746 replies to this topic

[Tom Braybrook]

I'm just assuming that the type of degrees required are more or less evenly distributed across all ethnicity and gender groups.

 

Unless you have some type of proof that FN are not attracted to science, engineering, computer science, nursing, leisure studies etc., and then are overrepresented by type of degrees you think are appropriate for this position. 

what!!...now i have to provide proof so that your theory works....get outta here! you made the assumption - you provide the proof, slacker!

[Victoria Watcher]

I prefer to stick to generalizations.

[Moderation]

and race and gender should be key factors.these days, but not the only factors that they may have been in the not too distant past.

[Victoria Watcher]

They cracked down on the outdoor parties. Now look.




The University of Victoria is moving some exams online after a large number of students contracted COVID-19 following two off-campus gatherings.

In a statement posted to its website Thursday night, the university said it is aware of an increase in cases among students in its business school and varsity programs. It said Island Health has made it aware the spike in cases is connected to two off-campus social gatherings on the weekend of Dec. 4 and 5.

The university said Island Health is conducting contact tracing, and anyone who attended the two events is asked to self-monitor for COVID-19 symptoms. Anyone not contacted by Island Health is not considered at risk, the university said.



https://www.vicnews....e-exams-online/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 10 December 2021 - 12:21 PM.

[Nparker]

And yet I have to prove I am vaccinated to get a sit-down meal. 

[Cats4Hire]

all in person exams are now "adjusted" (either online or cancelled) https://www.uvic.ca/...m-period notice

[Victoria Watcher]

FFS. The stigma though!

[Victoria Watcher]

“Since COVID-19 transmission is uncommon in educational settings, in most cases, public health notifications to the campus community will not be required,” reads a paragraph in the Return to Campus Public Health Guidance document. “Please do not notify faculty, staff, or students about potential or confirmed communicable disease cases (including COVID-19) unless requested to do so by the local Medical Health Officer.”

________

Following the guidelines in the BCCDC document, UVic did not initially post a public notification about the increase in cases. Instead, the dean of the university’s business school sent out a letter to the affected students, notifying them of the positive cases while Island Health conducted the contact tracing process.

After CHEK News published a story on the spike in cases on Thursday, UVic posted a notice to its website that night alerting the campus community to the cases and its mitigation efforts.

Island Health confirmed there was no outbreak and did not initially disclose the specific number of cases, citing respect for patient privacy.

_________


But on Friday, the health authority’s chief medical health officer Richard Stanwick revealed there were about 30 confirmed cases, with additional individuals being tested for the virus.

https://www.cheknews...lusters-926242/





Who’s on first?

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 12 December 2021 - 07:26 PM.

[Nparker]

...on Friday, the health authority’s chief medical health officer Richard Stanwick revealed there were about 30 confirmed cases...

Isn't this mousey little man (finally) retiring soon?

[Victoria Watcher]

As of Monday, all exams will be online.

 

“We know this is short notice for those with exams scheduled for Monday, and we are reaching out to instructors with guidance to make this transition as smooth as possible,” the university said.

 

 

 

https://www.vicnews....covid-19-cases/

 

 

Must be a bonanza for students.  Pretty easy to cheat with online testing.  Access to online tools and of course you can have an experienced student "take" the exam sitting beside you.

 

I'm sure they use some technical tools to prevent some of this, but it's obviously clear that online testing has all kinds of problems, for the determined.

 

And it's not like these are mid-terms, these are the final exams for the courses.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 December 2021 - 07:08 AM.

[Cats4Hire]

 

Must be a bonanza for students.  Pretty easy to cheat with online testing.  Access to online tools and of course you can have an experienced student "take" the exam sitting beside you.

 

I'm sure they use some technical tools to prevent some of this, but it's obviously clear that online testing has all kinds of problems, for the determined.

 

And it's not like these are mid-terms, these are the final exams for the courses.

 

well we just had a year of online only exams so probably no worse than those.

 

Also the most excitement I've seen is either from night owls happy they don't have to get to campus for a 9 AM exam scheduled for their 3 PM class or the early birds happy they don't have to stay on campus until 10 PM if they got the night exam block for their 8:30 AM class. Everyone else I've seen is mostly hoping next semester doesn't go back online. 

 

Exams aren't even useful for testing knowledge. They test your ability to cram knowledge and barf it out the next day. Go take a test you did well on in highschool. Unless it's directly related to your current job you'll perform much lower.

 

If anything some exams become harder too. For example my English exams are still just writing essays. Except now they're open book and require direct quotations I have to actually hunt for and cite. The only ones you can easily "cheat" on are STEM classes and go ask anyone in those fields the last time they had to do a job with no calculator and weren't allowed to look something they weren't sure on up.

[Victoria Watcher]

well we just had a year of online only exams so probably no worse than those.

 

Also the most excitement I've seen is either from night owls happy they don't have to get to campus for a 9 AM exam scheduled for their 3 PM class or the early birds happy they don't have to stay on campus until 10 PM if they got the night exam block for their 8:30 AM class. Everyone else I've seen is mostly hoping next semester doesn't go back online. 

 

Exams aren't even useful for testing knowledge. They test your ability to cram knowledge and barf it out the next day. Go take a test you did well on in highschool. Unless it's directly related to your current job you'll perform much lower.

 

If anything some exams become harder too. For example my English exams are still just writing essays. Except now they're open book and require direct quotations I have to actually hunt for and cite. The only ones you can easily "cheat" on are STEM classes and go ask anyone in those fields the last time they had to do a job with no calculator and weren't allowed to look something they weren't sure on up.

