bring back corporal punishment!

[Gary_Yngve]

These days it is illegal to grade a student on their conduct. What this means is that you cannot grade attendance or timeliness on assignments.

 

Instead, you need to be clever and grade them on participation and the ability to master material in a certain amount of time.

[slothrop]

Illegal? Who says? You can't take off points for a paper turned in late?

[ashw_justin]

you're grading already?

[Gary_Yngve]

I'm writing the late policy for assignments as part of the syllabus.

 

http://depts.washington.edu/grading/issue1/conduct.htm#behaviors

[Kitergal]

are you kidding me?? I had classes where If you missed three or more classes you automatically failed!! That's not legit anymore?? WTF!!

[ashw_justin]

Hell, see if I care, one less brain to feed.

 

Son, you're obviously too smart for the system. Now, go forth, and be disillusioned.

[sobo]

These days it is illegal to grade a student on their conduct. What this means is that you cannot grade attendance or timeliness on assignments.

 

Instead, you need to be clever and grade them on participation and the ability to master material in a certain amount of time.

 

Jeezuz H. Christ! And I thought our primary and secondary school systems were the ones in trouble. Now the students in our institutes of "higher learning" need something as basic and obvious as this to be explained to them? What have we dumbed it down to?

[Fairweather]

These days it is illegal to grade a student on their conduct. What this means is that you cannot grade attendance or timeliness on assignments.

 

Instead, you need to be clever and grade them on participation and the ability to master material in a certain amount of time.

 

Gary,

 

your thread title does not match your solution.

 

Main Entry: 2corporal

Function: adjective

Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin corporalis, from corpor-, corpus body -- more at MIDRIFF

1 obsolete : CORPOREAL, PHYSICAL

2 : of, relating to, or affecting the body <corporal punishment>

- cor·po·ral·ly /-p(&-)r&-lE/ adverb

 

Corporal punishment involves the physical. I support a return to this practice in our schools. I believe teachers need this valuable tool to maintain order within their classes without fear of a parent seeking litigious retaliation in kind. I still have one teen in school, and if he was so deserving I would have NO problem with a teacher using this type of corrective action.

[Gary_Yngve]

Faireather, I chose the thread title

 

1) to get people's attention

2) as a reactionary contrast to how careful teachers need to be in response to today's PC/litigious world

[chirp]

"Incoming!"

[whidbey]

Are you kidding me? Can the kid do the work? Is it worth the grade? I don't really care if they did show up. I care if they did the work..... kinda like the real world........

[whidbey]

me and fairweather...we is on the different ends of everything.

[Gary_Yngve]

i'm not requiring attendance for my class, except for exams.

 

i do expect they turn things in on time, though i'll give them a generous late policy.

[whidbey]

An A is an A is it not? If and when I was in school I could do the work and do the work that should receive an A.. Who really cares what the norm is?.... We should look at what is produced.... not what George JR. wants us to.

[whidbey]

in case you missed my personal opinion... George is an idiot,.

[EWolfe]

"Incoming!"

 

He needs punishing:

 

[selkirk]

i'm not requiring attendance for my class, except for exams.

 

i do expect they turn things in on time, though i'll give them a generous late policy.

 

just make sure you set a stiff official policy up front in your syllabus. It's much easier to back off later if you feel its justified, then get caught by some bugger abusing your policy. Also helps cover your ass if someone decides to challenge a grade. Is this your first solo class?

[Gary_Yngve]

It's my first class as Instructor as opposed to TA

(and I get paid 1.75X too!)

 

I need to write five assignments, two midterms, one final, and thirty lectures, in addition to dealing with all the administrivia that TAs are normally sheltered from.

 

This is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing, so I want this experience to be as good as possible, both for myself and my students.

[whidbey]

Gary, Enjoy what you have decided to do. If it's what your calling is then you will enjoy it and I thank you!!!! Good for you. Thank you again.

[selkirk]

Good luck on it. If you have any question send me a PM. I've been teaching a stand alone for the past couple of years at the U., though it's more of a hands-on quasi-lab based class then a lecture format.

[Gary_Yngve]

Thanks. I've had plenty of years of TA experience, including running quiz sections, guest lecturing. and writing assignments and exams. The main thing is I've never done ALL of it at once. And this quarter won't be purely a teaching quarter -- I need to make some research progress too (to be quantified exactly at a meeting we halleluhah scheduled in advance).

 

I think the hardest thing for me with the course will be finding the right balance of how much I can cover. I'm obviously incredibly enthusiastic about it and have all these grandiose ideas, but I'm expecting somewhat of a reality check. Though my students are smart, this is a CS course, and they're not CS majors. If they could do CS is their sleep, they may have been CS majors instead. But it will be a good experience, especially if I don't want to teach at a top-tier school.

[Gary_Yngve]

Yeah, the late policy is pretty spelled out. I give them some number of grace days over the quarter before they start losing points for latework.

 

And I figured out my late policy. If I show up late, even a minute, I owe them food the next lecture. Same if my pager beeps in class.

[ashw_justin]

Not for CS majors, eh? What is it then? Can I audit?

[bwrts]

An A is an A is it not? If and when I was in school I could do the work and do the work that should receive an A.. Who really cares what the norm is?.... We should look at what is produced.... not what George JR. wants us to.

I agree an A is an A. However timing is everything and in the "real" world if you are late, a lot of times it is better to not even show up again. In my short experience as a geology consultant, I have noticed the laziness and resourse/time-wasting in the unionized construction world. This is amazing to me and really a great shame in our society. Back when I used to swing a hammer in Ltown, the philosphy of the contractors I worked for was all about production and conservation of the materials as MONEY was the object collected in the end. Time is money. Sure we took breaks but, criminey, the amount of waste compared to big business construction is staggering. Even if you factor in the job-size difference.

 

All said, Gary, I think tardiness and truency should not matter for lectures, although rude and disrespectful. Make being there a requirement with random morning bonus quizes and the good 'ole exam question only covered in class is sure to keep most students on time and present everyday. Turning in assignments late should definitely be down-graded, as timing in life is everything.

[Gary_Yngve]

I think it's disrespectful to come to lecture and listen to your ipod and play Solitaire. Stay home instead.

 

Likewise, if you're sleepy, I'd rather you sleep in the comfort of your own bed or leave class for a minute to run around the building to perk yourself up.

 

Pop quizzes are a good idea, but they need to be graded... throwing in exam questions on material only covered in class is the way to go.

 

Justin -- it's a course on data structures and algorithms, pretty much the heart of CS. Searching and sorting. Lists, maps, balanced binary trees, graphs...

 

If all goes well, the course project, built cumulatively over the four assignments (with extensive skeleton code provided by me) will be a Java application that can identify what peaks you are seeing from a given location, or at least an approximation -- there's a few details regarding earth curvature that I'm ignoring for right now.