Student Feedback
… Your video lectures are great by the way. Nga mihi
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… On another note, I quite enjoy your class videos. Thank you
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Hi Andrew, I hope everything is going well. It feels good to be back in NZ (except for the lock-down) and have everything wrapped up with Weltec for the degree. I really want to say thank you for connecting me with Stefan for the project and all the support, teaching and advice you've offered throughout my degree. It's been a fantastic experience and really had a large impact on me. I feel really privileged. If you did want to meet up and have a bit of a debrief I'd be more than happy. I truly appreciate your help. Kind Regards
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Kia ora, Thank you so much Andrew. I appreciated all your help and the way you teach your course. I will keep your life lessons in mind and aim to be more confident for my future. Nga mihi
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Hi Andrew, Appreciate for your teaching! I learned a lot from your teaching from computing to the importance of accuracy and precision in engineer’s work. At the beginning of this course, I was basically a “BABY-like computer guy”. To be honesty, I was using the google drive and video recording for the first time of my life. Now, I know how to make the shared files in correct orders with right link. You guided me through the entrance of computing and programming. Really appreciate that! Thank you very much!
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Hi Andrew, Here's my Labview project, thank you very much for teaching me this semester, it has certainly been very different from usual! Cheers
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Hi Andrew, Thanks for that, spoke to Malcolm Fair last Monday told him how much I enjoyed the class format, as in the multi-layered/multi-skilled/multi-themed approach to learning and how it forced me to work through problems rather than learn through route. I will definitely be trying to adapt my learning and application as an Engineer to anything I can going forward. Again thank you and have a good holiday. Regards
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Hi Andrew I'm very, very pleased with my exam result. Thanks heaps for the class, wish I was able to do it sooner. Cheers
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Hello Andrew, This is …. (I omit the name of the student here) from the computing class. I decided to send you email to say thank you. I'm really glad you covered the special relativity in the course. Sometimes, I felt it was adding extra complexity to the class, but it was intellectually stimulating and I quite enjoyed it. My motivation for studying math is I can understand complicated physics concepts such as the relativity, Maxwell's equations and etc. So I can understand some part of the underlying law of the universe which could be permanent. To me those are keys to change assumptions we make about the world. Maybe less relevant to our everyday life, but it's very mentally stimulating, profound and mind-boggling. I was quite intimidated by the relativity and I assumed in order to understand it, I need to know very complicated mathematical concepts. However, by learning more about the special relativity during the class and talking to you, I found out the special relativity is not difficult to understand. The most of the concepts in the special relativity revolve around the Lorentz factor. I was reading more about the special relativity a month ago, and I was quite surprised to find out the length contraction and the time dilation are just multiplication and division of the Lorentz factor. It's so simple, thanks to you, now I can remember the Lorentz factor from my memory. I hope I can spare some time to study some concepts of the general relativity, astrophysics and electro-magnetism during the summer break. By the way, before I started studying at WelTec, I was trying to teach myself vector calculus, so I can understand Maxwell's equations. Now I have the right tools which I learned how to use during the class, I hope I can actually understand some of those concepts. I'm also grateful that assignments in your class need to be submitted with video presentations. At first, I didn't like it because I didn't have any idea what to say during the video and it took very long time to make one. In fact, it took more time to make video than completing all of the tasks for the first assignment. However, I got hang of it gradually. In the end, making a video presentation for the final assignment, I was much more relaxed and I knew how to present and explain what I did. I think making the video presentation helped me to improve my communication skills too. Thank you so much Andrew! Best Regards
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Thanks Andrew, I was thinking back to (I omit the name of the university here) when I was doing a double degree (Bach. Science in computers + Bach. Economics). Not sure why I took computing - it once took me 8 hours to do a fairly simple assignment, and made little sense to me. Lectures did not seem to match tutorials at all which was frustrating, so I gave up on it in about 7 weeks. This course has been far better - challenging but actually understandable and enjoyable to work out the problems. Cheers
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Hello Andrew This is (I omit the name of the student here), and I am writing this message as I feel unfortunate because I believe this was the last class I will see you at. I waited my grades to be published before I send this message as I do not want this message to influence my marks. I am from a family that interested in teaching as a path for a job, my mum is a school teacher and two of her brothers who I look up to are university teachers. So I was raised and taught that teachers must be respected and appreciated. In my religion we believe that teachers status is second after our prophet Mohammed, also in my culture we have saying that say, “Who taught me a letter I become his slave for ever.” So Andrew I am deeply thankful to you and I do wish one day that I become something like you. A great teacher and exceptional engineer. I think that I was so lucky that I was taught by you in two different topics (computing and IC2). I wish that our journey in class rooms did not finish, but I understand live is moving forward and everything has an end. I believe this end is a happy end as I was given a lot of real engineering skills and also live knowledge. I am including Malcolm in this message just to let him know how lucky Weltec and the students to have a great teacher like you Andrew and I wish all my teachers were like you. Andrew’s way of teaching is not as other teacher. For me Andrew’s class is a challenge, first thing that I think about is that Andrew is my client and his assignment is a job he wants it to be done, so either he will pay me when I finish it because it is what he wants or say, “Look this is not what I want”, and I will get low mark in this case which I understood from the first day and I worked on this logic. However his demands are reasonable and I found that they are doable. when I send my assignment and receive the grade I have never replied to the message as I understand it is final and I just moved on, and I found the grades are fair and I do not think that I got unfair mark ever with Andrew. What I am trying to say is I am learning while I am doing the assignment and the class is only to discus the problem not to see how the problem can be solved, solving the problem is my job. I believe what I learned at Andrew’s class will stay with me forever and I even used the knowledge from Andrew’s class in other class, for example in my second year project and in PLC2. In the end I would say that I do respect and appreciate all my teachers but I like few of them. Andrew, I think you are the best teacher that I have ever had. I wish there were enough words to show my appreciation but I believe there is no enough words for you Andrew. I would just say thank you for ever and God bless you Andrew...
