Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

In my mechanics class last Thursday, before anything else at the start of the class, I wrote down on the right side of the board the equations that we would be using for that session, those of constant horizontal velocity and constant vertical acceleration and how to get the x and y (horizontal and vertical) components of the velocity given the initial magnitude and the initial angle (and vice versa).

I shouldn’t have been surprised when the students copied down those equations (again) despite the fact that we had already discussed them the meeting before. I guess it goes to show that they really weren’t paying attention during the class in the computer lab with a more entertaining (and controllable) distraction in front of them.

Again I took the problems we discussed from the textbook, just to hopefully instill the idea that they should pay more attention to the book than they have in the past two tests (which is probably close to nil for most of them).

In retrospect (the second time in two posts I’m using this hindsight) maybe I shouldn’t have discussed the even numbered problems from the book in sequence, because it seems that the examples we solved then were relatively simple compared to the ones we discussed last Monday, and I don’t think it bade well for their confidence that they were scratching their heads in the “advanced” review two days ago.

But back to Thursday for now: this was also when I told them about my compromise for their request for open-notes exams last time. Just like in what I did in my electricity and mechanics class last term, I told them that they could form a committee (or even just one person) who will make a one-page one-side reference sheet that will have to be submitted to me two days before the next quiz.

If this reference sheet is approved, then I will give them the green light to have it photocopied and handed out with their questionnaire and test booklet in the next quiz.

Of course there were still people who complained about it, saying that one side of one paper is not enough to write down all the examples they have in the their notes to which they would prefer to compare whatever problems come up in the exam.

I told them the reason I wouldn’t agree to that was because I didn’t want people complaining that they failed the next test because their notes weren’t as complete as some of their classmates, and I didn’t want everyone photocopying the notes of their classmate who was most earnest in taking down the lessons.

I feel that I’ve taken the evaluation beyond memorization of facts (that will not serve them at all in their jobs later on, when reliance on faulty recollections could cost the company millions and lose them their job) but in trying to grow in them the sense that it’s not about taking the equations to heart, but in being able to analyze the given situations to know when to use the equations, and to always verify and back up their assumptions by looking it up in the proper sources (and not just online).

In my Mathematical Methods 1 class last Friday again the test was made mere hours before giving it to the students, and there were two major errors.

First was asking for interval notation for even the quadratic inequalities, which should have been set notation instead. After all, interval notation for the sometimes two ranges of the expressions in one variable of degree two would require two intervals: one involving negative infinity and the other positive infinity.

The other mistake involved the word problem for quadratic inequalities. For this I had to think up of two sets of factor terms given a constant of three digits, and from there make two expressions of the form A-x-squared plus B-x plus C. In my hurry I switched the two sets of factors, and had to make another value for David and I to announce as corrections at the start of the test.

I’ll stop there for now. Until tomorrow, class dismissed.