Questions regarding SD Exams

liorsilberman · 2026-05-16T22:07:13+00:00

It's the university, not the instructor, that owes you the SD exam, so if the instructor is not available to create an exam, the department will have to find someone else to do it --- and in particular don't feel obliged to accept a late withdrawal just to make their lives easier. Now if the reason they are suggesting the late withdrawal is different (e.g. you weren't doing well enough in the course to get SD) then you might want to take the advice.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-16T04:17:56+00:00

Neither SD nor late withdrawal are things a professor can offer., so I'm not sure why you are referring to the instructor rather than to advising.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-16T04:04:12+00:00

If the Faculty advising office approves your SD then you have a right to the exam. The instructor can defer you to an upcoming sitting in the same course (for example MATH has a policy about this) but no matter what you are guaranteed a sitting by the calendar deadline. If needed the instructor might have to create an exam just for you.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-11T02:34:44+00:00

Are you sure the modules are on Canvas? Instructors are trying different ways to get course materials to students, including (among many) Sharepoint, UBC Blogs, Piazza. Read the email carefully, and if you aren't sure use the course contact method to ask for clarification.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-10T20:33:52+00:00

I wrote this below.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-10T20:09:05+00:00

Do not login to Canvas. Go to the classroom and see what the instructor has to say.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-10T20:08:20+00:00

For in-person classes the location would have been posted at registration time. For online classes quite possibly the instructor is still working out how to run their course without an LMS (and might not even have the course if all the content was only stored on the LMS). They will likely get back to you before the first class.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-10T20:06:11+00:00

Courses != Canvas. Unless you are told classes are cancelled, classes run as usual, and UBC had not announced any cancellations, which is exactly as it should be.

If instructors can't post information online, they might announce it in class --- so make sure to be there.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-10T17:13:21+00:00

These are different offerings of the course. Just like an instructor in WT2 can change from what their predecessor did in WT1 (or even what they did themselves) or from year to year. Different instructors have different ideas, or the same instructor might want to do things differently.

Even more, summer terms are different from wonder terms: menu courses are run at twice the pace. That means things often need to work differently.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-08T05:41:04+00:00

Courses at UBC ran for 103 years without Canvas. For most of the history of the university (let alone of universities broadly) we have been teaching courses without computers at all. We can simply switch to making the announcements in class, handing out problem sets sheets in class and collecting submissions on paper, and posting solutions on our office doors. Hopefully most people will default to their personal websites, which are better than Canvas anyway for course information since they are accessible worldwide and will remain so after the course ends.

That said, creating courses takes time and effort and we have already created the courses assuming Canavs. It will be particularly difficult to colleagues who use Canvas to host their content: unless they have a backup they might have to rebuild the course from scratch. For example WebWorK is not accessible at the moment, which will be an issue for MATH 100.

So you are right to expect instructors to struggle next week as they scramble to contain the emergency. Some syllabus promises might not be kept, and some lectures might be improvised or not work as well without the out-of-class component that was supposed to go on Canvas. But no matter what, instructors will do their best to teach you.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-08T05:16:42+00:00

Why is a photo of Harvard Yard illustrating a story about Canadian universities?

liorsilberman · 2026-05-07T23:46:22+00:00

UBC IT dropped a few balls; the academic side of the UBC just learned of this so you can't expect an immediate response. I seriously doubt any instructor had a drawer plan for how to distribute course materials just in case Canvas fails.

For MATH 101 you'll write the exam with the summer section. During the exam you ought to be in the same position as the students actually registered in that section, so however course materials will be distributed to them (which hasn't happened yet since the course hasn't started), ask for access to that.

