post-midterm thoughts
I am very sorry about how people are feeling. I feel terrible as a TA, for various reasons, and I can only emphasize with you. On the other hand, I commend you all for sharing your thoughts and feelings-keep them coming! It's very informative, and it's good for people to see that they "are not alone".
Now, here is the tricky part: do you really want to do something tangible about it? I can point out what I don't like about the exam, but this is very unlikely to have any effect, if past experience is a reference. Each one of you can go complain bitterly about how "unfair" it was, which also is not very likely to have any consequences.
Or, we can look at is as scientists, make a coordinate effort, base all arguments on facts, and come up with an objective conclusion and possibly a 'suggestion for improvement' or 'possible solution'. That is much more likely to have an effect.
I don't think anyone will be able to look at this situation objectively enough for the next day or so, as it was a very upsetting experience. When you feel a bit better, you can think about, and maybe quickly write down the reasons why you think that question 1, or 2, or 3 were "bad", and what you would do to make them better. You can also think about how much information, and how much practice did you have on the lac operon? How much about homologous recombination in bacteria? How much about ligations and restriction mapping?
I'll be at Monday's tutorial 15-20 min in advance and I'll stay later, so we'll have time to discuss the matter and decide what to do about it.
Cheers,
Pam
PS: for the record, I think that question 2 was an old question from Dr Beatty (the formatting looks exactly like his, and not at all like Craig's)
Now, here is the tricky part: do you really want to do something tangible about it? I can point out what I don't like about the exam, but this is very unlikely to have any effect, if past experience is a reference. Each one of you can go complain bitterly about how "unfair" it was, which also is not very likely to have any consequences.
Or, we can look at is as scientists, make a coordinate effort, base all arguments on facts, and come up with an objective conclusion and possibly a 'suggestion for improvement' or 'possible solution'. That is much more likely to have an effect.
I don't think anyone will be able to look at this situation objectively enough for the next day or so, as it was a very upsetting experience. When you feel a bit better, you can think about, and maybe quickly write down the reasons why you think that question 1, or 2, or 3 were "bad", and what you would do to make them better. You can also think about how much information, and how much practice did you have on the lac operon? How much about homologous recombination in bacteria? How much about ligations and restriction mapping?
I'll be at Monday's tutorial 15-20 min in advance and I'll stay later, so we'll have time to discuss the matter and decide what to do about it.
Cheers,
Pam
PS: for the record, I think that question 2 was an old question from Dr Beatty (the formatting looks exactly like his, and not at all like Craig's)
posted by pam39 at 10:12 PM
12 Comments:
Pam - Does Craig scale the grades if the average is really low?
honestly Q2 was horrible because unlike the rest of the class I did not take Biol 334 last term and so I was lost from the get go when the words "homologous recombination" was brought up
The test was horrible and Craig should've not told us it was going to be easy when in fact it wasn't
i don't know if there's any scaling in bio. Maybe he'll see how we do in final and weigh more in final??
Either way we have lost our chance of scoring BIG on the midterm
POST MIDTERM TRAUMATIC STRESS SYNDROME!!!! We all have it and it's all Craig's fault...I've spent my entire weekend crying and honestly kicking the course textbook around :(
I personally found the midterm to be fair. I didn't think Q2 was hard. It just took a little more time to understand what it was asking and to remember 334 material.
Pam, do you have any additional office hours or other times where we can come and get help from u?
I was wondering what kind of questions can we expect on the final regarding the material we went over today. Can you maybe put some extra questions online for us to do?
yes, I'll put some genomics practice questions up by tonight. Possible exam questions include assembling contigs, using molecular markers to interpret pedigrees (like q 36) and incorporating the 'chromosome walking' technique into your cloning experiments.
We don't have office hours in the Summer, but let's say I can have an 'office half hour' after each tutorial, and if Craig decides to give you Friday off, we could have an 'office hours session' then.
Cheers!
Pam
How long will you saty behind after the tutorials? I would really like to have some help with the problems since I am in another class while the tutorials are on
Thnx
On friday can we have the tutorial during the class time (11-1)?
VNTR's are molecular markers on different alleles and RFLP's are molecular markers on the same allele that help us find a gene of interest? Is that right guys?
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