danaleeling

I do not use AI detection systems in SC 130 Physical Science for laboratory report submissions as I have reasons to doubt their accuracy. AI is evolving too quickly for detection systems to keep up. In addition, false positives are deeply damaging to the instructor-student relationship. False positives are undoubtedly very rare, but anecdotal evidence suggests that false positives disproportionately affect the most academically capable students.   The course syllabus does not currently include a statement on the use of AI because as an instructor I am still working to understand what a functional AI policy will look like. I can only encourage the students to write reports in their own words. My intent is to help them improve their own writing skills, not the writing skills of an AI.  Sometimes I can sense that AI has been used - AI tends to use vocabulary and idioms found in formal scientific writing and technical publications. That is what the AI is trained on, but my st...

Day three is week two in summer session physical science. And week two is velocity. After a note on screen capturing graphs to not cut off the bottom of the graph, the students were orally asked what a time versus distance graph would look like for an object moving at an unchanging speed.  Then the class adjourned to the sidewalk where a 30 meter RipStik run was done.  The newer stopwatch with timing to a thousandth of a second was used. That third decimal place is actually quite meaningless.  This term marked a return to the sidewalk on a sunny day. Spring term the class used the vacant student center building. Prior to going to the sidewalk the students were asked to sketch what would be the result on the time versus distance graph for three ball speeds. About half of the students made a correct sketch. The most common misconception was a single line where different segments of the line corresponded to different speeds.  The ball...

The design intent outlined fall 2025 was a set of five case studies that the DDFT program students would engage with using problem-based-learning approaches. The original plan was to offer these sessions spring 2026 but scheduling issues prevented the sessions from occurring. The sessions were moved to summer 2026 with the intent that this would be a residential, problem-based-learning set of sessions. The first day of the sessions saw an attendance of one student and notes from many others that they were either off-island, or had conflicting class schedules, or simply intended to engage with the material online Elizabeth Synchronous video conferencing sessions are notorious for attendance issues, and have all of the same time conflict issues as a residential section. Add in connectivity and power issues, and synchronous sessions are generally a nonstarter. How to engage in asynchronous group based PBL online is not clear. Stack on top of this that the medical case studies ...

Day one was still in the add/drop period with three of eighteen absent. Coverage focused on the course syllabus, calendar, learning outcomes, and the nature of the course.  Tuesday started with tech Tuesday, app downloads, app demonstrations, and submitting screenshots. Then measurement and density were introduced.  Tuesday morning opened with coverage of what apps to download. The introduction overlooked coverage of the screenshot assignment. Then the metric system and measurement were introduced.  The introduction began with space, time, matter, and energy. Energy was then set aside. Typical variables were listed followed by the metric system units used for those measurements, both MKS and CGS. The concept that one cubic centimeter is one milliliter of water and is one gram was introducted. 500 ml bottles of water were massed, with the newer bottle coming in at 501 grams. Two 500 ml bottles massed 996 grams, just shy of a kilogram.  ...

"Princeton will now require instructors in exam rooms for the first time since 1893" - The House of El . A former Yap campus instructor, used to say, "Tests don't test." The college president has encouraged the development of curricula that is inclusive of AI. I still have tests and quizzes in my courses, but they are done unproctored, outside of class, on the students' own time, in Moodle. The tests are obviously open book and open world. The tests are also not used to assess learning. More complex assignments and projects are used to assess learning.  I spent time during this between-terms break consuming videos on AI in education and upcoming developments in AI. I can see around me the issues El describes in the video: instructors, and institutions, trying to find ways to retain an educational structure that predates 1893. Proctors, lock down browsers, paper and pencil in class exercises and assessments.  A study on how to redevelop the college curricula ...

If a category in Moodle contains items with different total possible points, the ability to drop the lowest grade is disabled.  In the above image there are learning outcomes attached to the assignments. The learning outcomes are scored based on the number of ratings. There are four ratings being used: optimal, sufficient, suboptimal, and no evidence. Moodle automatically assigns points to ratings in a monotonic sequence. Four rating, four points maximum.  Because the assignment are 30 points and the outcomes are four, dropping the lowest is disabled. One might reason that not including the outcomes in the aggregation would resolve this issue. In the above the outcomes are no longer included in the grade aggregation. But dropping the lowest remains disabled. The code underneath the gradebook still sees the four point student learning outcomes.  One option is to use subcategories. Moving the assignments into one category and the learning outcomes into another restores the ...