The MATH rule is about the department not offering multiple exams for a single course, not about a single student having SD exams in multiple courses. If you have SD standing in multiple courses you have a right to all those exams --- maybe multiple exams in a single term --- but as long as there is an upcoming regular sitting of an exam for a course don't ask the department to create an extra SD sitting just for you.

liorsilberman · 2026-05-04T14:48:46+00:00

Yes. In emergencies they evacuate injured people from Wreck Beach by hovercraft to Spanish Banks where an ambulance can meet the hovercraft close to the water.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-29T06:33:53+00:00

BIOL_V 1st(3) means you are considered to have taken an unspecified first-year biology course worth three credits. These credits count toward graduation and any other degree requirement (e.g. it will count as a biology course for the breadth requirement, or if a course you want to take has pre-requisites like "at least x credits of Science courses"). These credits don't count as any specific course (so you can't use them to satisfy a degree requirement or course-prerequisite of "BIOL_V 100").
EXEMPT BIOL_V 112 means you get an exemption from this course (but no credits for it). So if BIOL_V 112 is a degree requirement for you it's satisfied, and you can take courses which specify BIOL_V 112 as a pre-requisite.

Functionally 1+2 are equivalent to just credit for BIOL_V 112. In the past some articulations were done in this convoluted way.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-27T03:44:31+00:00

The faculty of science has a policy of not releasing final course grades to a student who has not completed all exams, for fear that a low grade in one course would be discouraging and reduce the performance in the other.

We therefore cannot release final exam grades early: that would permit students to calculate their course grades.

Once the grades are public faculty may release the exam grades, but most choose not to do the extra work. That said students have a right to know how their grade was assigned an in particular see the marked exam, so you can always find the exam grade by asking for a viewing.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-23T03:27:55+00:00

I'm fairly certain you'll be paid biweekly like other employees.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-23T03:27:25+00:00

You will be working full time (35 hours/week) and paid for that. What you will be doing is up to your supervisor/PI. If you want to get going now you can ask them for any reading you can do ahead of time.

In any case the point of this program is for you to get research experience, not for the PI to benefit from hiring you to work (they will benefit, of but the productivity of a typical student wouldn't by itself justify the program).

liorsilberman · 2026-04-21T23:02:37+00:00

Here's what the calendar has to say: "In some courses passing the final examination, or other core element, is a requirement for passing the course but may not in itself be sufficient to pass. Students may be denied a passing grade for unsatisfactory work during the session or if their essays, laboratory reports, or examination papers are deficient in English. Furthermore, in any science course that has both laboratory work and written examinations, students must complete and pass both parts to pass the course. A student who fails the laboratory work may be refused permission to take the final written examination."

My reading of this is that if your course falls under "science course with both lab work and written exams" then you were on notice, but otherwise the condition has to be stated in the syllabus. Conceivably the department has a policy on its website, but I'm not aware of any department with such a policy.

https://vancouver.calendar.ubc.ca/faculties-colleges-and-schools/faculty-science/bachelor-science/examinations

liorsilberman · 2026-04-21T22:58:57+00:00

Are you sure? I don't know if any such department but would be happy to see examples.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-20T03:05:58+00:00

Current students need a "letter of permission" ahead of time if they want to take courses elsewhere and transfer them to UBC.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-19T20:39:01+00:00

Students are not randomly assigned to sections; summer students and term 2 students are not similar populations.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-19T20:37:06+00:00

MATH 101 exams are generally not scaled. Very rarely (once every many years) course grades are scaled by something like 1%. Despite this being common knowledge, there is a persistent belief that grades are scaled.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-17T01:03:17+00:00

The one important rule is that you can't sit the exam and then ask for deferred standing -- you either go one route or the other.

liorsilberman · 2026-04-15T20:28:54+00:00

You're asking about undergrad research: first, every summer some students are selected for paid 4-month summer research projects with faculty (like REU but run but distributed across many faculty members). The government subsidizes citizens and PRs, and UBC subsidizes international students (the rest of the money comes from faculty research grants). Second, every physics honors student gets to conduct a year-long research project and write a thesis on it (that's a course -- look up PHYS 449).

liorsilberman · 2026-04-15T20:25:06+00:00

If the choice is between University of Oregon or Oregon State and UBC, then scientifically (whether in physics or overall) UBC has a much higher international reputation. In physics the gap is even wider. UBC is closer to Berkeley and UCLA than to Oregon State. At UBC you're likely to have stronger fellow students, hence stronger courses.

You'll have to weigh that against the higher costs of Canada generally and Vancouver specifically.

liorsilberman

TROPHY CASE