HTML tables

Good article from 456 Berea Street on using HTML tables the way they were intended ... the definitive, complex description is in the W3C's HTML4 table documentation.

School of Maths + Computing and Information Systems = what?

Our Vice-Chancellor decided to merge us with CIS so what's the new faculty going to be called? One suggestion is "The Faculty of Informatics" but wtf does that mean to UK students?! My Polish colleague suggests it's a common-enough term on the continent but a quick survey of our students suggests they have no idea ... my preference is for something like "Faculty of Maths and Computing" or even "Faculty of Information Systems and Maths" (an "F-ism" <grin>) but I'm convinced that the "debate" that's being encouraged by management is a smoke-screen: we waste our effort arguing over relatively small issues while the management make all the important decisions without us and eventually (when we're worn down and permanently divided over this issue) they step-in with a "solution" that they had in mind all-along, getting it all done with the minimum of "moo". <sigh> but I hope I'm being too cynical and pray the University management will keep us all in the loop re. the new structure.

Coursework submission

I love coursework submission day :-) It makes the labs that follow the deadline so peaceful as the majority of students don't turn up, no doubt exhausted by the effort of creating 3 web pages, putting them in 3 separate folders and putting the lot in a ZIP file for submission... However I was truly impressed with a few students who turned up for the lab and managed to work through some exercises using the W3C's DOM node methods. Kudos to them, and a restful evening to the rest, fragile darlings! Now to get on with marking 120 sets of work :-(

Feedback and professionalism

Today we had our SSCC where student representatives get to (usually) air grievances and raise problems for our attention. It's a great forum, perhaps a bit slow having just one meeting per term but we are, usually, a friendly, open school that welcomes feedback. Feedback from my module seems to be that I've mistakenly given the impression that the DOM0 is old-fashioned (true) and useless (false), which is useful feedback but I'd have been happier to hear about it after a lecture so that I could correct the misapprehension immediately. Level 3 students also expressed the opinion that I'd asked them to read too much -- 1 chapter per week seems fine to me, perhaps it's the 3 chapters for their "reading week" (no lectures!) that they feel is excessive. I'd have expected final year students to be better at reading than second years, but apparently not... Ho hum.

Tidy applet

Wouldn't it be fun if someone compiled jtidy into an applet <grin>

It's a frickin function...

To mis-quote Dr Evil: it's a frickin function ... Working with 2^nd/3^rd year students on computing-related degrees who don't know what a function is, what arguments do and why you don't have to call function f(x) with an argument named x is rather frustrating, to put it mildly. Especially after the lecture where I said if you don't know what a function is, revise before this week's lab class or come and talk to me ... IMO, a jolly good time to frickin Google it!

Question Mark Perception

Last year our Educational Technology Unit arranged for the University to purchase Question Mark Perception and this year it's available for "early adopters" to test. Throwing caution to the wind I had my Blackboard tests converted for Perception (a time-consuming task, for some dumbass reason, as they both speak variants of XML.) The Perception system has been set up so that we must follow a long-winded procedure to create tests:

1. Create test offline.
2. Add obscure (Blackboard internal) module code to a comment field in the test.
3. Export test to "QPack" file (?!) with specific name space convention.
4. Log on to a module in Blackboard.
5. Take three clicks to find the Perception tools link and get authenticated for Perception server by Blackboard.
6. Import QPack file into Perception (3 more clicks & a pause.)
7. Return to Blackboard, 3 more clicks to add one from the list of Perception tests for the module ... if you forgot the obscure module code the test does not show (so go back 5 steps! + see below.)
8. Add the test, pretty-much as usual for Blackboard, sit back and relax...

This seems excessively complex, especially as Perception has a built-in publishing facility. Also apparently designed-in, is the inability of ordinary users to delete tests from the Perception server themselves. So if you forget the obscure module code you're stuck with a test you can't delete.

Now they always say caveat emptor to early adopters but it seems rather vital that when my students take their tests that their marks will get recorded in Blackboard for them to see. Perhaps it's a minor bug, but not only does this not happen (despite assurances to the contrary) the grade reporting software in Perception seems to be broken! And this has taken a full year to implement... <groan>

Update 15Oct04: The man in charge returned from a week-long conference today and has assured me that fixing the lack of grades is a top priority. Now we wait! your call is important to us, please stay on the line while we try to connect you...

Preparation for a new term

Am I alone in thinking that preparing for a new term featuring modules that have prerequisite material clearly includes revising the old material? Judging from the lack of prior knowledge from some students in my practical lab this afternoon it's not an obvious thing to do! What do they expect? To be taught the same stuff every year for three years? <groan>

Starting as I mean to go on

1^st lecture of the new term today for my Web Technologies module. I tried a novel (insane?) trick today that I'd been toying with last year but hadn't got around to: After the break, when the talking began to increase and the first mobile phone rang I stopped talking and wandered up to the young lady whose phone was ringing, asked if I could borrow it and (without doing-so) pulled out of my pocket another phone that I'd bought off eBay for the purpose (�2 well spent!) I then threw my phone towards the front of the lecture theatre where it smashed apart with a loud crash. <grin> it had shock value if nothing else (& I was careful to lob it over the heads of the class and check that no-one was near the crash site. Probably a health and safety violation all the same...) I've no idea if my subsequent plea to turn off mobile phones will have more weight this year (or have I just inadvertently challenged the class to disobey?!) but they seemed attentive for the latter half of the 2 hour lecture period, which is unusual in itself. Now what to do next week?

Wasting a day on management bull

The new term starts next week so it's rather busy at work. Apparently that means it's also the perfect time for management to decide we need a team-building event with the school we'll be merging with in a year's time! So myself and fifty members of academic, admin and technical staff spent today considering the journey metaphor as a means to coping with the merger ... madness! We apparently surprised the hired management consultant with our cynicism and could have achieved a similar level of networking over morning coffee or evening beer, either of which would have saved money, time and effort all round. Ho hum...