Term Project Comments

Overall Opinion

With some happy exceptions your work in these term projects did not represent the best of what I think the class is capable. In too many there were a variety of structural problems or a lack of focus on an “intelligent building” issue in any depth.  There was one unfortunate instance of plagiarism and several in which what was submitted bore only a tangential relationship to the topics of the course.  Below are my comments that address some of these issues.

Good

There were several papers that II read with great pleasure because the authors had either addressed the topic of which I was ignorant and related it clearly to the intelligent building concepts, or had taken some aspect of the intelligent building concepts and considered it in detail adding their own experience or projections.

Sad

Too many of you produced reports that had long introductions that outweighed the major substance up the topic. Others put together a number of different topics but in no greater depth than we had considered in class and without any significant additions.

Report Structure

One of the greatest disappointments was that many of you don't seem to fully grasp the ingredients of a good technical paper. Besides the obvious need to use appropriate language and to include citations for any assertions or quotations used there is a fundamental structure that is commonly expected. That structure is, to oversimplify for the sake of exposition:

• Introduction – Usually states the main idea of the paper to prepare the reader for what follows – 10% of length
• Main Body – Background, discussion of the elements of the main idea, description of how the main elements interact, consideration of difficulties with the main idea and possibly future work. – 80% of length
• Conclusion – Restatement of main idea and how it has been “proven” in the main body – 10% of length.

Intelligence and Green

A number of you addressed the topic of Intelligence vs. Green in one form or another.  I would argue that these two concepts are not inherently similar, although intelligence can often be used in service of developing a green building.  As I said to one group (edited):

You have written a paper which certainly meets the expectations of the assignment. What follows is an opinion that I hope you will consider as you move forward.

I would argue that by accepting the definitions of intelligence and green that you use in this paper you have automatically produced more of an overlap than is necessary. In particular there is no inherent reason why intelligence has to be used to produce environmentally friendly results. It can equally well be used to produce drama or luxury or general excess as opposed to environmentally friendly and indeed is used that way today. In that sense it's rather like the computer, a tool that can be used for multiple purposes ranging from enhancing a green lifestyle to killing people using autonomous drones.