And a some chocolate cake as well

This is not about my latest baking achievement.

Yesterday I got an email from the authorities here informing us of a new governmental policy.

From now on, ALL the 'compulsory' course materials must be on Universities' intranet, and those students receiving a governmental grant for studying, the University must print all these materials for free upon request.

The purpose is to democratize access to higher education, and, basically, to provide free education.

This really poses a lot of questions...

-Basic education has been 'free' of in this country for a long time. Yet every year, newspapers make headlines with the hundreds of € spent by families on kids getting back to school (some of which is probably useless branded stuff, but still). Free education is a myth. That being said, I do believe it is important to make sure that people from any income group can access education at any level.

-Still, this, from the pedagogical point of view, and from the point of view of a lecturer, has a number of implications. I use a textbook (rather nice and quite reasonnably priced, beside the fact that it can be bought/sold second hand) - does that mean I can't use that as a 'compulsory' course material? Does that mean that instead of this nice textbook, I need to write a shitty syllabus for them to study from?

-Why is the intranet the only canal mentionned? What happened to libraries? (for which the government also spends money, incidentally)

This comes as yet another obligation for lecturers to fulfill. I wonder if whoever came up with this has any idea of the type of course materials that are currently used.

Did I mention this trimester I need to lecture in a room that is litterally 2 meters from a big construction site? So far I haven't been able to get another room. They really want us to fucking podcast our lectures (not on my mind...)

Learning to write in scientific style

I don't know how this is in other countries, but here, there is a large discrepancy between what you learn is writing 'well' in secondary school and what is expected of students in terms of writing once they write scientific reports in University.

At school, the only course where writing is assessed is the course on the language here. Any other place where writing may be required tend to not assess writing (maybe spelling). Wherever writing is assessed, certain specific aspects will be valued positively: being able to construct complex yet understandable sentences, show a large vocabulary by the liberal use of synonyms and many different words, discuss nuances of all sorts.

In University however, you are expected to be able to write in a clear, concise, scientific style. When we tell students that writing will be part of the marks, not just the content, they try to write, but tend to get back to those things valued in school, whereas scientific vocabulary tend to avoid naming things 10 different names, and that expression such as 'a lot', 'not as much', 'many', 'little' are generally not well seen (gimme the figure!).

It's interesting to notice this difference. Both ways are interesting, probably, and those who will go towards litteraray studies probably will find that training valuable; those going into science though need to learn something different. For some it is really challenging. There are students who consistently give back way more words than the limit set.

Weekend emails

and baking. Pumpkin cake. It ended up being very crumbly (unusually so - I baked this thing before), but still yummy. Got a whole pumpkin from my dad this weekend, so it was a pumpkin soup, curry and cake fest.

What about weekend email? What do to do (if you are as bad as me and check and read them)? Reply? Wait for monday?

Can replying emails of the department chair make you look good (or like someone who has no life, and is reliable on emergency things. "let's organize a meeting, reply asap")

I reckon students should not be answered on weekends - but I did it recently out of pure self interest to secure myself a good student as a master student (mission accomplished). Other emails I tend to ignore.

The truth is: I should use my weekend for something else, and more interesting if it has to be work I suppose...

Hello

that title tells you nothing right?

I have the great honour to have been designated volunteer for being "advisor on studies". I have the great pleasure and honour to advise the students on various choices of courses for various circumstances (in my discipline). It's lovely.

I get:
-emails with eloquent titles such as the one above;
-emails that are not signed;
-people mispelling my name (I'm used to that);
-emails with approx. 1 spelling mistake for every 5 words;
-people coming in my office with no appointment who just come in and don't even bother introducing themselves;
-students who expect you to do everything for them.

This is a sample.

So far I got 1 (One) who came in prepared with her list of classes, her time table and further info.

Tomorrow I have appointments with (I think) 4 (need to update agenda after list of pathetic emails).

This useless whinning coincides with the big head on all student related business sending an email to all the students in the university telling them among other things that chatting in class is disrespectful of the teacher as well as of other students. Yes, people. We need to send official reminders of this to all our students.

I try to avoid "In my days... " kind of talk, but I don't remember this happening when I was a student (Ah! we didn't have email for most my years anyway!). I did my bit of chatting when in class/lecture rooms but I stopped quite soon.

