This semester, my students were creating a website which features a to-do list. Anyone who registers on the site can create their own to-do items which they can retrieve later.   Unfortunately, some of the students hadn’t quite implemented authentication properly when their sites went live, and one of their classmates was a vandal with fellatio on their mind.

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Almost every semester I get one case of plagiarism.  Some are more blatant and idiotic than others.  I’m never sure whether I’m upset with them for cheating, or for thinking I was so stupid that I wouldn’t notice. 

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I’ve had a very busy time over the past two weeks with my students having a major website development assignment due.   Out of a class of 88, I’ve had around 12-15 students coming to see me nearly every day.

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One of the tasks my students have to do during their first assignment is to start a new thread on our discussion forum. There are no rules, they can post about anything.

Student 1 calls his thread ‘Sup noobs’. Here is the exchange that ensued:

Student 1: Assignment zero weow!
Student 2: lol t3h n00bz0r is j00
Student 2: wewt
Student 1: stfu

For the labtest, I gave my students a small programming task that involved creating a system that catalogued diamonds.

The top row are the Steinmetz Pink, the Millenium Star and the Allnatt.  On the bottom row are the Heart of Eternity, the Pumpkin, the Moussaieff Red and the Ocean Dream.  Collectively, these diamonds weigh in at over 400 carats, and are worth well over US$100 million.

The students had to implement a Diamond business object, which had a weight property.  Here is one student’s implementation:

I wonder if those are baby carrots or full grown?  Cooked or raw?
 

I thought my students were bad enough with their last minute assignment extensions, but I never would have predicted this.

Five days after the assignment was due, I receive this email:

Dear Mam,
I am sorry for late reply.
On 28/8/6 monday i was trying to submit my assignment on q: drive around 4 clock when my access was denied and I had emailed my assignment at your address but i got email from you which mentioned about webdropoff box.
If you can tell me how to access it I can submit my assignment again.
I would be thankfull if my assignment can be accepted.

With Regards

The reason why his "access was denied" was that he was trying to submit after the cutoff time.  He did email me that night, but of course, the exe caused it to get zapped by the uni email filter.  I replied telling him to immediately send it to be through the webdropoff box service (a large section of assignment 0 was devoted to getting them to understand how to use this).   If he’d sent it that night, I probably would have overlooked the late submission and marked it … but to wait five days?  Tough luck buddy.

If that wasn’t bad enough, two weeks after the assignment was due, a student came to see me with a medical certificate stating that she had a 5 day extension.  She confessed that she’d "maybe left it a little bit late" to come and see me.  Ya think?

A student came to see me today looking very serious.   He explained that he got zero for a certain part of the assignment and wanted to know why.   Then he said:

I implemented something different.  Do I actually have to make it do what the specification says?

Ummm, YES!  Hello?  Just what do you think is the point of this entire course?

*Sigh*, I really wish I could actually say that to students instead of just thinking it.

A student writes this on the discussion forum today:

I didnt attend Monday’s lecture due to a mid-term test <—my bad, just wonder what did we learn on Monday?

This course doesn’t have classes on Monday. 

It’s no wonder that this student’s very next post is titled: lost at the beginning

My students had an assignment due yesterday.   They have had this assignment for 5 weeks now, and I gave them a four day extension because the due date clashed with a semester test and assignment in a course most of them were taking.

The assignment was due at 4pm yesterday, and during the day I received three requests for an extension.  Posted for your enjoyment below are the student’s requests and what I wish I could reply.

First request

Can I ask you a big favourite?  Can I get a one day extension, because I really want to hand in my FINAL proper and smoothed performed program (which would be much easier for you to mark and test as well)?  I’m not very happy with my code at the moment, and trying to figure out the best way to make it work smoothly without those low-level bugs…   At 11:21am

Yes, OF COURSE you can have a favourite.  There’s no reason why you should be obliged to complete your assignment within the same timeframe as the rest of the class.  And given the five weeks you’ve already had, I can easily understand why you haven’t managed to do it already.

