Exams

I invigilated three examinations recently. The first paper, I was only there to satisfy the required staff-student ratio. I filled in for a colleague for the second, and was asked to do the same for another for the third paper. The first examination was uneventful while the second and third were more “interesting”, particularly the second.

It was a three-hour paper on a Sunday afternoon. Previously, all our papers were at most two-and-a-half hours long. Now they are three hours long. Apparently, they decided that all papers should last the same (three hours) so not to disturb students sitting for examinations for different papers in big venues. Accounting typically had three-hour papers.

Anyway, with less than an hour left on the clock on, we had a suspected cheating case. I’ll spare you the details. The student, as only to be expected, profusely swore that he was not cheating. Regardless, in such situations we were bound by procedures, so we followed them as best as we could. The student was from one of the sections I was responsible for, so I had to fill up some forms for the legal unit and might later be called to a hearing.

It was obvious from the confiscated answer script that the student was failing the paper. Less than half of the multiple choice questions were answered while the answer booklet only had three partially written pages. Perhaps it was an act of desperation, which in no way justifies trying to cheat through an examination.

Later I learned that the student, an international, was taking the course for the third and final attempt. I feel sorry for him. It troubles me that we could admit a student from halfway across the globe, make him sit through two years of pre-sessional language preparation, and let him fail on the first year. It just doesn’t seem right. I think we failed him at least as much as he failed himself. Either he should not have been admitted in the first place or we should have done a better job, our job, at preparing him.

During the third examination on a Saturday, a student walked into the examination hall at 0940 when the paper started at 0900. The rule says that a student cannot come later than 30 minutes after the start of an exam, so we had to ask her to leave. We also turned away another student who came at 1015. The first student claimed that she was not aware of the rule. The second owned up that he overslept.

Edited

In my free time I help copy edit articles for our journal. I would have gladly done it for free. At least all along I thought I was doing it for free until recently I got paid, so, YAY!

Some of the articles I see are very well-written, others not so. It’s the not-so-well-written ones that I am writing about. I was told to ensure that the articles are in the proper format, as well as looking for grammatical errors. You would have thought that academics, who write all the time, write well. Apparently, they don’t.

There is a guide for style, based on the Chicago Manual of Style, which I presume is supplied to all the authors. Basically, it tells what font to use, how to format the headings, the format for citation, etc. None of the articles follow the guide perfectly, which is fine as that’s where I come in, but I sometimes wonder if some of the authors even know how to properly use a word processor. I have seen articles that doesn’t seem to have a system for organizing headings.

The author of this article I’m currently looking at seems to have a fetish for italicizing and quotation marks. Every other word is either italicized or in quotes. Some words are both italicized and put in quotation marks. Reading the article, I cannot help feeling that the author is being ironic and cynical. As much as we expect students to follow instructions, I find it extremely annoying that lecturers and professors fail to do the same.

The second part of the job is less annoying but much trickier, as my grammar is far from perfect. Often I am not sure whether to use the past tense or the present tense, so simply go by what I feel right. However, most of the grammatical mistakes are glaring, like a missing article or an incomplete sentence. Generally, I find that academics tend to write very long sentences that by the end of the sentence you forget what is written at the beginning. Haven’t they heard of sentence connectors?

The point of writing is to convey information. You want people to understand what you write. Therefore, as much as possible I think it is best to always try to write short sentences with simple words.

Exam Tip #2

I wanted to take the half day off to run some errands yesterday, but thought that since I have an exam today students might come looking for me. So I stayed in my office and did some marking instead. Nobody came, zero, and I thought based on the carry marks many students are having problems. We’ll see.

Quite many actually came to see me earlier this week and last week. Nobody came to ask me to clarify a concept or help solve an exercise problem, however. They all came just for some giveaway extra assignment, some consideration, to push up their carry marks. Nobody ever came to see me during the whole semester too; even after the disastrous mid-semester test.

[SIGH]

Okay, exam tip #2 is an obvious one: answer the question.

“Huh?”

It may come as a surprise, but many students did not do well in exams simply because they didn’t answer the question. I am not referring to the blank pages here – there are those too – but many wrote about B when the question asked about A.

Perhaps they didn’t read the question properly. Perhaps they did, but misunderstood the question entirely. Often I suspect it’s the latter, because most of the students now have poor command of the English language.

