Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

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

In the classes of my two Introduction to Robotics sections during the second half of the fourth week of the third term, they continued with their first projects.

I have been asking them for progress reports on their work at the end of each meeting, so I have at least a monitor of whether or not they are proceeding at the right pace or too slowly to make it to their deadline which is at the end of two weeks.

Besides that we have continued implementing the reality TV show voting style of giving their own group mates grades at the end of each session, which will be one fourth or twenty five percent of their total grade for that project.

Some groups have unanimously (or near unanimously – how can I tell if only one member was too afraid to go against the majority?) decided to give each other the highest possible grade possible each time, because they believe they all work the same amount for the project.

Others though, take it all too seriously and give me secretly folded papers containing the grades that they gave their classmates.

One of these groups, in fact, is the one who – I forgot to mention last time – gave me a project proposal in the form of a letter addressed, obviously, to me.

One of the Communications teachers afterwards assured me these freshmen have yet to take their business writing course, so they had no idea how to go about writing technical proposals as opposed to formal business ones.

It was certainly a high point in my day though. Maybe I will have that submission paper framed. All these years teaching science courses and it’s the first time I’ve received something like that.

They could have looked up the format on the internet. Or, in retrospect, I could have given them one myself, specifying exactly what I wanted them to write in their papers.

Add that to the list of things I will have to remember to do for next time.

Session 977 was given a failing grade by its group mates. Class dismissed.