Live from grading labyrinth

My students (or should I say "pupils"?) this year have a problem: they cannot be concise. Some of them anyway. It makes reading their answers very soporific.

I always include a maximum to the length of their answers (always a bit more than what is necessary, in big writing, to fit everything necessary for a correct answer), but some of them have problems sticking to the limit. And write in tiny fly's footprints (if you see what I mean) from one edge of the paper to the other.

And so what is partly one more aspects of how they should answer (concisely) and a way to rationalise my time use is not working. I'm falling asleep over wordy, overlong answers...

I watched over one of the exams and it was funny and irritating to have them asking questions on the *exact* meaning of the wording of the question. Just read the bleeding thing! There's no hidden meaning! Don't you ever play board game and read rules? Same thing: it means what it says!

And yes, we did cover topic x in class.

Glamourous

Last weekend, after Husband and myself had worked way too much for a sunny weekend, we decided to go to the nearby park and have a picnic. As you can see, on the menu: gin&tonic and crisps. Mh, and very nice break in the beautiful weather. That was as much outdoors as my hay fever allowed me to have comfortably over the past week. Sneezing and itchy nose hell was unleashed tonight after I spent 15 minutes in the wind on a more countrysid-ish train platform. Stoopid me.

Two unrelated notes.

I have noticed that Students seem to mostly refer to themselves as "pupils". Isn't this weird? I think when I was a Student, I would have been so proud to refer to myself as a Student, and not a mere pupil. Pupil is for secondary school, no? No wonder they think we need to hold their hand all the time if they refer to themselves as pupils. Ahem.

I've helped my godson (for default of a better term, really, he shouldn't count on me for uncritical religious education) for preparing his english exam. They seem to be talking about way more glamourous stuff than I did when I was at school. A sample: Sharon Stone and the media, cosmetic surgery, speed dating. We were watching TV movies of Miss Marple stories.

Last activity with student: check

ohoh and this for today too:

Last activity with students this year (save for exams) was done today. Not a lecture, it was actually a debate they had to do and moderate and they did great!

Funny how they're scared if you don't hold their hand all the time, but they do great! I hope they notice that yes, they can. (ahah)

I'll be happy to teach this bunch again next year.

Ah! Students!

On the whole, I had relatively little reason to complain about my students this year. I teach 3 courses and supervise 1 project, but out of these 4 activities, 3 are with the same bunch. The horrible bunch of last year shifted to the 4th activity. The group I encounter most was this year on the whole charming. They are on the whole motivated, most of them working, and some hard working. Wouldn't bet on their chance for the Nobel, but there is no Nobel in my discipline anyway so it doesn't really matter. They were quite reactive to activities I (this year) dared to propose in class.

And so, I only have anecdotes for one post!

I have to relate this story from the horrible bunch though. I had about 25% attendance for this class taught in English. Possible explanations:
-They are slackers;
-It was too slow;
-It was in English.

Not all students who did attend found it easy to follow in English, but most thought it was perfectly OK. They thought it was good. And even, they found it sometimes too slow. One even suggested that maybe other students were not turning up because it was too slow. Yeah, except that in order to know that, you do need to turn up at least once, right? And on the speed issue, if you want to go faster, do not stare blankly at the lecturer when a very simple question is asked.

Now the other group, the nice group, were on the whole great, but there were a few occasion when the showed outrageous naivity and candor... (these are third years, btw).

This week they had a practical exam, that I watched over for some time. One asked the TA "I remember the second half but not the first half of the procedure, can you tell me, and take out half the marks?". Other students did not agree with that (and we didn't either)...

Another one had problems with the software (all stuff he should have been able to deal with); after I refused to tell him what to do, he asked if he could ask the rest of the class... er, no.

But the new TA gave me way more reason to complain. More on that later.

Hands on the table!

Recently, (I have been crazy busy, but nevermind) I have noticed on regular occasions students fiddling under the table.

As in texting under the table. It drives me crazy. Surely, this is as bad as calling and it means their phone is on, which is bad enough.

But they are trying to be discrete and I have not heard any noisy new message boink boink...

I really don't find this acceptable but on the other hand although I'm pretty sure that is what they are doing, I'm not 100% sure... I'm teaching after all and always get only a glimpse...