During last week’s exam I was asked several times to explain the meaning of three words: independent, dampen, and forthcoming. Perhaps we should allow dictionaries as we do calculators in the exam hall.

Sorry, no kitty today. :D

Exam Tip

It’s the final examination period again.

Students always ask me for tips for the finals. Here’s one. Forget about targeting this or that chapter. You can try doing that, of course, but final exams are cumulative. Try reading the first page of the question paper for once. Yes, I mean the cover page with all the instructions nobody ever reads. You have no idea how many students lost so many marks simply from not following instructions.

Easy, huh?

Now, here’s a kitty:

Blue velvetgloss by ^impressionenmeer at deviantART

Emails

Dated March 5 from one mujing da great:

assalamualaikum

sir,
4 ur information im one of ur students currently.

i am very weak in macroeconomics subject,
i got low marks 4 the mid term n ur quizzes,

i hope u can update ur notes at ur webpage so i can download the remaining 7chapters after the mid term..
plzz sir..

the final is just around the corner.
so i found it very difficult4 me if u dont update ur notez

so i hope u can respond it well 4 ur students success in ur teachings
i believe every lecturer dont want to get their student fail in his or her subject

so i hope u can update ur notes ASAP.

tq, wassalam

Of course, I have no idea who mujing da great is. Perhaps that is exactly the point – the author wanted to remain anonymous because he (or she) knew that he wrote me a terrible email. Or perhaps he was ashamed of the name his parents gave him. Or perhaps he was one of those-who-must-not-be-named. WHOAH! :P

mujing da great must have missed the first class. That was when I explained that I do not give class notes. It just so happens that I have presentation slides prepared for half of the course from last semester when I was assigned a seminar room, which I uploaded on to the course webpage. I strongly believe that students must prepare their own notes.

Assalamualaikum brother.. my name [name] [student ID number] from section 2 Econ1610..

Can u mk a make test 2 for us to cover our mark in mid term exam since me and my friend including from section 1 not do it well.

my suggestion is u divide the percentage into 2 which is for 1st mid test 12.4 and the another 12.5 so total 25%.

the test 2 including CH 30,31,32 and 33... to mk ur life easy just mk MCQ.. about 35Q... then after we finish the test u give the paper not to the owner and mark the paper (since it only MCQ).. so in 1 class everything is done..

As the result we can increase our carry mark and have hope to get A or at least A-..

I'm sure u'll happy if many of ur student get A in this subject...

I know it depend on our efford and i'll try..

I hope u accept my suggestion...

1 more thing whatever is ur decision i'll accept ( but i'll happy if u accept my suggestion) and thx so much for teaching me and i want to appologies 4 any shortcoming ...

'Doakan kejayaan kami semua'

Although it is one of those uniquely-UIA things, it still sounds weird when a student calls me “brother”. This email from two days ago is just wrong in so many ways. Well, maybe a little funny too. What do you think?

Good Week

Kulliyyah meetings are typically awfully boring, but the recent one earlier this week had its moments.

Turns out we can still bar students from sitting for the final examination. *Somebody* gave us the wrong information. Supposedly now the university have decided to be silent on the issue in the revised rules to allow each kulliyyah to pursue its own policy with regard to student attendance. A quick vote and we’re set to go back to the old practice next semester. I suppose everybody missed issuing warning and barring letters. :D

Oh, before we go on here’s a comic, just because I want to put a picture on:

Devotion to Duty @ xkcd

The Dean also mentioned that he won’t be questioning course instructors about high failure rates, especially for lower level courses. Somebody commented that the kulliyyah has a very high percentage of students with CGPA of 3.6 and above, and suggested that we’re being too lenient. Too lenient? Definitely not me. “Not me,” claimed everyone else around me as well. Wonderful. :P

Finally, on an absolutely, totally separate matter, she’s said it.

Excuse Letter

From time to time a student would come and tell me that they have an excuse letter to miss class to attend some program. Usually I don’t think much about it; extra-curricular activities are important. Besides, university students are supposed to be considered adults who know what they are doing. And I appreciate the courtesy of the heads-up.

“Sir, I have an excuse letter for next class.”
“Wow, you do? Awesome!”
“Huh?”
“What is it for?”
“I am in the committee for the [whatever] program next week.”
“What do you do, in this committee?”
“I’m in the committee, lah.”

