School of Architecture and Planning

Feedback sent (memos, final presentations)

we've posted detailed feedback on your individual memos on the Stellar website, under Homework, where you submitted that memo.

and sent a feedback memo on your presentation via email (economic development team, we've sent the feedback memo to nicole for forwarding).

thx again for all your hard work, and we hope the new year is off to a terrific start.

mia, phil + xav

Announced on 09 January 2012  10:21  p.m. by Xavier de Souza Briggs

More Learning -- post-semester resources and other leads

We've just posted the latest issue of a practice-focused journal for community development and, in particular, comprehensive and innovative approaches. It's a good read on a number of very current concerns and opportunities, especially for creative work to support neighborhood-level interventions in a tough fiscal climate. There are a number of interesting health-related articles and also commentaries on leadership work. I did a Q&A with the editors with observations about the past 20 years too.

This posting is in a new topic on the course website, under Materials>More Learning (up top of the Materials page)

We'll add some more before the holidays and, in the new year, use Plaza and other tools to share leads for more learning too.

See u tonight.

Announced on 13 December 2011  11:39  a.m. by Xavier de Souza Briggs

Thx in advance for feedback on 11.401 - here's what we really could work with

Dear students --

A friendly reminder to please complete your evaluation of the course by 12 noon on Friday, December 16th, go to:
http://web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation/

And a big thank you in advance. We read these closely and, consistent with what our students often ask for, we are particularly eager for feedback, as opposed to ratings ('evaluation' in the dictionary sense).

That is, what's particularly useful is specific comments on how useful you found the material we covered, what other kinds of material or topics you'd suggest we look at (stipulating that adding things generally requires dropping or abbreviating others), things about the course that helped you learn (right down to the mechanics of the course -- how we prepared you, how we used time, assignments, etc.), and things that could have helped you learn more effectively.

Put another way, and ratings aside for the moment, the more you can put yourselves in the shoes of someone trying to teach an effective survey (intro) course in a very broad field, the better -- in terms of generating actionable feedback to improve the course for future students. The less useful evaluations offer a kind of customer satisfaction review -- how pleased someone was with the experience -- and candidly, if that's all we receive, it gives us little to work with.

On a broader note, the focus, major objectives, and learning approach of the course (and the other intro courses) will get a healthy rethink as part of our planning for the future of DUSP and the MCP degree. One important element of that MCP rethink is how the introduction to 'the field' broadly (currently Gateway) relates to courses that introduce students to specializations or subfields, to the analytics courses (econ, QR, etc.), and other parts of the core.

So your feedback can help inform that.

Thanks very much, and best of luck with the final push.

-- x

Announced on 07 December 2011  1:11  p.m. by Xavier de Souza Briggs

Schedule for Final Presentations

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13th
(Room 9-450B)

Dinner and more to be served! Please plan to stay throughout, to support your classmates as an audience member and discussion participant regardless of when your team delivers:

6-6:45pm Housing team
6:45-7:30 Incarceration team
7:30-8:15 Economic development team
8:15-8:30 Wrap-up/debrief

Be professional--well-organized, on point, and on time--but no special dress code applies. The evening offers you a chance to showcase your hard work but engage the audience in learning more, too, through questions and debate, as appropriate.

Our evaluation will emphasize presentation content (clarity, carefulness, creativity, and organization), but we will also give you feedback on delivery of the presentation, to help you hone this critical communication skill.

Guidance slides (re: effective professional presentations) to be posted by tomorrow, under MATERIALS. Good luck, ask questions as needed.

Phil and Xav

Announced on 01 December 2011  3:56  p.m. by Xavier de Souza Briggs

Dry Run Schedule

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7th
(Room 9-554)

6-6:45pm Incarceration Team
6:45-7:30 Economic Development Team
7:30-8:15 Housing Team

And thanks for being as flexible as possible re: conflicts with other classes.

We should be able to email the schedule of final presentations by tomorrow, along with guidance on structuring the presentations to get your message across but interact effectively with the audience too.

Announced on 01 December 2011  2:06  p.m. by Xavier de Souza Briggs