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.

Some more observations I've made about this new generation of students in my general science requirement mechanics lab class: I told them about making sure that their iron stand doesn't move so that they would minimize the error during their experiment, and what do they do? They use an excessive amount of masking tape all around the base to stabilize the set up.

What happened to old-fashioned carefulness? How difficult is it to keep the equipment steady in about an hour's worth of work?

I also have had to return to announcing to the students at the start of each experiment how much time it could take them ideally to finish (usually an hour or an hour and a half) because in the first half of the term (insert standard remark here about how it doesn't seem like that much time has passed already) there has been a habit of the students taking the whole three hours to finish their work. For the day when I have two lab classes in a row, it has happened more than once that the earlier class is still there when the second class is already starting to show up, and I have had to tell them to move to the back of the room so that the other students could enter already. I also had to tell them not to react when they heard the new quiz questions I gave the second class.

I also have one student (a second year student, but hangs out with the fourth year slackers) who apparently is a late enrollee and somehow slipped through the net and was able to be listed in the lab class but not the lecture. With the student's current behavior of being absent every other week, it doesn't look like he will pass the course anyway, so there's no way I would agree to him just re-enrolling next term with the lecture and just crediting his "work" for this term.

I will have to implement stricter measures to make certain students don't disregard the lab, and see to it the other teachers implement it.

One idea I already have is to show the students' class standing so far in the term within the next two weeks, and indicate all the requirements they've missed and what they could make up (if it is possible to make up for it; for the quiz, there's none).

I don't want to have to bug specific students about their submissions. They have to show initiative in finding out what they need.

Session 1533 thinks there's still a chance of passing showing up in the latter half of the lab class. Class dismissed.