However, sometimes a student would come and tell me that they have a forthcoming excuse letter to miss a quiz I just announced. Now, that is *annoying*.

As full-time students, part of their full-time ‘job’ is to attend classes. Even when they are no longer directly held responsible for it, class attendance is still compulsory. There are of course exceptions like family and medical emergencies, court appointments, etc. but having an excuse letter does not automatically and necessarily mean that one is excused.

Often the so-called excuse letter isn’t really an excuse letter at all. They just state that some programs are being organized at some dates, with a list of names attached; nothing at all in the letters about how the listed names are involved and asked to be excused. What am I suppose to do with them, wrap fried bananas? And the students often never even bother to highlight their names. They always assume I know who each and every one of them is.

You want to skip class to visit an orphanage, help organize an event, welcome a big shot VIP, or even watch an elephant dance? Go ahead, go crazy. Excuse letter or no excuse letter doesn’t really matter to me. Just don’t ask me to reschedule a quiz or otherwise bend over backwards to accommodate your personal day off.

“Sir, I cannot sit for the quiz on Monday. I will have an excuse letter.”
“Huh?”
“I will be away for a musical theatre till Wednesday...”
“Huh?”
“... so, can you arrange for me to take the quiz later? I promise I won’t ask the others; I don’t think they’d tell me anyway.”

Questions

It’s always the same. Before a test nobody will ask me any questions. No questions about the materials, that is. They never stop asking me about the format of the test, though, all the way till the eve of the test by emails. It’s extremely annoying receiving the same stupid question again and again: “Sir, what is the format of the test?” I really don’t get the preoccupation with the format. It can be essays, multiple-choice, etc. but much more important than the format of the test is to study the materials.

“What difference does it make?” I asked recently.
“It helps us prepare better,” they said. Prepare better how? Nobody asks me to explain or re-explain a concept, theory, whatever. All they want to know is the format.

During the test, everybody will be all serious, as they should be, and I’ll be sitting in front of the class, bored, looking out for anybody who might want to ask me anything. You guessed it, rarely anybody ever does. Sometimes, somebody will ask me to explain a word. I might as well not be in the room and go have lunch or something.

Now, after the test, it’s something else. After I return all the scripts, after I go through all the questions and the solutions and highlight the common mistakes, after the initial shock of realizing how terrible they did, finally come the questions.

“Sir, will there be another test?”
“Sir, can you give us some assignments for extra credits?”
“Sir, can you help us?”

Yeah, now they’re talking.

No Parking

At today’s meeting somebody again raised the issue of parking spaces on campus. Our staff parking area is constantly intruded upon by students, contractors, visitors, etc. who park indiscriminately in our parking spaces and on both sides of the access lane. The security officers are either incapable or unwilling to take action.

The problem is fairly easy to solve, if only you resolve to do it. I wrote about it over three years ago but think it’s time for a revisit.

First, we start by having an audit of parking facilities on campus to see exactly how many parking spaces there are. For illustration, let’s say that there are 1,000 on them. Then, we allocate out of the 1,000 parking spaces for staff and other university employees (say 500) and visitors (say 100). Not all university employees need to be allocated parking spaces, but I would say that each academic staff should be assigned one as needed.

Parking aversion by Zneak at deviantART

What to do with the remaining 400 is where it gets interesting. The university can auction off all or some of them for maximum revenue. If auctioning is too “capitalistic”, we can sell long-term parking permits instead. Those who opt not to buy parking permits, like visitors, can be charged hourly or daily rates. I don’t see that there is any obligation for the university to provide free parking to students. Free parking is not a necessity, particularly when most students are offered on-campus housing and the university is regularly serviced by buses. With the government cutting down funding, the university can definitely use the extra income.

The second part is enforcement. One way, we can tell campus security to buck up. I doubt they’ll ever step up though, being understaffed and overworked as they are. The biggest problem now is people parking their vehicles where they aren’t supposed to. The existing method of enforcement, by either issuing summonses or clamping the offending vehicles, doesn’t seem to work. In fact, I think that it is stupid to clamp vehicles found to be parked haphazardly and obstructing traffic, so they cannot be moved. The better alternative is to tow them away.