 

I agree with all of this.  But all of us that have been to university also know we take some courses just to get more required credits (especially in year #1 and #2) and an easy course that's easy to cheat on just gives us those credits with less effort/time.

 

I agree that university is mostly a waste of time, but you need it to check a few boxes at some jobs.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 December 2021 - 07:30 AM.

[laconic]

Modern skills are not based on being able to memorize facts. Google killed Jeopardy years ago. The skills are in being able to apply the knowledge, not recall it.

Educators continue to give those sorts of exams because the grading is really easy to defend.

[spanky123]

 

As of Monday, all exams will be online.

 

“We know this is short notice for those with exams scheduled for Monday, and we are reaching out to instructors with guidance to make this transition as smooth as possible,” the university said.

 

 

 

https://www.vicnews....covid-19-cases/

 

 

Must be a bonanza for students.  Pretty easy to cheat with online testing.  Access to online tools and of course you can have an experienced student "take" the exam sitting beside you.

 

I'm sure they use some technical tools to prevent some of this, but it's obviously clear that online testing has all kinds of problems, for the determined.

 

And it's not like these are mid-terms, these are the final exams for the courses.

 

 

Knowing students at UVIC and UBC it is very unfortunate. Cheating is rampant and so much so that even students who would not ever cheat are forced to do so or risk performing below class averages.

[spanky123]

“Since COVID-19 transmission is uncommon in educational settings, in most cases, public health notifications to the campus community will not be required,” reads a paragraph in the Return to Campus Public Health Guidance document. “Please do not notify faculty, staff, or students about potential or confirmed communicable disease cases (including COVID-19) unless requested to do so by the local Medical Health Officer.”

________

Following the guidelines in the BCCDC document, UVic did not initially post a public notification about the increase in cases. Instead, the dean of the university’s business school sent out a letter to the affected students, notifying them of the positive cases while Island Health conducted the contact tracing process.

After CHEK News published a story on the spike in cases on Thursday, UVic posted a notice to its website that night alerting the campus community to the cases and its mitigation efforts.

Island Health confirmed there was no outbreak and did not initially disclose the specific number of cases, citing respect for patient privacy.

But on Friday, the health authority’s chief medical health officer Richard Stanwick revealed there were about 30 confirmed cases, with additional individuals being tested for the virus.
 

 

I would say this is shocking but rumours of BC Health covering up outbreaks are ongoing. The very unfortunate thing here is that on Thursday night Viatec had its annual XMAS party and I hear close to 500 people, including many UVIC students, attended. Had Island Health told us the truth then hopefully many people would have stayed home if they had potentially been exposed. I guess if there is a larger outbreak as a result then we will have to wait for CHEK to report on it.

[Moderation]

One of the hardest exams I ever had was a week long period where any resources could be used.

[Mike K.]

Yeah, I had a prof who created tests specifically for open book, but you had to know where to look through your course material because the answers were so convoluted. He said “use any tool you can.” Ok, so I scanned all of my course materials through a scan-to-text tool, installed a Google search tool on a private website where the text was uploaded, and Google did the searching for answers. It felt dirty, but that’s what he was looking for.

I suppose the difference today is the switch was sudden, so the current exams would have been created weeks or months ago for in-person testing.

[laconic]

That's the other end of the spectrum. Those "convoluted" educators seem to have a desire to show students that they aren't worthy.

 

At one point in my career as a comp sci instructor at a community college many students were copying the lab assignments, changing a few details and submitting them as theirs. Given they were all doing the same very small coding assignments the solutions were similar, but when I had to give feedback one multiple copies of the same odd constructs it was obvious the students were borrowing from each other.

 

I decided that I would no longer be concerned about how the students learned, but whether they understood the material. For grading the assignments I would sit in the lab for 5 minutes and ask them questions about their solution. The questions were

 

1) Tell me what the problem was you were asked to solve

2) Show me the general steps your program goes through to solve the problem (in code this is generally not linear, but bounces around the code)

3) Point to a tricky bit and tell me why that caused more thought/work

4) Suppose I asked you to modify the code to do X. Point to the places in your code where you would have to make changes (again, this is often in more than one place so you have to understand the flow.

 

Students could borrow code from other students (if they felt they learned best from working backwards from solutions). They could watch other students do their demo (if they felt they learned best that way) so they knew the questions (which got changed a bit each time). They could give wrong answers as long as they were able to correct their responses. If their demo was a disaster they were allowed to retry (pass/fail) but they were told not to test my patience.

 

I told the students that the more time I spent in a demo, the more I was worried about their ability to write similar code in an exam setting, so I was not trying to be mean, but rather trying to use the demo as educational time to improve their mark on the exams.

 

Just prior to the exam I would walk them through the previous year's exam and show them how I approached the solution. The students could bring in all the material they wished, including the previous exams. When I gave the exams I watched to see that the best students in the class finished about halfway through, which gave the other students a reasonable time to finish. The most common complaint from students who failed was "I didn't have enough time", which was code for "I spent too much time looking for solutions in my reference material because I didn't really know the material and hadn't practiced". Amazingly, bell curves were still the norm.

 

In pretty much any field, if you're good at your job, you know within about a minute whether others in the same field are also good at their job.

[Victoria Watcher]

Honestly. Education should have had a massive shakeup as soon as most of us had internet and devices. But it barely changed.

Makes no sense.

[Mike K.]

I don't think much will change until students waken up to the reality that five year degrees could be easily completed in two.

 

It's bonkers, isn't it, that we move from high school where we spend 8:45AM - 3PM every day early September to late June, to university, where students spend three hours in class per day, from early September to early April.