[DeCal] Week 7: Update, Grading, Presentations, Guest Lecturer

Presentations

Regarding grading, we have changed the policy of giving a single grade for the entire group as we believe this encourages people to put in the least possible amount of work (and punishes those that would otherwise work more). There's many different words for this phenomenon, but no matter how it's phrased; we don't like it and the system itself hurts the class. By the way, these are the continual improvements we see in this course as each semester progresses. I have been also been going over the past presentations and seeing as much of the work has not been cited, has made it difficult for me to follow and verify the veracity of the claims made in some of the presentations. You risk not receiving full credit if your work is NOT cited. Also, the name of the authors of each slide should be clearly marked. We see the presentations as being no less important than a midterm, a final examination, and term paper combined into one.

A Break From Presentations?

So, I've been hearing that perhaps, we should have a week without presentations, and the facilitators are making a conscious effort to schedule a guest lecturer. However, as it stands now, especially with the extended dead week this semester, we are currently against the idea of showing a documentary or video that you can otherwise watch at home (or at a LiNK event).

For example, please do see:

Welcome to North Korea Documentary


Thank you Matt Infald for the suggestion.