Well this is it! The last week of learning before the next weeks exams.
At this point, the focus on learning the last few things, and getting that last bit of practice before we get tested.
Just when collectively we seem to be mingling more as a group, it's so soon going to come to an end.
The Dean of the school came into one of our classes to gather feedback about the school environment and the curriculum. The electrical curriculum hasn't officially been updated since 2003. The technology has changed so much since then. The teachers have been great with staying up to date. However, with fairly strict guidelines as to what they have to teach, there isn't much time to deviate for new material.
There was also an interesting discussion that came up about the school environment, specifically as a trades school. Generally, non-trades people won't notice or pay much mind to things like plumbing issues (toilets not working for long stretch of time), communication wires not neatly tied up, lights flickering or out. But as tradespeople, which all of the students and most of the faculty are, it's a little sad. As workers we try to take pride in our work, and we'd like to see the same pride in our school.
There was also comments on how our learning was affected by the Fall strike, which reduced our intake from 10 weeks to 9 weeks, and by adding 6 hours of class-time per week in the format of an additional course. It made it much more demanding and difficult to absorb the amount of information required to learn. I have 5 binders on the go, and if you were to stack just the paper (handouts, workbooks and notes) from those binders together, it's about a 6" stack of paper. That's not including any textbooks we worked out of. (Probably another 6-7" stack of paper). That's a lot of information to cover in a short amount of time.
Next week is mostly exams and labs. There are a couple classes where we have a review class the day before the test. The rest is on us to get prepared. But really, if we don't know it by now...
...for the most part, people seem to be taking school seriously. For some of us, we are right around the corner to writing our Certificate of Qualification exam. It requires a 70% to pass, which doesn't sound bad. To put it in perspective though, I'm a high 80's and 90's student. I worked hard on the last practice CofQ exam and still only got a 74%. It's not an easy test!
At this point, the focus on learning the last few things, and getting that last bit of practice before we get tested.
Just when collectively we seem to be mingling more as a group, it's so soon going to come to an end.
The Dean of the school came into one of our classes to gather feedback about the school environment and the curriculum. The electrical curriculum hasn't officially been updated since 2003. The technology has changed so much since then. The teachers have been great with staying up to date. However, with fairly strict guidelines as to what they have to teach, there isn't much time to deviate for new material.
There was also an interesting discussion that came up about the school environment, specifically as a trades school. Generally, non-trades people won't notice or pay much mind to things like plumbing issues (toilets not working for long stretch of time), communication wires not neatly tied up, lights flickering or out. But as tradespeople, which all of the students and most of the faculty are, it's a little sad. As workers we try to take pride in our work, and we'd like to see the same pride in our school.
There was also comments on how our learning was affected by the Fall strike, which reduced our intake from 10 weeks to 9 weeks, and by adding 6 hours of class-time per week in the format of an additional course. It made it much more demanding and difficult to absorb the amount of information required to learn. I have 5 binders on the go, and if you were to stack just the paper (handouts, workbooks and notes) from those binders together, it's about a 6" stack of paper. That's not including any textbooks we worked out of. (Probably another 6-7" stack of paper). That's a lot of information to cover in a short amount of time.
Next week is mostly exams and labs. There are a couple classes where we have a review class the day before the test. The rest is on us to get prepared. But really, if we don't know it by now...
...for the most part, people seem to be taking school seriously. For some of us, we are right around the corner to writing our Certificate of Qualification exam. It requires a 70% to pass, which doesn't sound bad. To put it in perspective though, I'm a high 80's and 90's student. I worked hard on the last practice CofQ exam and still only got a 74%. It's not an easy test!
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