I Broke His Brain (long-tastic)...

[Sapphire Silk]

Heyyyyyyy, you use Moodle, too.

I hate Moodle. At least for taking exams on.

<snip> People would complain about the homework all the time. Now yeah, having homework due almost every week was kind of a bummer. <snip>

Geez, what did these people do to get through a math class where you had homework every day?

I love Moodle. So much more customizable than Blackboard. I love giving exams on it too: it does the item analysis for me, and makes grading them sooo much easier, especially if I have to throw out a question, or take more than one answer. I usually release the score a few hours after class is over, whereas when I was using scantrons, it might take up to a week.

My students actually like taking exams on Moodle, because they get their scores back much faster.

They don't like that I only give them one question per page, and that I shuffle the questions so no two students have the same question at the same time.

[Drakstern]

My students actually like taking exams on Moodle, because they get their scores back much faster.

They don't like that I only give them one question per page, and that I shuffle the questions so no two students have the same question at the same time.

This sounds tons better than the Carmen system that OSU used.

That thing was a terrible, terrible abomination and if I never have to touch it again, I will be *thrilled*.

[Magpie]

Geez, what did these people do to get through a math class where you had homework every day?

I don't think I ever had one of those where the homework was marked. There was one with daily homework, but he didn't even check for completion. The first day I asked him if he wanted to mark it or just wanted to check that we'd done it. He told me that he wasn't even going to check it, he did daily quizes instead. And like that my homework was done. (This was in highschool, and it was a business math course, not a technical one, and I was with the general stream, so it wasn't much of a problem for me.)

And I'm feeling more and more that I oughtn't complain that engineering doesn't give exemptions to the English Language Proficiency test. Not that it's really bad, but I was always jealous of the people who got out of it. Actually, as a TA, I can really see that it might be a benefit to make a requirement that at least one of the non-tech electives should require essays, because so many of my students couldn't write, and seemed to think that it wouldn't be a job requirement. For some of them that might be true, but not for as many as thought that. (It wouldn't work: my classmates would look at their marks on essays, then look at where they lost marks. They only cared if the marks weren't "for BS stuff like grammar and style". I'll give the guy who said that some credit - he was correct in that he was able to write, it was his writing that got him a book contract, not the other way around, but I'm not sure he acknowledge the importance of formal writing styles.) Just please don't make me take English courses! They're hard.

I've never been really good at the "write down my final draft first" trick. But what with computers, I never really have a rough draft. I tend to make my outline, and then start fleshing out the points, etc, just like they tell us to. But with a computer, it's all the same document. There is no real dividing line between "outline" and "first draft", because they just flow together. And I may have one part on the second or third edit before I've made it to the end. So I somewhat follow the proper process, but not linearly enough to easily hand in the various steps.

[Sapphire Silk]

<snip>
. Actually, as a TA, I can really see that it might be a benefit to make a requirement that at least one of the non-tech electives should require essays, because so many of my students couldn't write, and seemed to think that it wouldn't be a job requirement. <snip>

A lot of my nursing students don't understand how important it is to communicate in writing. Even though nursing documentation doesn't place an emphasis on the rules of grammar, spelling and clarity are another matter.

I often tell my students, "If you sound like a gansta from the hood or a hick from the holler no one is going to respect you, no matter how good you are."

It even has legal implications: if you can't spell a medical term correctly, you give an attorney room to question your competence. After all, how can you claim to understand hyperbilirubinemia if you can't even spell it?

[draftermatt]

Double spaced, 12 point font is correct APA format, which is why I require my students to use it.

My English professors all required 12 point in Times New Roman or Arial. Wihch never made sense since 12 Point Arial is bigger than TNR.

My wife once used that trick to edge a short essay over the page length requirements. It worked.

Did anyone else think of the old black and white cartoon Bosco?

I've told the story before of my English 101 class where people were dropping like files or switching professors since "it's too hard" and "this is Community College, it shouldn't be this strict/hard"

I wonder how many of them even finished school at all.

[Magpie]

12 pt Arial looks comically oversized. I use 10 pt Arial the same way I use 12 point Times. (And yes, I once used that exact same loophole to make something longer).

[Eisa]

^I use 10 pt Verdana the same way. I like how Verdana looks more than Times New Roman, so I tend to write my papers in Verdana and then change the font when I'm done. Always seems to work out.

[Drakstern]

And I'm feeling more and more that I oughtn't complain that engineering doesn't give exemptions to the English Language Proficiency test. Not that it's really bad, but I was always jealous of the people who got out of it. Actually, as a TA, I can really see that it might be a benefit to make a requirement that at least one of the non-tech electives should require essays, because so many of my students couldn't write, and seemed to think that it wouldn't be a job requirement. For some of them that might be true, but not for as many as thought that.

I've never been in a job other than 'bagger' that didn't require at least *some* modicum of writing skills at times. I used it when I was a cashier, when I was a driver at a pizza joint, when I was a CSR answering phone calls. Used it all the time when I was doing warranty issues.