We can contract tow truck operators to carry away vehicles that violate parking rules, of course at the expense of the owners. Since the tow trucks get paid for each vehicle they tow away, motivating them won’t be a problem. Again, the university can take a cut of the towing charges. It is one thing to get to your car and find a parking ticket or have it clamped; something else to find it gone, towed away. I’m sure nobody will dare violate parking rules after having their car towed away once.

Now, aren’t we glad I am not running the university?

Errands

I was reminded recently that I haven’t been updating my blog. Well, what can I say; I have been busy or otherwise occupied. :P

There is nothing unusual happening at work. Oh, the university has decided that we cannot bar students for non-attendance anymore, which is fine by me. Word has it that the university wants to avoid the trouble of dealing with students taking legal actions after being barred from taking the final exam. If true, I say that it is one very lame excuse. Why bother having any rules then? In the past, issuance of warning and barring letters had helped both the university and parents discover cases of students going missing.

Now that we cannot bar students, many lecturers don’t even bother taking attendance anymore, although the university still says that we are recommended to continue doing it. What for? Only the Rector now can bar students “in cases of breach of university regulation”. I was told that it means that lecturers can request the Rector to bar students for any violations. I suppose that now I can finally get students barred for wearing toilet slippers to class.

Last year, I bought a new pair of baju melayu for Raya after six years. The last time I bought a new baju melayu before that was in 2003 for my IIUM graduation. Since I had to attend the convocation ceremony twice, I bought a suit and a baju melayu. The baju melayu I had before that lasted even longer. Going by the previous records, I ordered enough baju melayu last weekend to last me at least twenty years! LOL.

The past weeks also had me busy with Mak’s cabinet. We had a termite infestation that ruined part of my mother’s new cabinet. So we disassembled the cabinet, threw away the parts beyond saving, bought replacement parts, and are now in the process of reassembling the cabinet. Before that the walls need repainting. I bought a 5-liter can of Dulux Light & Space last weekend. Mak picked a purplish pink shade called Pink Sea Iris. Hopefully, I can get the painting done this weekend.

On top of everything, I am also looking at second-hand 4x4s for my brother. Luckily, there is a cousin living nearby who knows a mechanic we can bring along, as I know next to nothing about cars. We went to see a couple of prospects last night, and we’re going to see at least one more tonight. I really hope we find a good car soon, as I have better ways to spend my evening than looking at old cars.

Why Bother?

1. I teach two courses, each with two classes, and I give assignments in all four. Unfortunately, I cannot read minds.
   
   
2. While I certainly cannot memorize the names of even a quarter of the students, I am pretty sure that there is no “Sean Nast” registered in any of the classes.

Week 2

I am beginning the think that there is something conspiring against me going online. Streamyx at home continues to be erratic, while at work Google sites like Gmail and Google Reader take forever to load. The only way I can get Gmail to load is in basic HTML view. Google Reader simply refuses to load completely.

We are now in the second week of the semester so the class lists have basically settled, although I still had a student asking to join my class on Monday and one suddenly showing up today. Registration was supposed to be over last week, but apparently the university only charges a RM5 per day fee for late registration. No wonder many students think nothing about coming and registering late. Even today, a saw a small group swarming the kulliyyah office with manual registration forms.

A colleague recently proposed that we drop one topic from the ECON1610 syllabus to spend more time discussing issues in class, but I disagreed because the content of the course is simple enough as it is. Instead, we can always cut down on instructions and assign reading to the students. We are doing GDP this week. I’ve covered all the definitions and calculation bits on Monday, so will discuss issues today.

Economists haven’t gotten many things right lately, and we don’t even agree on what we’ve gotten wrong. Paul Krugman argues that we have underestimated the flaws and frictions of the market. I would go further. We have overestimated the size and significance of the very thing we call “the market.”

Nancy Folbre; What We’ve Learned: Our (Increasingly) Non-Market Economy

If we have poor measures, what we strive to do (say, increase GDP) may actually contribute to a worsening of living standards. We may also be confronted with false choices, seeing trade-offs between output and environmental protection that don't exist. By contrast, a better measure of economic performance might show that steps taken to improve the environment are good for the economy.

