With the tremendous development of transportation and tourisms, vacations has became a popular relaxation that has almost became an essential. With this, numerous topics has been thrown out about this. For example, an old saying that is popular among travelers is: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” This expression refers to the the idea of adaption when visiting foreign countries, changing how a person behaves and the habits. Another viral topic that is within people who loves to travel is “Dark Tourism”. This refers to the idea of whether all tourist spots should be opened to public, or should some tourist spots be labled as “Dark Tourism” which forbiddens tourist to visit in due to protection or respect. In a recent Seminar we had, our english class discussed about these two topics, and I am going to evoke the great points we made as well as reflecting on my personal performance.
The Seminar was divided into two parts, each one about the two topics we conversed: “When in Rome, should we do as the Romans do?” and “Dark Tourism.” We had two hosts, them being Nicholas and Janson for the first day, Toby and Crystal for the second day, and they were in charge of coming up with topics as well as making sure that everybody engages in the disucssion. Compared to our first seminar, the second one had more people actually participating in it, which provides the Seminar with a lot more sharings, but making the duration of the Seminar excessively long at the same time. Therefore, we were not able to finish our Seminar in 1 day. In fact, we only finished the first part, which is half on the first day, and the rest on the second day. I personally think that I did a pretty good job, getting double eights on my Seminar score, and sharing a lot of my ideas which I think are abundant in quality. When I get an interesting thought, I would wait for a bit till it slowly develops and matures in my head, and then share. This not only ensures the quality of the sharing, that I always have the opportunity of sharing my thoughts, and gives me the option to respond to someone else’s idea, therefore enriches my sharing. Despite me really enjoying the process of the Seminar, I do have some suggestions on how our Seminar is held and graded that could really improve the quality of our Seminar. I noticed the fact that in order to get a high score, we only have to share much, but the quality does not matter. This is evident through the students that provide no useful and deep ideas and still manages to full marks on the Seminar (Such as L and D). In addition, students such as Matthew and Eric who provides high quality thoughts through low quantity shares does not get as high as a score. The reason why is this dreadful to the Seminar, is because of the fact that we should value quality over quantity in a Seminar. A Seminar consists a great amount of students discussing together, therefore not only does not lack quantity, but also face the problem of not enough opportunities for students to share occasionally. Therefore, basing the scores out of the quality instead of the quantity of the Seminar would skyrocket the standard and value of the Seminar, and also ensures that everybody has enough opportunities to share.
Because of me last time sharing too much about the content, and focusing too less on the reflection itself, I will only summarize a sufficient amount of ideas that are my favorite. In the first part of the Seminar, our topic was revolving around the old phrase “When in Rome, do as Romans do.” With the globalization of our world, people start to travel to different places, either for work or vaction. Hereby, an excessive amount of people start to encounter the problem of the difference in culture. In a different country, having things that are newcome and not used to is inevitable. In this case, some people argue that in a foreign country, we should just adapt to it, and change yourself because of it. Others argue that when we experience a difference in culture and habits, we should not change ourselves for it. In fact, there are some times where we have to change them. Here is my thoughts on this argument: First of all, and the most important part, is that anything we do is based on the fact that we are not forcing anything. Not us, and not other people. Therefore, if there is something that we should do, we should not force ourselves to do it if we are not able to accept it. If it is a must to do thing that we cannot accept, we should just leave and go somewhere else, therefore avoiding hurt and insults on both sides. However, this goes the same bothways. If there is something that they do that we think are bad, we should not force them to change. In the reading we had, the person tried to stop what they are doing by force, resulting in failure. Changing or stopping them by force not only does not make them change, but also could cause physical or mental damage. In this instance, we should try to change them by persuading them through words, and we have to accept the fact that they can refuse to change. Next, is the topic about “dark tourism”. I think some places should not be allowed to tourists due to protection of that place or respect. If the government or whoever is in charge for the tourist place cannot accept people disrespecting it, then just close it down, simple as that. Don’t force people to respect it, so just close it yay.
Hey, inspired by your observations in this reflection, I asked AI for an algorithm whereby for high students, ‘low quality contributions’ can count as a kind of penalty against ‘initiative’ score so we aren’t rewarding high initiative if all that is produced is ’empty babble’. This is what AI returned:
Here’s a formula you can use in your Excel sheet that penalizes high “initiative” scores based on “low quality” while being lenient on low “initiative” scores:
“`excel
=IF(C2 GREATER THAN X, C2, C2 – (MAX(0, C2 – Y) * D2)) // Assuming Initiative in C2, Low Quality in D2, Thresholds in X & Y
“`
**Explanation:**
* `C2`: Cell containing the “initiative” score.
* `D2`: Cell containing the “low quality” score.
* `X`: Threshold for “initiative” below which there’s no penalty (e.g., 3 for minimal initiative).
* `Y`: Threshold for “low quality” above which it starts affecting the penalty (e.g., 2 for slightly low quality).
**How it works:**
1. The `IF` statement checks if the “initiative” score (C2) is less than the defined threshold (X).
2. If the “initiative” score is below the threshold, it returns the original score (C2) as there’s no penalty.
3. If the “initiative” score is above the threshold, it calculates the penalty based on the difference between initiative and the threshold (C2 – X).
4. The `MAX(0,…)` function ensures the penalty is always non-negative.
5. This penalty is then multiplied by the “low quality” score (D2) to create a larger penalty for higher “low quality” scores.
6. Finally, the penalty is subtracted from the original “initiative” score to get the adjusted total score.
**Adjusting the Thresholds:**
* Change the value in `X` to adjust the minimum “initiative” score before the penalty kicks in.
* Change the value in `Y` to adjust the “low quality” threshold above which it starts affecting the penalty more.
**Additional Notes:**
* You can replace the cell references (C2, D2) with the actual locations of your data in the spreadsheet.
* This formula assumes a higher “low quality” score indicates worse performance. If your scale works the other way around, you might need to adjust the formula accordingly.
This formula provides a flexible way to penalize high “initiative” scores based on “low quality” while being forgiving towards students with low initiative. You can experiment with the thresholds (X & Y) to achieve the desired balance in your scoring system.
So, I will use the data from our seminars to work out a sensible threshold for both ‘initiative’ and ‘low quality contributions’ so it will limit the score of a student speaking a lot of less useful stuff while not penalising those quiet ones who seldom contribute.
This is indeed a very concerning problem, as some people like to listen more than talking. However, if people don’t speak, they either don’t want to, or they didn’t generate an useful idea. If they don’t have a good point to say, it is an ability issue and they deserve the points they get. On the other hand, If they don’t want to say anything although they have something useful, there is no need to say nothing, as anyone is free to say anything in the discussion. It’s their fault they don’t say anything and get a low score.
yeah but the thing is, a student is able to get 8s with all gibberish and repetition of other people’s sharing or common sense, this is the main problem, which drops the quality of our seminar. In addition, we don’t lack the amount of ideas students want to share. In fact, we have too much students who want to share. Therefore, getting rid of the ideas and sharings that suck is going to give more opportunitites to the students who actually have great ideas yayyyyy
I’m glad you noticed the quantity being rewarded over quality issue. I think this might be a limitation of the assessment instrument in a class where students are confident in speaking but do not necessarily share useful ideas. This has been criticised by a researcher called Pennycook (1994) who was concerned the communicative English classroom became a site of ’empty babble’. Do you think it is possible to amend the assessment instrument to stop this happening?
You have also presented a clear argument of your own views 😀
Quite a number of language errors – check tenses and subject-verb agreement, especially around countable/uncountable nouns.
Oh no i can still edit your comments
oogie