Week End course at SLIIT

From this post I'd like to discuss the week end course of SLIIT. When I was in the 1st year, I did the week day course in the 1st semester and then moved into the week end course in the 2nd semester so that I have experiences of both of the courses.  

When we take the lecturing hours, both the week end and week day courses have the same. What the week day students are taught in 5 days is taught for week end students in 2 days. In-addition to that, week end students may require to participate in a two hour practical or a lecture in a week end. 

When I was doing my 2nd semester, we had lectures from 8.30 A.M to 8.00 P.M on Saturdays. On Sundays we had lectures from 8.30 A.M to 7.00 P.M. In-addition to that we had the ITA practical on Mondays from 5.30 P.M to 7.30 P.M. 

On Saturdays and Sundays we had a break only for half an hour. It was the lunch break which was given from 1.30 P.M to 2.00 P.M. 

There were days where the lecture before the lunch was finished around 1.40 P.M limiting our break for just 20 minutes so that we had to rush to the next lecture as soon as we had lunch. It was so terrible. 

It was really hard to concentrate on every lecture, practical and tutorial as we had to keep our concentration continuously. I think following the week end course is a great opportunity to master your skills on 'how to concentrate'.

Saturdays were not a problem for me as there were practicals within the lectures so that it broke the monotony. But Sundays were worse. After the lectures at SLIIT on Saturdays, I went home around 9.00 P.M and I was half-dead. Then again I had to go to SLIIT in the next day and do the same. I can remember the worst period was the ITA lecture which was at 2.00 P.M to 4.00 P.M on Sundays which began just after the lunch. I was half-asleep for the whole semester during that lecture ( I hope Jagath Sir won't see this :D ). 

The other thing is about the students coming to the week end course. Most of the students came to the week end course were doing jobs on week days. Some were doing academic courses at other institutes and universities on week days. So that there were so many problems when we were doing group assignments in the 2nd semester. 

We had three group assignments and they were the DBMS I assignment, ST I assignment and the ITA assignment. We had no time to do our assignments or even to discuss the progress of them during Saturday and Sunday as we had no free time allocated for the whole two days. The problem was that the marks for DBMS I and ITA assignments were added to the final marks of those subjects so that doing the assignments well was really important. One option left was to meet on week days to do the assignments. But we didn't do it either.  

What I want to tell you is that if you can follow the week day course, it's always better. You'll understand why I'm saying that when I tell you how we did the assignments. I'll discuss it from my later posts.

-Tharindu Edirisinghe-

-SLIIT 10'-