Eric's Beijing Diary

The Oracle lab class is going pretty well. There are definitely some differences. In Arizona, I had a lab with 15 computers. Here I have a lab with 128 computers. It sounds worse than it is, because there are only 90 students in the class, but that is still quite a large number for a lab. Fortunately, they are generally pretty bright students. BUAA is rated by the government as a "top 15" university, so Beihang does not accept any students who score below the 98th percentile on the national entrance exams. At my previous university in Arizona, I designed lab worksheets for each lab. That approach just isn't practical here. What I did here was to create an intranet website that can be acccessed from any computer in the lab. The website has the lab procedures, which are basically a detailed set of instructions. I walk students through the process, explaining the concepts. Then I encourage them to work with the lab until they are comfortable with it. The next week, I give them a multiple choice quiz, which is hosted on Discovery School. That website is blocked for the students, but fortunately I found a student who had a whole bunch of proxy IP's, so I am able to help them get around it. After the students take the quiz online and submit it, the results are sent to my email address by Discovery School. I can also go to Discovery School myself and get a log matching each student's student number with the time they began the quiz, the time they finished the quiz, and their score. Makes life a lot easier.