CDS Deadline
Chirag Variawa
All Sections
No unread replies. No replies.

Dear APS112 students, 

 

The teaching team has received some requests to extend the deadline of the Conceptual Design Specification ("CDS") group document from Friday night to Sunday night.  A class rep asked the teaching team last week, and we deliberated significantly before responding, saying that the deadline couldn't be moved for a number of reasons.  In the spirit of transparency, please allow me an opportunity to explain our reasoning:

 

The CDS deadline was released at the beginning of term, and ultimately, students ought to have prepared their time and worked towards the deadline accordingly.  Additionally, this is a group project, and the shared ownership of the CDS document would have suggested that time ought've been managed to meet that deadline - especially as all students are required to complete a Gantt Chart and share that with their Engineering Manager illustrating that the deadline would be met.  We don't have extensions like these in the "real world" necessarily... if anything, missing a deadline by even seconds would mean that the entire project could be scrapped!  We want to prepare you for those harsh realities in the safety of an academic environment instead of facing them head-on in industry.  In this course, we also have multiple help sessions, including cancelling our Thursday lecture content and replacing it with a Help Session for all 9am, 10am, and 11am sections.  Some students have mentioned that they only had a few days to work on their CDS, when in fact work could have begun after the PR was submitted (as per the Gantt charts of many groups, which we believed were accurate...?).  Also, the ESP course is compliant to the existing manner of responding to approved academic petitions: if a student (team) has an approved academic petition, with evidence as appropriate, then we will adjust the grading penalty as per the accommodation to be fair to all students.  Some students have indicated that the deadline is fair and attainable, whereas some have responded otherwise - we want to be consistent for all students uniformly. 

 

At present, the CDS assignment deadline is Friday night, with the CDS debriefs starting on the Monday that follows it.  As such our TA's only have Saturday and Sunday to carefully and thoroughly grade the documents for the Monday sections.  We don't have tutorials for the week thereafter, so we can't simply move the CDS debrief for those Monday sections to the following week... without them all being on-board with the idea (and a few related pieces falling into place as well).  

 

We are presently in talks with the entire teaching team to see what can be done.  We really don't want to disadvantage anybody, but we do have an obligation to be consistent with the course content and deadlines ... if we move one thing, then others are affected as well.

 

Nonetheless, we are working towards finding another solution for you, one that takes into account your mental health and wellbeing as well as the responsibilities you have as an engineering student to demonstrate your performance on course content in a timely fashion.  Unfortunately, at the present moment, it means that there is no extension to the CDS.  However, if there are ANY (and I mean ANY) changes, you will be the first to know via a class announcement by Tuesday March 21st at the latest.

 

Thanks everyone for your time and attention.

 

Kind regards,

--Prof. Variawa.