that it was a similar situation with the Chemistry courses being taught to first year students in the Chemical Engineering discipline. To highlight the fact that she has always been concemed about the poor performance of students in her second year course, Dr Biyela shared with us correspondence she had in 2014 with Prof Aletta Zietman-Thomas, the former head of the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment (FEBE) ADU, on the challenges of having to teach, test, and assess a course at the second year level when the majority of the students in the class are operating at levels below the second year standard, She states, ‘what | have tried to do is to improve the pass rate without lowering the standard of the course or merely passing students who have failed in order to inflate the throughput. | have tried many things to help the students, either with some assistance from ADU or on my own. | have no doubt that in the long term these interventions will bear fruits”. Dr Biyela highlighted her philosophy of teaching which is to expiain various aspects of the course from fundamental principles of chemistry, physics and mathematics which runs against the grain of rote, shallow and pattemn-recognition learning that many Students are used to. She challenges the students to learn by first understanding the “story” narrated by each problem, then “Visualising and sketching" the problem, “formulating a mathematical framework", and finally “solving” the problem.Dr Biyela took us through the first presentation that she makes to the students at the start of the semester, and that the presentation is available online on SAKAI to every student, That presentation contained a detailed outline that included dates in which topics are taught, tutorial sessions, dates when different homework assignments are due, and reading material from the prescribed text (Appendix |). It is quite an impressive and comprehensive course outline and presentation. Six assignments are given to the students in the course, of which five are graded and one is not. In 2016, however, because of the students’ protests, only four assignments were graded. Dr Biyela indicated that three of the slides in the first PowerPoint presentation, which introduces environmental engineering to students, are from the presentation she made when she was interviewed for her position in 2011, and that the curriculum development of CIVN2013 is a fulfilment of her manifesto to the School. Dr Biyela made it clear that she is deeply hurt by the lies, peddied by Student x compulsory to attend lectures, despite the fact that he did not attend any of her lectures in 201 know only one sure way to master this course, and it includes: In fact, slide 18 ofthe first presentation has the following statement: 1. Attending lectures (Every lecturer/professor has a unique style of instruction. During lectures | prefer to expand on what is on the lecture notes as well as share specific examples and/or case studies. By, consistently, missing lectures a student can easily miss up to a third of what | cover in a course)’, The above statement is a clear warning to students who do net attend lectures. 2. Course outline: how it relates to the syllabus in the FEBE rules book? This was an easy exercise to accomplish. We took the teaching schedule and outline in Appendix | and compared it with the syllabus in the FEBE rules book, and we reached a unanimous conclusion that the course outline is an expansion of the syllabus in the FEBE rules book.3. Did the supplementary examination of January 6, 2017 cover the course material for the entire semester? This was also achieved quite easily by comparing the questions with the course outline obvious from Table 1. that all questions in the supplementary examination of January 6, 2017 covered the course material for the semester. in Appendix |. The results are summarized in the Table 1. It is Table 1 Question | No of weeks of | Marks awarded to Questions in the lectures | supplementary examination of January 6, 2017 1 3 30 it 2 4 30 3 4 30 4 1 10 4. Was the mark distribution of the supplementary examination of January 6, 2017 a correct reflection of intellectual demands from each of the questions? (On reviewing the questions, it is obvious that questions which require analytical, higher marks than those which are descriptive in nature. This is the norm in the Civil Engineering degree programme, and many other Engineering disciplines. Questions 1, 2 (part 2) and 3 (part 2) are such questions, and it is expected that they were awarded 30, 25 and 15 marks, respectively. Another way to ascertain n that a correct mark K distribution was adopted in the paper is to superimpose the mark dis istribution hon the v weeks of lectures in Table 1 ‘There is a strong correlation between the number of weeks that topics were covered and the marks awarded to the questions in the ‘supplementary examination of January 6, 2017. umerical_and problem-solving skills have 5. Accusation that Reaction Kinetics and Chlorine disinfection were not taught by Dr Biyela in 204 y Dr Biyela in 2018. 5 The allegation by Ao Prof Adeshola llemobade that the content on Reaction tics and Chlorine disinfection was not taught, is ludicrous coming from a student 4who did not attend the lectures. Dr Biyela indicated that 60% of the homework assignment number 3 of 2016, which dealt with water pollution and water treatment, was based on disinfection kinetics ayite problem of the loss of chlorine residuals in drinking water distribution systems "A Menlo thin aanlgneneit, and, received a score of 70%, 6. Accusation that Question 2 of the Supplementary Examination paper in CIVN2013 of January 6, 2017 was from Part B of a question in a text book, and that, as presented in the examination, it required the solution from Part A which was not provided in the examination. As such Question 2 is unanswerable. It is important to note that Stadeg¥ aware of the fact that this question was derived from one of the textbooks used in the CIVN2013 course because Dr Biyela showed hi the examination solution memorandum. The solution, prepared by Dr Biyela, cited the location (by page number) of solved example problems which derive different formulae applicable to the question in the supplementary exam. Step-by-step Inking of solutions.to solved example problems is almost universal in solution manuals and solution sets deliberately mis-represented facts to cast aspersions on the question in order to gain sympathy. Dr Biyela has provided us the unabridged memorandum. The question which is complete and answerable using the data Provided in the problem statement (see Appendix Il) is NOT from a text book. The solution refers to a solved example problem from one of the recommended textbooks, 4s that example problem was used to teach the concepts tested in the exam question. 