Quoc-Anh Nguyen- Reflection

The major thing that I learned in ME 250 was how to use CAD. Many companies today uses CAD for design and we will be using class throughout ME 350 and 450, so I think we should have dedicated more time towards learning how to use CAD.
As for design and manufacturing, I found out that it was a very quick and time consuming process. Even after making all the designs and calculations, there could be many things that prevent the manufacturing of the design. Material resources were one of the largest obstacles. One can have a good design, but without the material, the design was useless. Thus, I think the student should have an earlier list of the materials in the kit. This is because many of us do not have cars and so we cannot buy other materials. Also out team had a big problem with bending the aluminum plate for our cart. Our plate was much longer than the length of the bending machine so we had to do it by hand. So I think students should be given the length of the bending machine, the dimension of the laser jet and the dimension of the water-jet so we can make better preparations before finding out that we cannot make our part the way we planned.
Teamwork is an important part of this course, and everyone needs to do their fair share in order for the team to succeed. Everyone should be advice on the importance of picking their teammate. Also we should be given a team evaluation at the middle of the semester to see how well each team is working together and to motivate each member to work harder.
Time management was one of the hardest things to keep track of for this course. Since each team members will have different classes to worry about and scheduling time, an outline of when everything is due should be posted from beginning of semester to end so each team knows exactly what to expect. I learn that to have a schedule that everyone can follow will keep the team and each individual on track.
Many of the homework problems were too hard and had many ambiguous assumptions. Without going to office hours, most people would have a hard time figuring out these assumptions. Homework felt more like office hours work. Anyone who goes to office hours will most likely get a better score than those who stays home. Also, we did not do any calculations during class, but we had many calculations to do in homework. Maybe we can do some example problems similar to the homework during class.
Exam was too long and we were not provided enough time. I felt like if people started with the first part and wrote down something for each question then they would have a better chance of getting a higher score where as if you spent your time with the calculations on the second part, then you will run out of time and won’t score as well. Usually, the time it took for a GSI to finish an exam is multiply by two, and that time is what the students will get.
If I can retake this course again, I would go to office hours for each homework assignment.