How can you tell the end of the semester is nearing?, or: A meandering post which will neatly segue into a critique of courseware and its designers :)

Students and their excuses become lamer by the day.

Today another prize-winner in the cerebral prowess category emailed me...

I don't understand why I got taken off points on the quiz I missed. I sent
an excuse.

A. You didn't send an excuse. What you did was go play on the shiny new WebCT Absence Notification tool. You typed in course coordinates and clicked a button or two, and WebCT (not you) sent me a message (not an excuse) notifying me that you were going to be absent. Of course I didn't need notification because I could plainly see you were not in class.

B. Excusing an absence wouldn't take care of the quiz anyway. After an excused absence students still have to contact me about quiz make-ups; otherwise quiz grades remain at 0.

Who thought up this idiot absence notification thingy anyway? Did we really need another dirt clod in the already murky realm of absences and excuses? Stupid courseware inventers...

"I know! Let's add one more completely useless tool to WebCT instead of making
any of the stuff we have on there already work better! Then when someone asks
why the gradebook is so fucking stupid we can distract them with something which
they never asked for and which will make their lives even more difficult!"

Courseware people should have to take an IT version of the Hippocratic Oath or something. If they can't make something that works, at least do no harm!