Joseph E Stiglitz; Rethink GDP fetish

Last Week

Last week I couldn’t connect to the internet at home, again. Yes, Streamyx sucks but what real choice is there? I couldn’t be bothered to call the helpline as the last time it didn’t help at all. Has Streamyx implemented a bandwidth cap? Anathem was (is) still there under the bed, but I picked up Makers from the shelf above instead.

Makers is about Perry and Lester who make stuff out of junk, and reporter-turned-blogger Suzanne Church who chronicles their lives. Lester makes mechanical computers for fun, and with Perry they make wonders. You can download and read all of it for free here.

Many reviewers say that Makers is Cory Doctorow’s best work yet and I totally agree, although I’ve only read Little Brother previously. Little Brother was more fun, but Makers has a lot more depth. A reviewer on Amazon even calls Makers a business book.

I took Makers to Kuantan last weekend where the kulliyyah had our IEEP. Earlier, I had registered to take the bus but in the end decided to drive on my own instead. It’s the KL-Karak highway. I love the highland drive with the frequent gear-shifting and tight corners going uphill and downhill. It was wet most of the way too on Friday so I got to put on my hoodie and had a nice cool drive. What a way to unwind. The hills were much more exciting at night, though.

2009.2 (Exams, Part 3)

The new semester began yesterday. However, I cancelled my M&B classes this morning to attend a talk by Prof Jomo KS on climate change and development.

Before I forget, summary of last semester’s batch:

Number of students: 85
Highest score: 77.40% (A−)
Lowest score: 31.08% (F)
Average score: 51.77% (C)
Median score: 51.34% (C)
Standard deviation: 9.31%
Number of students failing the course: 36
Number of students failing the final examination paper: 61

The university records system automatically round the results to the nearest integer, so the final number of fails is 22. All the numbers above exclude two students who were barred from the final exam.

One student scored zero. He turned up at 1020 when the exam started at 0900, saying that he overslept. We turned him away, of course, as per examination rules.

The very next day a student emailed me about a resit exam. She was sure of failing the course (and in fact she did). The email annoyed me to bits, as I have not even started marking, and it means extra work preparing the resit paper. Students often fail on resit anyway, and I don’t think this one will be any different. We discussed abolishing resit exams at the kulliyyah meeting before, but nothing concrete has come from it.

A few days later another student ambushed me at the corridor. He was concerned about his performance in the exam. I told him that there is nothing that he could do now and I was still marking the paper. “Of course,” he said, “only you can help me.” Yes, I got the not-so-subtle message.

He was wrong.

Exams, Part 2

Extracted from the Examination Guidelines for Invigilators

Part V: Instruction to Examiners
24. (a) The respective examiners of every paper must be present within the first 30 minutes of the examination to answer any queries related to the question paper or to correct any errors in the question paper. However, the examiner of any paper shall not in any manner to assist candidates in answering their papers, such as explaining a word or translating a question.

Examiners are usually also invigilators. So, while invigilating we aren’t supposed to help explain to a student even what a single word means. Fine, I suppose, if a student asks to define a critical term. What about, however, if a student asks to explain a word of trivial importance to the question? After all, the objective of the exam was not to test a student’s English vocabulary.

My second and last paper for the semester was this morning – with about 180 scripts to mark, AARGH! Here are the actual top two questions I received this semester. The first, from last week:

Other things being constant, what will be the effect of each of the following upon the equilibrium level of GDP?
(iii) A rapid upsurge in the rate of technological advance.

“Sir, what is upsurge?”

The second from today:

How did they financial crisis which originated in the US become a full-blown global financial crisis?

“Sir, what is the meaning of this word (full-blown)?”

So, two questions went through my mind each time:

1. Should I answer them (when the rules say no but the words don’t really matter)?
2. Should I answer them (when the words are common expressions everybody should know)?

Exams, Part 1

Extracted from the Examination Guidelines for Invigilators:

Part VI: Disciplinary Action for Breach of Rules and Regulations by Candidates
25. (b) Any breach of examination instructions, rules and regulations or parts thereof is a serious disciplinary offence, and candidates found guilty of such an offence shall be subject to an immediate disciplinary penalty as provided under Part V of the Disciplinary of Students Rules 1984.

