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

Last Wednesday before anything else (including my 8am mechanics lab class) I prepared the midterm exam for the Graphics Two classes. Even though this was scheduled for 11am onwards, my lab class theoretically runs up to that time, so I did want to have to face the contingency that my students would perform the experiment too long.

Just like in the finals of Graphics One last term, I made three activities for the two classes.

In the earlier of the two classes, they would be assigned different sets depending on whether they sat at odd or even numbered terminals. This is to prevent students seating beside each other to compare notes, since the task was easy enough that some similarities between the works of different people cannot be immediately concluded as copying or cheating.

But if there were suspicions, it would be limited to the work of those two terminals away because the network would be turned off at the time.

There is also the anticipation that the first class (if ever there are persons who finish early) would give hints to the next class what to expect.

For the second class, I prepared the more difficult activity. That is, it’s more difficult in the sense that a certain degree of designer’s prerogative is given, such that it would be very obvious if someone just copied from another. But in any case, students still have to sit one terminal apart.

But unlike the first two activities, there are also more hints on how to approach the project, and not just an illustration on how the finished product looks like. In fact, just like the Graphics One finals of the second class, they have to rely on what looks like hand written specifications, which, if they were to use the software (or a similar one) after they graduate, they would most likely encounter from their superiors or clients when being assigned to work on a design.

Due to some miscommunication with the computer lab in charge though, with whom I had talked to last Thursday afternoon about copying the license for November from the shared folder of the faculty secretary’s PC, the license wasn’t updated (or the wrong one was) on the students’ terminals.

The Graphics Two teacher only told me about this at 12pm, when a third of the three hour session had already passed.

I gave him a copy of the real new license, but it couldn’t be installed in the thirty plus consoles anyway because that guy in charge had just gone on his lunch break.

Assuming he’d take an hour on that, he’d return with only an hour to spare for the exam, less the time needed to log on at each terminal as administrator to allow access to the program files.

So the teacher decided to just postpone the exam again to next Wednesday, and just tasked them to finish the seven new exercises I had prepared last week.

And that’s this week’s Graphics Two sessions. I’ll talk about mechanics lab and the Thursday classes next time. The class is done for today.