General Advice following The Matrix submission.

Hi All,

A key message that Daniel and I would like to communicate following your submission of The Matrix is that, for most of you, you need to pay extra attention to the weightings given to each assessment criteria in the course outline.

Many of you handled the precedent selection, its key concept and how this might be of use to you quite well. But referencing often let the work down, so if you got a low mark in this criteria you should look at the how to guide for APA referencing here (the short video is a good place to start). Note that you didn't need to use the APA referencing style, but it is common in our areas of research so it's as good as any. In addition, the point of referencing existing literature is to support of challenge your opinions ... if your opinions weren't clear, or non existent!, then you would have scored low here too. However, this part of the assessment was only worth 20%.

Given that this is a practical, design lab based, course it shouldn't have been surprising that the criteria on scale, material and technique was worth so much; 40%. Many of you scored very low here because you simple stated what the scale, materials and techniques would be with no justification. The same was true for the budget criteria ... most were just guesses with no breakdown of what was going to be involved.

One important question you might ask is ... does getting a low mark in The Matrix assessment mean you will get a low mark overall?

Not necessarily,  all the project precedents we saw have the potential to make really good fabrications and could document really well. The purpose of The Matrix was to help establish a solid plan for action so you could progress with confidence having thought about the challenges or opportunities you were about to face. A low mark suggests you'll have more surprises, be put under more pressure, and probably spend more (money and time) than you had to ... but if you overcome those obstacles your final two assessments could be as good as someone who got a high mark for The Matrix; we wont be taking your Matrix mark into account when assessing the Fabrications and Documentation.

There is 70% of the course yet to be assessed, so plenty of marks to be had to pass the course or do really well ... but keep your eye on the assessment criteria, and their weightings, so you make sure you direct your efforts to where they count the most.

Kind regards

Russell