April it is not,
yet one may leap a dateline,
to join in laughter.
Cheers,
Don V
====
At 08:44 PM 3/31/2010, Saurabh Bhattacharya wrote:
Very smartly done indeed :-) I think in poetic terms this would be
called an acrostic structure?
--- [email protected] wrote:
From: David Braddon-Mitchell <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: [SydPhil] The seminars this month
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 13:45:42 +1100
All attenders of seminars should note that, in order to encourage
better understanding and discussion at seminars, from next week we
will be administering a short test after each seminar, and before discussion.
Probably this will ensure that discussion is more informed.
Depending on the results of the test, discussion time will be
allocated to each member of the audience, from a maximum of 10
minutes down to nothing.
Relatively simple test questions will be requested from each speaker
prior to their seminar. Although the speaker will provide answers,
in order to ensure that these do not just reflect their
idiosyncratic take on the issues, and that the test properly
reflects the background , the answers will be vetted by ad-hoc committees.
In order to ensure a degree of fairness, and that discussion from
across sub-sdisciplinary boundaries can take place, members of the
audience will asked to nominate how close their areas of study or
research are to the paper. The grading of the test will reflect
this, with much higher grades required to earn time for experts in
the field. Thus, in a paper on Fichte, an expert on German idealism
might require 80% to earn seven minutes, a Mill scholar would
require only 60% and a teleonomist only 40%.
Leading experts in teaching and learning have suggested to me that
we could incorporate a further test if this trial proves successful:
additional questions could be asked after the discussion, to see if
people's understanding has improved. Evidence of continual
improvement could be used to allocate bonus time in future discussions.
Fair treatment is very important, and I encourage all attenders of
the seminar series to give this system a fair go.
On the other hand I apologize in advance for any inconvenience or
teething problems. Please outline your suggestions and concerns and
send them to me as the new system is implemented.
Ordinarily I will be able to reply immediately, but I do plan to
move to an implementation of the system at the meta level: those
participants whose suggestions for improvement have been most
helpful, and delivered in the most collegial way, will have their
suggestions prioritized for trials.
Let it be very clear that this is an efficiency matter; I have
calculated the salary cost to the taxpayer of 40 academics listening
to questions; it comes to $82.80 per minute and this does not
include on-costs, room hire etc, toilet facilities etc. It is thus
imperative that each minute be of a high quality, that we can fully justify.
David Braddon-Mitchell,
Professor of Philosophy,
Department of Philosophy, SOPHI
Main Quad A 14
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
fax +61 2 9351 6660
Time in Sydney, NSW:
<http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_AU-NSW.aspx>http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_AU-NSW.aspx
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===================================
Don V Black, Chairman
IEEE-OC Video Game Engineers
http://www.gamesig.org
Executive Committee Member,
IEEE CS Task Force on Game Technology
1-949-548-1969
[email protected]
===================================
Doctoral Candidate, Center of GraVITy
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
University of California at Irvine
http://newport.eecs.uci.edu/~dblack/
===================================
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