The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on Today at 07:53:57 AMToday, I've got a letter for a colleague to update/write, and marking to do.

Edit: eep, remembered I have to defend a new course for the department before the faculty senate committee. Sigh. So much for getting stuff done.

Progress acceptable.

$3.69 at Costco and Sam's Club. $3.79 and up at the rest around town.

I have been digging into the music of Jason Molina, limiting myself (for now) to his Songs:Ohia phase and his Magnolia Electric Co. phase. The man released 19 albums in 15 years before massive organ failure from alcoholism in 2013, so it will take a while.

Right now, my absolute favorites is Songs:Ohia's "Didn't It Rain" and Magnolia Electric Co's "Josephine."

Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers passed away, age 80.

Duane Allman once said, "I'm the famous guitarist, but Dickey is the good one." I've always been more enamored of his playing on "Live at the Fillmore" than Allman's, as good as it was.

Quote from: apl68 on April 18, 2024, 10:02:59 AM

Quote from: fishbrains on April 18, 2024, 08:35:25 AMStudents don't know that the words "delve," "tapestry," and/or "whilst" in an essay send professors straight to the AI-generation detector.

While that's understandable, it does seem sad for those students who read a lot and have unusually rich vocabularies.  Although you may teach somewhere that doesn't have any such students.

Do you perhaps mean "Whilst that's understandable, it does seem sad for students who delve into literature and develop a linguistic tapestry."

Quote from: apl68 on Today at 07:47:34 AMI feel kind of guilty that my first thought, on seeing a reference to "university spokesman Ira Thor," was to wonder whether he had a sister named Ima.

Or Yora?

I have a friend named Hyla, and whenever I mention her name my husband says "and her sister Lola..."

Quote from: apl68 on Today at 08:02:03 AMI hope that budding engineers not only have to go through high-standards courses to graduate, but are also still subjected to rigorous on-the-job, real-world apprenticeship work before they can advance far enough to do any damage. 

Obviously, I can't speak for all programs but I'm proud of ours. All of us faculty have practical experience in the field - I worked in the construction-related field for years. We all have either a PhD or are PEs (licensed professional engineers) and some are both. We hold our students to a very high standard that our administration typically supports when the students send complaints up the chain of command and appeal grades that are 'not fair' because the professor was 'mean.' We require hand calculations along with computer-based solutions to many problems. Heck, in lab today, my students had to solve a problem three ways and part of their grade was based on discussing why there were ever so slight differences in the results.

To graduate, our students must either complete an internship with very specific requirements, or take part in a year-long industrial-sponsored capstone project. They are well prepared. We consistently look for ways to hold our students to a high standard and be fair at the same time. Engineering has an unfortunate reputation for being needlessly hard and having too many 'weed out' courses. That can be true, but we try to avoid making courses hard for the sake of being hard. We also place an absolute limit on the number of times students can retake a course because there is no joy in stringing students along if they will never actually earn a degree.

Many of the larger companies in fields like automotive, aerospace, oil and gas, etc. who hire our students put new employees with less experience through what they call a rotational program where they work at different jobs in the company for several months at a time and see where their skills and interests best fit in the company. So, aside from the embarrassing stuff that makes the news about quality and standards (especially recently), most of the companies I've ever worked with/near/around, even oil and gas, are quite serious about doing a good job and being safe.

After he retired from the military, my Dad worked as a machinist. I always wanted to help him starting when I was little and he gave me small, safe, chores to do and explained what he was doing. I was probably the only elementary school kid who had a basic understanding of torque. I do a lot of my own home repairs, and the stuff I can't do, I follow the repairmen around asking all sorts of questions so I'm sure my Dad is smiling down from the great beyond saying "That's my girl!"

Documentation.

I am not kidding.

And the student who yesterday didn't know the word was one of the bright ones. 

Sigh. At least she knows it now. I hope.

Mandisa, Christian musician and American Idol alumna, passed away yesterday. Quite a shock.

Quote from: marshwiggle on April 18, 2024, 12:03:54 PM

Quote from: fosca on April 18, 2024, 11:45:43 AM

Quote from: EdnaMode on April 18, 2024, 06:14:06 AMDoes he really think he should earn points because he didn't intend to do it incorrectly? Ugh. I've heard a lot of excuses over the years, but this at least is a new spin on things.

I swear all of my plagiarists say this and seem to assume that I'll just automatically say "Well, that's all right then, no penalty for you!"  I do know they get really indignant when I don't say that.

Participation trophies are so 90's; intention trophies are where it's at now! Who cares about all that pesky effort; after all, it's the thought that counts.

I really, really wanted to suggest to one of my plagiarists using this excuse that if they actually wanted to go into criminal justice they might want to consider what a plagiarism note in their file might do to that future.  But I suspect that would be considered being too mean.