This ironic statement taken directly from the course: “Thus excellent or poor communication and writing skills can be the difference between a great engineer and not so great engineer, will impact the engineer’s credibility and reputation” While the majority of material was readable, there were instances where the sentences did not make sense or were missing words (mostly minor grammatical errors.) The layout of the paper was very chaotic, with captions not clearly attached to photos, and many different listing formats that changed from section to section. I found that that the information laid out in the course was sporadic and incomplete, jumping from topic to topic and presented a lot of information that was not really that pertinent.
The biggest issue I had was with the quiz. It had poorly written questions that dealt with topics not addressed in the material. One question in particular about what an expert witness is expected to do before and during deposition/trial was worded completely wrong so that the “correct” answers were actually wrong. It took four tries to finally realize that the question should have been worded what “shouldn’t” be done. Again, this actual information was not specified in the course material. The last question actually had the question repeated as the first answer. The correct answer was actually “a,b,c” which only made sense if you disregarded that selection.
While the course material was ok, it seemed to have been taken from a lecture or presentation, where questions are asked in the material but never answered. Also, there was little information about what a structural engineer is actually inspecting or looking for during an inspection, or how to interpret those observations. Perhaps the author is just leaving this analysis up to the PE’s professional opinion. For example: When is something damaged from foundation settlement vs. wind? That type of information was non-existent or barely touched on.