My father was an engineer. He had three degrees as well as his Electrical Engineering masters. He's very successful, having become an officer in the AF and running an analysis lab for a major aeronautics corporation. He has to write reports. Lots and lots of reports. His subordinates have to write reports. They have to be clear and readable. As he put it, "It doesn't matter how good you are at your job if you can't make what you're doing understood by those who need to understand what you're doing."

So I agree- to an extent- that the very formal sort of essay writing and grammar may not be necessary, but just like what Panacea said. You have to be able to present yourself and your ideas clearly, or no one will take you seriously. This is true outside of work, at work, and even moreso if you are a professional.

[Alpha Strike]

Then there was my master's thesis: 150 pages of Civil War fun I actually enjoyed writing it because the vast majority of what I wrote about came from primary sources (letters, government reports, news articles, etc) that no one had seen or touched in 125 years.

Writing doesn't have to be a chore.

While I can't imagine writing something this long, the thought of getting to look through sources this old sounds pretty neat. Where or how were you able to get your hands on primary resources of this age?

I warn my students against playing with font size/spacing/etc. My wife is a graphic designer specializing in print production. We have rulers that measure in point size, and she can type spec TNR and about 100 other fonts by sight (as in, looking at a menu, "This is 11-point Arial scaled to 95% and bolded, and they've done something to the kerning").

What is "kerning?"

[Alpha Strike]

I've told the story before of my English 101 class where people were dropping like files or switching professors since "it's too hard" and "this is Community College, it shouldn't be this strict/hard"

I wonder how many of them even finished school at all.

When I first went off to college, I had the smarts but neither the motivation or the work ethic, and ended up dropping out. After I finally got serious and decided to return to school, I started by enrolling in a community college to take care of my gen ed requirements prior to a transfer to a 4 year school.

The general consensus among the vast majority of students at the CC I attended was that it wasn't a "real" school and as such shouldn't require the same effort or time committment. Many had been forced to go to classes by their parents and/or resented having to show up and actually do work. Even in the 101 level courses my classmates would complain bitterly about any homework or assignments and were astonishingly rude to the professors, as if their final grade didn't matter.

I also think that there's a bit of a stigma attached to attending a community college, at least as a younger student. I remember in high school discussing my college choices, and if CC came up it was only because we were talking about either failing at everything else or because the person in question wasn't smart enough to do anything else. As an older, adult student I found my outlook much changed and I enjoyed my CC experiences but I was certainly in the minority in this regard.

[Sapphire Silk]

While I can't imagine writing something this long, the thought of getting to look through sources this old sounds pretty neat. Where or how were you able to get your hands on primary resources of this age?
"

Local historical societies, the Maryland Historical Society Archive, Maryland Hall of Records (state agency), and the National Archives in Washington DC.

I got access to original letters, diaries, newspaper articles, and the like at the historical societies, Census records and other legal records from the Hall of Records, and access to US Army military records at the National Archive.

The US Army, then as now, is fanatic about record keeping. Reports of military activities are just the start. I found reports from "detectives" (snitches in military occupied Maryland) with all kinds of "intel" about suspected and real Confederate sympathizers, reports on the recruitment of slaves into the Union Army, all kinds of things.

After the war was over, the military boxed up all those documents and put them on a shelf. I took them out of the box for the first time since they were put away.

It was the research project of a lifetime

These records are freely available to the public. You just have to know what to look for.

[Solumina]

These records are freely available to the public. You just have to know what to look for.

Most of those records are available to the general public. There are some things that you have to show a scholarly need for (such as writing a research paper) in which case you may need to have a student ID, submit a formal request, or submit an abstract of the article you are writing, it varies depending on who you want to get the records from. I was sad one day when I had forgotten my student ID and I went to the archives housed in my university’s library and I wasn’t allowed to access anything even though I was in their log from the day before (then again they have some rather old, rather fall apart-y kind of stuff that they were a bit paranoid about and you needed either some sort of temporary pass or a student ID in order to look at anything from the archives).

[Andara Bledin]

What is "kerning?"

Kerning is the spacing between the letters and the spacing between specific pairs of letters.

^-.-^

[EricKei]

What is "kerning?"

Dangit, Andara beat me to it.

To expand upon what AB said, one way of making a paper seem longer than it really is, is to either use a font where the kerning is spaced wider apart than most others, or else to actually manipulate the font itself. The end result of both of these techniques is that everything is spread out further. More space = fewer letters/words per line = fewer words per page = more pages for less effort ^_^

One good way to tell the difference is to look at a sans-serif font (like the normal text used on this board) and compare it to a Serif font like Times New Roman. TNR will have wider kerning because the letters need to be further apart -- that way, the serifs (little extra bits at the ends of lines) don't collide with one another/get so close as to make reading difficult.

[Seshat]

(then again they have some rather old, rather fall apart-y kind of stuff that they were a bit paranoid about and you needed either some sort of temporary pass or a student ID in order to look at anything from the archives).

It really makes you wish there was the funding to have that material properly replicated. Most scholars interested in the content of such documents will be happy with a certified replica.



Edit to add: I know there's nothing emotionally to compare with holding the original. But scholars as a general rule value archiving and protecting, and would awe at the original in its protective covering, then go ahead and read the replica for their research work.