Second request

I’m in your class, and can I ask for a extention for assignement one?
I think there are some problem with my work file, everytime I tried to open it, the Visual studio going no responce, and I’m getting so frustrated, maybe I need to do it again…

Maybe I can finishe it by end of tomorrow.   At 2:48pm

I took pity on this guy, figuring maybe his project had been corrupted so I asked him to send it to me so I could fix it for him.  As it turns out, there was no issue with his work file except that he hadn’t done any bloody work in it yet.

Third request

Can I request for a few hours extension- I will [submit] late tonight.  I will be able to finish a reasonable chunk of my assignment in these few hours, which at the moment is very much out of shape.  At 3:39pm!

How perfectly sensible of you to wait until 21 minutes before the deadline and then ask for extra time.  Obviously 5 weeks weren’t enough but 5 weeks and a few hours will be plenty.

I’ve sat through a lot of presentations in my time.  Literally hundreds of hours of lectures, dozens of hours of student presentation, both as a student, and as a lecturer.  I’ve listened to fellow PhD students and masters students present, and I’ve listened through several conferences.

Some people are naturally good.  They tell you a story.  When they speak, you feel as though they are having a conversation with you, even though there might be hundreds of other people in a room. 

Other people aren’t particularly naturally talented at speaking, but they avoid most of the major presentation sins and generally do a decent job.  They explain their points reasonably well, keep mostly to the topic and within the time constraints.  It’s not riveting stuff, but it’s enough to hold people’s attention.  Most competent lecturers fall into this category, which is where I’d like to think I am.

I’d guess about 5% of the speakers I’ve heard fall into the first category, and up to 45% into the second.  Sadly, that means that half of the presentations I’ve sat through were utter crap.

Here are some of the major presentations sins I’ve experienced:

Reading the slides.  Nothing on earth is more boring than a speaker just reading out the powerpoint slides.   Reading prepared notes that are a slightly expanded version of the slides is only marginally better, especially because the speaker usually ends up reading in a monotone.  It’s wooden and dull, and boring as hell.  The audience is so unstimulated that our attention just wanders off to other things, like counting the holes in the ceiling tiles.

Impenetrable voice.  Some people have a voice that is hard to understand.  It may be because of a heavy accent, gross overuse of umm and aah, grating vocal cords, or just because they mumble.  It requires huge mental effort for the audience to just follow the conversation, and unless we have a very compelling reason to do so, we just won’t.

Rambling.  Some speakers find it impossible to stick to the topic for more than 3 seconds at a time.  They inject personal anecdotes, reminisences or urban legends, or just let every random inane thought that passes through their brain escape out their mouth.  Sometimes we might find it interesting, but mostly it’s just a waste of everyone’s time, and us audience members are going to feel cheated.

Trying to cover too much.  Now, I can run anywhere between 8 and 30 slides an hour, depending on the exact nature of what I am presenting, but 30 slides an hour is my absolute limit.  I have been in presentations that were supposed to be 15 minutes long, where the presenter had over 40 slides.  Most people speak faster when they are nervous, but even allowing for that, some presenters try to race through about twice or three times the amount they can realistically cover.  This is especially bad when combined with the next sin.

Inability to stick to the time limit.  Bad speakers tend to speak too long about one aspect and run out of time for something else.
At one presentation I attended, a guy had 24 slides for a 10 minute presentation.  After 8 minutes, he was still on slide 4.  He was given his two-minute warning, and asked to just skip to the most important aspects (many slides away yet) but he continued going through the slide at the same laborious pace.  When his time was up, he was asked to wrap it up, but he continued at the same laborious pace.  Two minutes later, he was told he was over time and asked to finish, but he continued at the same laborious pace.  Finally, after he’d gone about 5 minutes over (and was still only on about slide 8 of 24), he was basically interrupted and shunted off the stage to make way for the next person.

The ability to respond to changing conditions and adjust the presentation on the fly, whether because of time limit, audience reaction, or some external change, is one of the things that really distinguishes a good presenter from a mediocre one.