Well, this cheered me up a little.

As I mentioned in my post last night I was not very happy with my second Unisa exam (INF 305). Whilst I was sitting writing the exam I was very dissapointed with the format as it was not what I had expected. 55% of the exam were questions like "List the 6" and "Name the 4" etc etc etc. It was obviously expected that the exact wording was to be filled in for each point. I had not memorised all the many many lists. I had memorised a few which had seemed to be important. Of course not one of the lists I had memorised came up; and many of what had seem arbitrary lists did. I tried my best; and upon looking at the text book I would get one out of three; 2 out of 4; four out of seven; one out four; 4 out of 4 (uncommon) etc etc 0 out of x was common. I think I may have got 50% (or a little bit less) for that section. The second question also had a 8 mark bit that needed me to first know a list of four; and then discuss. I think I got two-and-a-half out of the four. And the rest, since we had never been actually marked on a case study in an assignment; was unclear to me if I had answered in the expected way or not. So all in all - very iffffffffffffy. very very. very very very.

The guy sitting to my left in the venue. I will never forget his anger. About half and hour before I ran out of space he gave up...

(Yup... We had to answer the question on the question paper itself; and there was not so much space on the paper. Once I had filled in all the space available; including writing very small on the bottom of the pages - I thought.. what can I do now... and left the venue. (Half and hour early.) )

Anyway... the guy sitting to my left. He had stopped half and hour (or maybe more) before I strolled out of the venue. I only noticed his angst about half and hour before I finished. He had stopped. Put his paper neatly in front of him. He had crossed his arms and was staring directly in the empty space in front of him. He was very angry. Very angry. I think his eyes had become two tiny hard little red vortexes. And he did nothing else. Just stared in anger. I left him like that.

Today I went to the Unisa message board to see if that there had been a reaction. And boy had people cried and thrown their toys and screamed and swore. Take a peak....

Page 1 of complaints.
Page 2 of complaints
Page 3 of complaints.

But the nicest effect of all the toy throwing were these two responses from Unisa.

Re: The irony cup runneth over.

Posted by: TvD (Moderator)

Date: October 13, 2006 08:25PM

yes I agree that written assignments is a requirenment and I did get a number of voluntary written assignments from A01 to A05.

Anyway we are not monsters and I will take the comments into consideration when marking the exams - I will first discuss, and then consider letting Q2 count more for those students that did not do well in Q1 - as far as I am concerned Q2 is a better test of the academic requirements for your final year than Q1

Quality of design notations is strongly related to choosing between them.

TvD

Re: The irony cup runneth over.

Posted by: TvD (Moderator)

Date: October 16, 2006 09:45AM

After discussions with the School's Director we have found a solution that will satisfy those who are unhappy about the omission of mcq's from the exam, as well as those students that are unhappy about the cramped answering spaces for Q1

We will use another mcq mark that is available to us for each student
individually, as a substantial addition to Q1

This is unfortunately all I can say so please do not ask me to elaborate on this any further

TvD

So... anyway... tomorrow is my next exam.
I have only prepared by reading through the text book and going through the assignments and a past paper. I would get 100% for the past paper and the assignments; so I have a chance.

Tomorrow morning I will read through the study guide grab my pens and go for it.

I am not as prepared as I am normally am for exams; but I think under the circumstances I will not feel guilty or bad about that.

oh...

And then into hospital; to have an infusion into my birthday... well so it goes