Relax

I'm doing much better now. Not being sick kinda felt weird at first. I don't know why, but it felt weird. Like my body wasn't used to the lack of coughing. So I was in a great mood last week. Friday couldn't come soon enough.

I'm pretty sure my lectures ended on a good note, namely because I was feeling better. The complaint guy still wasn't satisfied with how I handle things. I made a study guide for our final because I don't think the average should be that low. Unfortunately, the only time I have to go over it is at the end of the last lab before the final. This is about 11:30pm-1am. Not exactly happy hour, but we're mostly awake anyway. At least, Full Sail expects everyone to be awake at that hour.

Well this guy doesn't like the idea of it being so late. Can't it be moved to the start of lecture? No ... the lecture covers some of the material. Can't it be moved to the start of lab? Well, I want to give the lazy students the opportunity to go home instead of studying. Sort of a "it's your choice to fail" thing. So no, they're not going home at 9pm. Can't we ... blah blah blah? No! Not doing it. Well ... there's this whole air of mystery surrounding this final. We haven't had a test like it at all, so we're freaking out. A) Who is this "we" you speak of? B) No. I understand you might be scared of the unknown, and perhaps the whole application could be introduced prior to the final. However, that involves work on my part, and I've already got other things to do? Let me quote him, "What? What do you have to do that you're so busy?" As if I just sat around doing nothing on my days off. Not any more genius. I have to write the quizzes. I have to grade the quizzes. I have to prep the lectures. I have to prep next month's lectures. I have to prep the final. I have paperwork to do. I have a lot of crap that may be more important than "I'm scared." Jerk.

Now it kinda gets funny. This complaint was on the Monday before the review. On Wednesday just before the review, I was going over their last quiz. I had the lights off so the projector could be seen clearly. After I gave them their grades, I said they had ten minutes before I would take attendance and let them leave. Afterward I would go over that study guide. Well apparently this guy doesn't like the dark either, and as he returns from getting a drink, he turns on the lights. It's not like we have a simple light switch, it's a panel of buttons. And he just presses one and continues on to his seat. ?!? I'm like, "Dude!" WTF? "Get permission first." "Oh ... sorry. Yeah, you're right." This guy acts like he's freaking invincible.

And he did give me some grief while I was going over the study guide. He was claiming that I was introducing new material on the last day. Which is completely not true, it's in the required book reading. (Mr. We Read The Book.)

I ended up docking him GPS points for turning off the lights. I'm not sure it could get any more unprofessional than that. And that just may have cost him an A. It depends on if they round the grades up or truncate them down. And from there it's not my choice.

***
So I'm hoping I don't see an email about it. I did tell him that he lost points, and that he's now borderline. He seemed to take it well. I believe he understood that he did make a mistake there. But, of course, that doesn't prevent him from complaining.

I'm just hoping I never see him again. That would sound good to me.

***
I'm looking at 31 students next month, 7 repeaters. (Only 11 out of 53 failed this month, but a few are 2 strikes.) I would say it's a good thing for me to have so few students, but that means I don't have many lab guys. Another one just got a job, so we're down to five. Only one of them will be in my class. Just one.

And I'm planning on changing up all the lectures. I'm bored of this order. And if it's in a more logical order, perhaps the grades will improve. I'll probably be having four quizzes, because some of the material needs to be tested twice. But with so few students, grading four quizzes shouldn't be too bad.

I want to add written (non-computer) quizzes. That way the questions are independent of each other. Whereas they can lose a lot of points on the programming quizzes by just screwing up one thing. Which isn't entirely my fault, but I'd prefer to be fair. So we'll see. I doubt I'll be writing any quizzes, so I'll just stick to programming for now.

There are two suggestions, one from the critiques and one from my sister-in-law, that I would like to implement. The first is having labs that are in the same standard at the quizzes. The current labs kinda give a general overview of what the program should do, occasionally requiring a function. A quiz specifies what functions to make, what parameters they have, and what everything should do. So if a lab was setup like that, they'd be better prepared. Granted, creating them could take a lot of time, so I'm thinking of just having one new lab per day in that style. The other suggestion is for debugging. See, I show them a lot of broken code in lecture (not too much this month), because they should be able to spot errors and fix them. However, showing them something broken doesn't help much, because they don't realize the entirety of it. Why is it broken? Why did he break it? Who would ever break it that way? Is it actually broken? Instead, I should give them broken code, and have them fix it. So I'm going to add one broken lab per day as well.

To curb some of the inattentiveness, I'm going to require them to turn in their labs. Not at the end of every day, but before the start of lecture. Right now, they aren't turning it in. The labs aren't graded. And the students may not know the right way to do the labs. Now, I don't intend to grade 4 labs x 9 days x 31 students, but I can look through them for completion. And I can use the GPS category of being prepared (ie bringing homework) as reinforcement. Now, I don't have enough time to also go over four labs a day, but I can put the correct code up on the server.

So ... that's the plan at least. I need to get the syllabus done by Wednesday. I have other paperwork due by Friday. And I have a very odd schedule this month: WFS, MWF, MS, MW. So ... I probably need to have a few lectures prepared at the start of each week, and I'll need those labs done ahead of time as well.

***
And now I'm tired. Hopefully I do work tomorrow ... or enough work at least. I don't know how much I have to get done. And I don't feel like working eight hours. If I can get the syllabus done, I'll be in good shape to do everything else Monday and Tuesday.