And how would that look like?? "Hands on the table! There shall be no fiddling on your lap in class"

It would be hilarious, no? Ahem.

A cake to celebrate...

... this novelty: students mispelling their own name on the cover page of a report.

OK, first I did not celebrate this, I just noticed, and the cake was even done before. I also noticed that they made not one but two mistakes in my name in the reference list. Mind you they did about 4 or 5 spelling mistakes on each page of this 22 pages report.

OK, since this was a group report, you can assume that it's someone else than the victim who made the mistake, but that does not make it any better.

I have so far read 1 out of 4 reports, but seemingly, 2 have overshot the page limit by about 30%... That's not good either. And I thought the page limit was high. But no. Of course if you repeat 3 times the same thing, it can take more pages.

How annoyed should you be at someone mispelling your name? I will admit that even here I have not the easiest-to-spell family name. But surely, that shouldn't be a reason. The other recent occasion someone mispelled my name was on the cover page for a report for a thesis comittee to which I attended. Ah, surely, it really is without any consequences, I wouldn't hold this against anyone. But is this an additional sign of faltaring basic mutual respect between individuals? (I must sound like a total old complainy hag).

Has anyone ever mispelled your name when they should have paid a bit of attention? (I'm not speaking restaurant reservation over the phone or shit like that) What did you think about it?

The contract

Recently, I have spent considerable time examining and implementing attempts at improving my lectures. Ah well, nothing revolutionary, but last year the objective was to deliver a course, now I can improve whatever I managed last year. I think the trend is positive. I have also taken action to receive detailed advice on particular issues.

One place that might deserve improvement though is the way students do their part of the work. As much as I am willing to take part of the blame, I still think that, well, they have a job too here and that you can expect a number of things from students who already have some experience in being a university student.

You could expect for example that if you tell them “All in the information about how this project will take place over the semester (that I have just been through with you), including details on reports, calendar and detail of deadline is found in this 3-pages document on the website”, they go and get it, read it, and remember to refer to it from time to time. And that when you remind them of the upcoming deadline for the first major report, they don’t look at you blankly. Also, if you say in the session and explicitly state in the 3-pages document that some specific reading (available on the website) is considered necessary to carry out the work properly, you’d have more than a couple of student who remember about those papers at session 6.

I do believe that this particular bunch of students has a genuine interest in the topic and their studies generally, and I enjoy interacting with them. But they seem to think that every new session, we’ll provide them with a new recipe they can simply follow and that they do not need to care of anything themselves. We thought we had been explicit enough about the long-term character of this class, but not strongly enough obviously… but I refuse to take all of the blame in this case. They are not respecting their contract.

Whatever happened to sharing the work

So I went to the field with the team here at the long stay abroad.

There were three assprofs or profs; three grad students; three family members (age range 3-33). (lots of 3s here).

Husband was one of three family members. Him and myself did about 80% of cooking duties. The rest was done by other prof; assprofs/profs did 100% of the dishwashing.

Grocery shopping was more evenly shared – although students were mostly involved in shopping for beverages –alcoholic or not.

H and I were flabbergasted. We could not imagine the same situation in our days as student. I was trying to picture myself watching my advisor doing the dishes… couldn’t.

Although I am somewhat picked by the idea that students did not participate much in chores, I am mostly disturbed by the idea that some people did everything and others did nothing. This is wrong. I can tell you, if these had been my students, I would have freaked out.

And after the exams...

"Dear Ms. Professor,

I contact you regarding my insufficient marks in your class. They were largely deserved, but I wish to express my ambition to succeed.

(…)

My motivation to succeed is great.

I thank you for the importance you will give to this email.

Student”

Dear Student,

Thank you for your email.

However, I think it would have been wise to express your great motivation to succeed by turning up at least once to the lectures, and also avoid the unfortunate situation that lead to the TA wondering where the hell you were coming from when you turned up at the practical exam.

Since you're asking, indeed your marks are very bad. And indeed it is deserved. There really is no excuse to do that badly for an exam that has as little surprise as this one (especially for someone with such a large ambition to succeed).

But I guess you now have a whole summer to express your great motivation to succeed.

See you in August.