7. External moderation of the examination question papers ‘The November 2016 was moderated by the External Examiner, Dr Themba Gumbo, but not the January 2017 supplementary examination. Considering the disruptions of the academic programme from September 2016, the lack of moderation of January 2017 supplementary examination is not unexpected, and this applies to all courses in the School for which there were supplementary examinations.8. Style of asking examination questions ent X This issue arose from the accusation by” that Dr Biyela described him in Question 4 of the November 2016 examiriation, We then looked at the pattern in which she asked questions in examinations since 2012. What is obvious is that Dr Biyela’s style of questioning is to use characters and put the student in the centre of her Questions. Itis a style of questioning that is evident not only in the examination papers, but also in assignments. Two examples are presented in Appendix II 8. Any lessons learnt? Any remedial actions for course delivery and assessment? Here we, including Dr Biyela, saw an opportunity to deliberate on measures to improve the throughput in CIVN2013. There are two other courses at 2" year level that have low pass rates: These are CIVN2008 (Materials and Structures |) and CIVN2011 (Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics for Engineers). Considerable investment in tutorial support has been offered by the School to students in CIVN2008 in 2017, and we await its impact on the pass rate at the end of July. Discussions are already underway with the School of Statistics on improving the pass rate in CIVN2011 Which is a second semester course. We agreed to invest heavily on tutorial support for CIVN2013 in the second semester. Prof Simate suggested considering having spot tests which assisted with CHMT3005 which he teaches and previously had a low pass rate, The under-preparedness of students due to the way CHEM1033 is being taught to 1" year students who are in a number of Schools is an issue that has to be addressed at the Faculty. We also agreed that marks for each question in CIVN2013 will be split into components of the question, as recommended by the External Examiner. However, this should not be seen as an indictment on Dr Biyela because the practice of mark allocation varies widely among academics. Prot Taigbenu has had discussions with Prof Chris James on this; while Prof James adopts the practice of Dr Biyela, Taigbenu distributes marks to components of the question. The consensus feached from the discussion is that there should be flexibility in the School on how lecturers allocate marks to questions,Concluding Remarks We highly commend Dr Biyela for the commitment and dedication in the development Of the curriculum of CIVN2013 which has given it the unique flavour of environmental ‘engineering course. Two years of offering this course in its current form is too short a time for Dr Biyela to become disillusioned with the low Pass rate. This exchange of ideas, particularly with the involvement of an academic external to the School (Prof ‘Simate), could well be the catalyst for improving the performance of students in the course. Prof Geoffrey 8. Simate Prof Akpgfuyé Taigbenu Associate Professor Head of School School of Chemical & Metallurgical School of Civil & Environmental Engineering EngineeringAppendix | Date Day Subject Readings by Page Numbers Julit_ | M No Contact Session = Jul14 [TH Introduction to CIVN2013; Mass__| 1-8 [sults TF Chemistry Refresher 47-75 Julai No Contact Session = Jul2i_ | TH Mass Balancos —__e2t July 22 TF Mass Balances ma July 25 [m1 Recitation — Group | = July 28 {TH Water Properties, Quantities and _ | 175-180, 220-244 Sources [suly 28 TF (HWA) |=...” eae a [Aug 01 | M. Recitation Session — Group = ‘Aug 04 [TH Drinking Water Quality | 282-288 ‘Aug 05 | F Drinking Water Quality 181-198, 281-316 ‘Aug 08M Recitation Session — Group Ill = Aug 11 | TH Drinking Water Quality 187-162, 193-199 ‘Aug 2 [F (HW2) | Drinking Water Treatment 289-316 Aug 15__[M Recitation Session — Group = Aug 18 | TH ‘Surface Water Quality 181-795, 199-308 ‘Aug 19 | F Surface Water Quality 210-229, 68-70, 219-229 ‘Aug 221M Recitation Session ~ Group 1 = = ‘Aug 25 | TH ‘Surface Water Quality 158-161, 196-199 ‘Aug 26 | F (HW3)__| Wastewater Treatment 316-333 | ‘Aug 27 to [M-S MID-TERM BREAK = Sept 04 Sept 05_| Recitation Session ~ Group I = Sept 08 | TH ‘Mid-Term Examination All work covered from Jul 11 Sept 09 F No Contact Session = Sept 12 [Mi Recitation Session —- Group = eal Sept 15__ [TH Structure of the Atmosphere 438-469 Sept 16 F Structure of the Atmosphere oa Sept 19M Recitation Session -- Group tI = Sept 22TH ‘Ambient Air Quality 367-370, 380-308 Sept 23 [F (HW) | Ambient Air Quality 426-437, 380-986, 401.425 Sept 26__|M Recitation — Group Ill = Sept 29 [TH Ambient Air Quality 426-437, 380-308, 407-425 Sept 30_|F C02 and Climate Change 501-545 Oct 03 [1M No Contact Session = Oct 06 | TH More CO2; introduction to 03 545-574 Oct 07 | F (HWS) __| Stratospheric Ozone Depletion 575-588, 553-555 Oct 10 [Mi No Contact Session = Oct 43 | TH ‘Stratospheric Ozone Depletion 575-588, 553-555 Octie [TF Solid Waste Management 601-612, 624-677 TRA TBA Final Examination All work covered from Sept 09