Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

At 330pm, after my last class yesterday, I went straight to the conference room where the departmental workshop was being held.

This is the first time we have had a workshop in the middle of the schoolyear.

They were talking about having an Open Lab. What's that? It's one room where the students can perform experiments anytime they want. At the start of the term they will be given a list of experiments to do for the whole fourteen weeks of classes. Instead of assigning them to do one experiment per week, they will have to schedule for themselves when they are going to go to the lab to do the experiment. I don't know whether the labs will be first come first served, or whether there will be a reservation sheet for using the lab. For the eight hours a day (or more depending on the availability of teachers to stay there) one teacher will be in the room to address any difficulty the students may have in performing the experiments.

The existing models they are looking at for basis are universities in SIngapore and in Japan, which have been experienced by some of the faculty members firsthand.

They said there are more experiments in the list than the students need to do, but each experiment has a certain number of points, and the student has to reach a something like one hundred points to get a passing grade in the course. The quality of the reports the student submits will determine if he or she gets an excellent grade.

It was agreed that one integrated science laboratory will be used next term as a try-out for this new type of lab.

Other aspects that the faculty have agreed need to be addressed more this term are faculty-student interaction, practicum, methods of improving teaching and introductory courses for science and engineering students.