Part VIII: Rules and Regulations for Candidates
27. (c) Candidates are not allowed to take into the examination hall/room, handphones, calculators, electronic diaries, purses and wallets, reference books (unless specified), booklets, diagrams or pieces of paper or any written material.

Part IX: Instruction to Candidates
37. Writing pads, booklets, pieces of paper, pictures, purses, handbags, handphones or any article on which writing is possible cannot be taken into the examination hall except stationery that is permitted by the Chief Invigilator. While in examination hall/room, candidates must not receive books, papers, booklets or pictures of any kind from anyone, but may receive these items from Invigilators authorised to do so by the Chief Invigilator.

Heard in the corridors this week, that a student was caught during one of the exams cheating using a smartphone containing pages and pages of notes.

“How could the student have slipped in the phone to the examination hall?”
“Apparently, now they are allowed to bring in their phones.”
“WTF?!”
“There were complaints in the previous semesters that some students lost the phones they left outside, so now we’re told to allow them to bring them in.”
“They already knew that phones weren’t allowed in the exam hall; it’s in the rules. So if they left their phones outside and they went missing, it’s not our problem. They shouldn’t have brought them in the first place.”
“Err...”

Paper Cut

It is paper cut season again. My first paper (of two) was on Wednesday so I’m right now marking exam scripts, but I’ve got my fingers cut even before that from going through term papers for another course. Those damned bleached white sheets with razor-sharp edges are a nightmare! Thankfully, there’s no blood, yet, unless perhaps I squeeze really hard. I had a paper cut so deep once that it actually did blood, so I left a partial finger print everywhere I touched.

Wherever am I going with this?

[SAVED, CONTINUED]

All right, I’ve finished marking the paper, so how about some basic statistics:

Number of students: 31
Highest score: 76.11% (A−)
Lowest score: 24.37% (F)
Average score: 53.62% (C)
Median score: 56.88% (C+)
Standard deviation: 12.48%
Number of students failing the course: 10

The semester is now over, but how I wish I could give the students their grades personally. See, I told you to take the course seriously and study from the beginning of the semester instead of just a week before the final exam. See, I told you to ask if you don’t understand the material, the language, whatever, instead of just sitting there quietly like everything is all right. See, I told you to work on improving your English. See, I told you...

Oh, I forgot one more:

Number of students failing the final examination paper: 23

OUCH!

Spam

Call me old fashioned, or just old, which seems to be a growingly common theme these days, but emails from students often make me cringe.

An uncle wrote me letter once when I was in school that made me want to cry (but I didn’t by the way). The letter wasn’t particularly sad or sentimental; though totally unexpected. It was just a mundane letter saying hi. What moved me was the language and style, beginning with “Ke hadapan anakanda...” Nobody writes that way anymore. Nobody wrote that way anymore. It was beautiful.

sir, regards to the total Carry mark dat u post tru online in myiium, dat mark is for what? cuz, u total it 60%..

Forget about the finer art of letter-writing. Business and formal correspondences from banks and government offices now are littered with glaring grammatical errors. Now, it seems, people can’t even write proper emails.

so, how about my mid term? sit for it or not?

In a letter, regardless of the form, each and every word properly written and spelled carries meaning, the whole composition of embodies the message both apparent and implied, all reflecting the writer. I wonder if the students writing these emails realize that they actually sound (or read) rather rude. Perhaps they do, and mean them so in the way people nowadays seem to confuse rudeness with assertiveness. Needless to say, such emails won’t get a reply from me.

__________
PS: I realize that I am beginning to sound like a broken record about the whole thing. Whatever.

First

I’m not working today as I am on sick leave. As far as I can recall this is my very first MC since I started working.

I missed work for health reasons before due to the occasional cold, fever etc. but never with an MC. I have more leave days than I ever had use for so usually would just call in sick and fill up the emergency leave form the next day. I rarely ever go to see the doctor just with a common cold or fever; it’s just a waste of time and money.

This time it’s different. I had diarrhea all day yesterday, and sometime last night I woke up shivering so bad I actually thought that I was going to die. The doctor told me that it was a reaction to the body losing so much minerals. Oh yes, of course, I totally knew that.

PFFFT!

WTF

Scarface by ~Deathness72 at deviantART

Class presentation for term paper begins this coming Monday, and dude came to see me today asking for suggestions for a topic!

It really warmed my heart. Really, I’m choked.