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Hi Andrew, For the first two years of the BEngTech delivery of MG5001 was delivered by a tutor from the School of IT. The School of Engineering was not particularly happy with the delivery of the course as it lacked structure and Engineering focus. With you taking over delivery in 2012 I believe we have gained this and brought the course into the 21st Century. I have had feedback about your delivery from students whose opinion I respect. The feedback has been all favourable. In one instance the student said it was the best course he had taken at WelTec, the one he gained the most from. I know he has completed at least three programmes at WelTec over a number of years so this is a good recommendation. The way you have developed the course and the way it is taught I believe are not only beneficial to your students and the School of Engineering but to the wider WelTec and Metro groups. Hence in past years I have asked you to share your methods with your peers in a number of presentations. Even yesterday at a Metro Management Group meeting MG5001 and what was delivered by the different members of the Metro group came up for discussion. My comment was that we are very pleased with the way and what we are delivering. My suggestion to those present was to go onto the Moodle site and view your material for MG5001 as an example of what should be done. So in summary I am very happy with where we are with the delivery and content of MG5001. It is vastly different from what was presented to the students in the first 2 years of BEngTech delivery. I do expect that delivery and content will keep evolving and I look forward to seeing what the future holds. Kind regards, Malcolm Fair Associate Head of School, Engineering (Degree and Diplomas) Wellington Institute of Technology
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Hi Andrew, You were right. The final exam was a great learning experience. Most exams are more a "show what you know" event. It was tough, but also very rewarding. Only when I thought about plotting y=x then y=2x then y=3x and what was happening did I select my function. I must say, bloody rewarding seeing the line spin in a similar manner as the video. Of all the papers I have done at Weltec, I think your lecture approach has pulled more effort from every student, and obtained the best results and created achievements for the students to be proud of. Well done. Talk to you soon
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Hi Andrew, How are you doing? This has been a long time coming. I've been meaning to write this email for a while now, as one of my favorite tutors at Weltec I wanted to let you know where I'm at. In February I applied for a Mechatronics and Control systems engineering role at a small company called Omeo Technology even though they were asking for someone with 2+ years experience. My first interview was presenting a project, which was my final year project my autonomous beach trash picker, but what really won them over was when they asked me to create a display on a computer which showed what the machine was doing in real time, which I managed to easily do with LabVIEW, all thanks to your classes. Because of Covid I didn't start until the end of May, but since then I have loved almost every bit of it. If you haven't already heard of Omeo, it is a small company in Otaki where we build electric self balancing mobility devices (legal reasons we can't call them wheel chairs) the game changer is they can be driven completely hands free... Thanks for your help. If it wasn't for your Instrumentation and Control and Engineering Computing classes I never would have been able to finish my final year project, or create a real time display so easily, which means I probably wouldn't have got the job. Cheers
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I learned a hang of a lot from Andrew’s computer knowledge and I considered myself already proficient with computing… If you ever are in the situation of having to provide remote labs again, this beats watching videos and filling in the data from someone else’s recordings hands-down. As a kinaesthetic learner and experimenter, I want to do it for myself. All in all, this electrical lab turned what was going to be a potentially humdrum academic exercise into an absorbing and interesting hands on series of experiments. It really turned a negative situation (lockdown) into a positive and interactive one. I recommend it. Regards
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Overall I found the course to be very informative and straightforward to follow with regards to the videos and the slides it was good to get a sufficient amount of background info on each topic. It also allowed me to be more flexible around my work day since I'm also doing two asset management papers and working full time currently. Face to face is always great but considering the current COVID circumstances and the fact that I live/work in Invercargill the online videos and prompt email replies were by far the best way to conduct the paper for myself. Previously I have done papers by travelling up to Dunedin and it essentially used up 2 afternoons, nights by the time I travelled there and back. This time could have been spent studying instead. Thanks for your time and effort Andrew
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I thoroughly enjoyed the course and have gained a great appreciation for programming. I wish you well for the future. Thank you for your time and expertise
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