The following blog was originally posted in "easyjournal", which was gone way earlier than Xanga. Repost now because the recent discussion about the following email from HKUST IELM 4110 course reminded me of my UG life when we were also forced to take the IEEM 311 course - I think they are basically the same.
Frankly speaking, I don't see any problems about this email, it is important to state the rules clearly upfront these days so students know what we expect.
Here is the entry I wrote on IEEM311 a decade ago (10 years already! orz...)
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4.23.2003
The first time I late for class
Writing the FYP report till 7:30 am this morning, I found my eyes kept watering. This left me no choice but setting three alarms at 9:30 am then closed my eyes...
10:10
was all I read the next time I opened my eyes. (Don't ask me about the alarms, I don't know what happened to them...)
Without a second thought, I jumped out of bed and changed my clothes, picked my PRS (Personal Response System, a "remote-control" answering machine) and run all my way to LTA. I arrived there at 10:18. Then I immediately felt asleep again.
(Let's me explain why I need to re-locate myself this hurry for this sleep. We, UST CPEG students, are required to attend a very MEANING seminar course. Attendances are marked. If you late twice, it would automatically "upgraded" to one absent. If your attendance does not meet the requirement, you will fail the course and need to do it all over again. For final year student, fail the course simply means -- DEFER.
After each seminar, there is a quiz for testing your "understanding" using the PRS. To pass the course, you need to answer 60% of PRS questions correctly.)
I, together with many other students, woke up automatically when the PRS session started. Are you wondering how we can answer the questions without listening to the seminar? Read on and you will see the point!
The first PRS question was about something related to "matrix tuning", and asked at whichever phrase it should be done. I do not remember the options right now, but I thought the answer should be 2 or 3. The other two answers were eliminated by common sense. Many students however commented that the answer should be 4. So, with a little hesitation, I chose 4, as the rule of the PRS game is, choose what the majority choose.
The result statistics of PRS were shown instantly after 2 mins, and from the graph, we knew that only one student chose 2 and one student chose 3, all the other students chose 4. The lecturer seemed to be surprised and said, "Well, the answer should be 3."
So now you see how many students actually listened to the seminar.
You may wonder why, while class attendances are being voluntary under SARS, so many students still attend the seminar. The reason is very simple, and you may read the following email:----
Dear students,
As you may know, classes will resume next Mon. We have invited Mr. XXX to speak on Occupational Risk Management Project Management for the coming IEEMYYY lecture on 16 April 03 (Wed).
Your attendance will be voluntary on the coming lecture. But of course you are welcome to come to the lecture, with your mask, on that day.
Since a major portion of IEEM YYY assessment is based on the PRS, we would make video lecture to be put on the web. (Time of availability will be announced later) If you encounter technical problems in viewing the lecture, you may request for CD-ROMs via WebCT. And for those who missed the classes, you would be asked to take a short exam as the final on May 21 (time and place to be announced) in lieu of PRS scores for the remainder of the semester.
In addition, we have reserve an office hour, every Wednesday from 11 to 12 for you to call Louisa So, the teaching assistant of IEEMYYY, at 2358ZZZZ, or you can write to XXXX@ust.hk or LLLLL@ust.hk if prefer email.
In deed, SARS has severely disrupted our teaching and learning. However, people in Hong Kong are flexible and dynamics to overcome challenges like SARS.
Let's work together to make it work.
Best regards,
Professor TTTT
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The ironic part is, this lecture with very high risk, i.e. a class size of 300 in a lecture theater without window, and most students are not getting anything out of it, is not cancelled, while the other very safe courses like Japanese, a class size of 20 in a classroom with many windows, are cancelled. I just do not understand what’s in the mind of our school management team.
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I bet you can tell how annoyed we felt towards the course. (Oh, and reading the "young" me though is, well, funny, and embarrassing.)
The rational me back then actually understood the need of taking attendance, or else the huge theater would be almost empty. It is just that this course is for final students who were very much deprived of sleep, and this course seldom invited Computer engineers to share, so for us who were very unlikely, if not impossible, to become a civil or mechanical engineer, we could never relate to those topics and hence we usually slept through the seminar. But we would try our best to pick seat furthest away from the stage to avoid embarrassing the speaker.
