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Hi, this was a fail. Don't look at this


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I had to put in draconian penalties to make sure people showed up to lab. Those now are moot, since for several reasons we are splitting the labs off from lecture and turning the lab into a separate course. So replacing it with a fail-by-definition diktat for the final exam is not a huge deal, imo.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Hey, I'm not teaching this summer, so I don't have to fail anyone right now!

 

OTOH, after some adjustments to the teaching schedule, I'll be teaching two courses (up from one) in the fall. And the one I picked up is one where yes, people can fail.

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I have seven classes in the coming year: two sections of Honors Chemistry, and five sections of Chemistry for Dummies ( I can't actually call it that, of course, but that's essentially what it is).

I have five, sort of. One's a seminar for freshman physics majors, which is supposed to be nothing but fun.

 

There's two sections of Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology which meet together for lecture and separately for labs. This one ends up being full of brand-new nonscience students, a remarkably clueless population.

 

And then the same sort of common-lecture/separate-labs deal for the 2nd quarter of algebra-based physics, which includes fluid statics, oscillations and waves (including sound in particular), and electromagnetism. Oddly, that class contains lots of rather experienced students in biology (mostly); because it isn't a prerequisite for anything (but it is required for their degree program) they put it off til their senior year. They don't have calculus and in general have an excessive fear of math, but they've got lots of lab class experience in bio and chemistry.

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There's two sections of Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology which meet together for lecture and separately for labs. This one ends up being full of brand-new nonscience students, a remarkably clueless population.

 

Would you allow me to look at your syllabus for this class? I'm putting together an astronomy course for my school (which hasn't had one since the Bush administration...maybe the first Bush administration) and I'm looking for ideas.

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I'll be able to do that in a few weeks, for this fall's class.

 

Usually I've taught a "Solar Systems: Ours and Others" course. That one now needs revision, but it'll be at least a year before I teach it again so I have time.

 

I give essay exams in that class. There's number-crunching, but it's in the labs and homeworks.

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  • 6 months later...

This is a difficult read, but it is an infamous fail that happened in the science of astronomy: the potassium flare stars.  Read the abstract (first page) and conclusions (on the last page) and you have the result: lighting up while observing can give you unexpected results.  Inbetween those pages is the long digest of work showing that this was the case: important to astronomers then, not important now.

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