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Journal jawtheshark's Journal: First Test 18

Journal by jawtheshark
Today I had my firt test... Well, you know: on the other side of the class, the guy that actually asks the questions. In case you didn't know: preparing a test takes a looooong time. It took me about 3 hours to set up something that I thought would be really easy. Seems that my easy isn't their easy.

Now the day start of nice... with snow. Goody, well have people coming in late. One girl came 20 mins late and a guy came in 10mins late. I let them work a bit longer after the test, gotta be fair.

Of course, I got the lamest excuses for not having learnt: I had one guy that told me his computer crashed this weekend and he couldn't learn. Though shit... If my computer would have crashed I wouldn't have had a test to give. Besides, you don't need a computer to learn computer science, right?

There was another couple of people that claimed that they thought the test was on thursday. Sure... If it was on thusday, do you really think I would have written it in the class-book for monday.

So, during the practical part I stress: don't forget indentation and save regularly. I think I said it 20 times not to forget indentation because I kept on seeing people not indenting at all. Being fed up with repeating it I write it in half metre letters on the blackboard. You really think that helped? Don't answer please... You all know the answer.

Finally there is this guy that manages to crash his Excel 10 minutes before the tests end. You know, infinite loops are a bitch with Excel. Surely he saved as I told at the beginning. Oh, wait, no he didn't! Being still in a relatively good mood, I allowed him to stay another 20 minutes through the break after the test (like the two that came late). Of course there is no way in hell he could have finished the excercises in that time. I wonder if he did it on purpose.

Oh, and they can't follow the simpelest instructions. On the sheet of the practical part I wrote: "Save your excel sheet as DEV3_NAME_FIRSTNAME.XLS". Only half of them did that. Now really, I had a hard time to get all files on my machine. Next time I'll say!: "If I can't find the file with a search on DEV3_*.XLS, I won't take it with me".

Honestly, was I that bad as a student too? For crying out loud: half the questions I asked were literally in the course that I gave them. They could have gotten 75% only by learning by heart.

I'm scared.... very scared for them.

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  • What level are the students you're testing here? This sounds run of the mill for a high school type setting. It might even be conceivable that it's entry level university stuff.

    Funny story about that. My first CS class at my university was absolutely packed the first day. I had to sit in the aisle and I was there five minutes before start. There was quite literally nowhere left to sit by the time class started and it must have been a huge fire hazard. Anyway, many of the people there were trying to get into

    • Quite right... Run of the mill highschool, that's exactly what it is. My class is the year before the final year highschool in the Commerce and Administration section. The get "computer science" but that means mainly "Word, Excel and Access". I had of course the joy of explaining VBA to them and even the simpelest loops seems to be Quantum Phyiscs to them.

      I'd say just grade harshly and don't take crap from them.

      The problem is that most of my superiors told me not to grade them too hard. That's why

      • I'd say you probably handled things appropriately. The file loss thing isn't gaining the guy any ground, because he had less time to do what he already didn't know how to do. Maybe it'll be a surprise and he'll have done really well on the bits he managed to redo, showing that he's only dumb for not saving. In which case he'll be grateful you saved his skin to that extent. Otherwise it was just 20 more minutes of torture with no improvement. Likely a worsening if you give partial credit based on shown work.
  • They are trying to pull against you to see how much of a "nice guy" you are, and they will abuse you for it.

    They may know shit about excel, but they know a HELL OF A LOT about the psychology of getting out of doing work.

    When I was a TA I had ALLLLLL the excuses... and I didn't let anything phase me. "Oh, you couldn't finish the project because you never heard back from the TA? YOU EMAILED ME 3 hours before the project was DUE! You get -5 for each day its late. Including today. Better luck next time and
    • I'm a nice guy.... but not a "too nice guy". There are things I understand like coming late because of the snow. There are things I can't stand like lying to me that your computer crashed in the weekend, or like saying that the test was on Thursday. You don't lie to me, I won't take it. As for the guy that didn't save his file often enough: I still don't know if I reacted correctly.

      As for the "compiling" part. If I have to take that into account, I can assure you that none of them will get above 50%

      • As for the guy that didn't save his file often enough: I still don't know if I reacted correctly.

        ACtually, I think you handled that case brilliantly (but then we all know I'm an asshole...). Give him some extra time; if he took some notes on paper while working it out he can get it done. If he's decently smart he can remember what he did. If he can't remember what he did then he learned a really valuable lesson in life: SAVE! (and an extension of that: NOHUP!!!! Oh GORD how I've kicked myself for no
  • Today I had my firt test

    So, do tell. Were the flirters cute? Dish out the truth.:)
    • The truth? You can't handle the truth!

      Ehm, serious... I didn't notice any fliters. Either I was not paying attention on that or there weren't any. Don't tell me I missed out ;-)

  • I want to know if I could cut it in the shark's class!
    • You'd get 100%. There is no way in hell that you can't explain me what a variable is, nor how to count form 1 to 10 without using a for loop and crap like that.

      I won't publish it here because the other group might find it and I don't have 100 different questions (the other group will get variations on the ones I used today). I will send it to you if you want, but I won't translate it for you. Setting it up as it is already took waaaay to much time and now I have to correct all of them. So, if you want

      • Yes, send me the french version by email. Also a list of the names of your cute female students along with their picture and email address. Put a star besided the names of those that might trade sex for answers to the test. ;-)
  • I wasn't even aware that you were fully accepted, and you already started teaching? It's cool!

    Any cute girls you can introduce me? (Heh. here it's legal to have sex with 16 y/o girls, unless you're their teacher)
    • I have been working as a teacher since the 3rd january. Well, "teacher" is an incorrect word. Let's say that I'm an "apprentice teacher", meaning I have to follow courses myself and I can play teacher for a limited amount of hours. Let's just say that I have one class and they have to accept me as a teacher.

      Plenty of cute girls, but I'm saving them for myself for when they aren't my students anymore ;-)))


  • Man this surely brings back memories.

    From experiene with tests in Excell, I *know* that Excell has auto-save on by default. There should be a ~temp.xls file somewhere.

    And as for the indentation thing. I`m pretty sure half of the students nodd when they don`t know what exactly "indenting code" means.

    One golden tip I can give you for any kind of teaching: Ask instead of teach. Let somebody of the group spell out loudly before the rest of the class what you otherwise would have had to repeat a zillion ti
    • Indenting.. of course I don't expect them to know the word. Well, I do by now. I fucking showed them a dozen times on the blackboard.

      I usually try the challenge response method, but mostly I never get replies. We weren't better with that back in the day, I know... The problem is often: I've got a programme to work through and can't afford to stand still at things they should have known for ages... I'm already behind: they should be in VBA-Objects by now. *sigh*

      Besides: Excel is only with one 'l' ;-


      • Didn`t you know I`m dislectic ;)

        Well what I did, is to make stupid jokes between the questions. Or sometimes what also gets their attention is to make fun of people (of course, in a "nice" way and only with the stronger subjects of the class as a target.. gotta be carefull with that) or just talk about major news events of the past few days. I always tried to embed their attention for programming into other major fields of attention, and I tried to single out the most vocal rebells and challenge them, an

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