Posted by Katy Darrah in Discussion - Security Course Upgrades

Posted by Admiral Katherine Dedul (Commandant) in Discussion - Security Course Upgrades

Posted by Sam Haynes in Discussion - Security Course Upgrades
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Hey All,

So we are about to kick off round of discussions about different courses. We’re going to start with the security course and we’ll play it by ear for now about a schedule for the rest. I’ll admit, it’s been a long time since I’ve had talks about the courses (beyond the informal course tutor to commandant type of chats), so I really don’t want to commit to a schedule yet until I have feel for how much interest there is and how much chatter we’re going to have.

So I’ve taken a google drive copy of the course Cale has graciously written. It is read only, just to avoid a lot changes that we lose track of.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18tCO_uTdxpXZUeVJ6iEUXDXGWUGhr3WsHP6O3IUuTiw/edit?usp=sharing

Let the discussion begin! :)

-Kat

Well first thing, there are both spelling and formatting issues to be addressed. Perhaps for ease and expediency commenting should be enabled so these can be pointed out, or specific passages addressed in the doc.

Reviewed most of it. It actually looks pretty good. Obviously haven’t gone over it with a fine-toothed comb yet. I will say it gives me sim ideas as well as ideas for other documentation that would supplement the course, but not directly.

I’m a little confused by the assessment section and the table layout. Is it supposed to indicate the “old” test and the “new” one proposed, or..something else? (There’s no language that i see regarding each column, so I can only infer.)

Sam H.

Thanks Sam for your suggestion. I’ve enabled commenting. Keep in mind that the end goal of these courses is to have them kept somewhere here on the STF server (likely the Library as that’s where all the others are kept), so formatting suggestions need to take that into account.

That table is one thing I was looking at. We could look at adding headings “Question 1” & “Question 2”. That might make it clearer to takers that there’s two questions per section that need answers to.

The table stuff I have to go over with the Librarian at one point just to see if there’s a better way to format that.

-Kat

So I actually like the colorful format with pictures that the gdoc has. Nice touch. That’d likely be lost when it’s uploaded to the library fyi, so…yeah.

We are absolutely 100% aware of that. It’s something that will need to be discussed at length with the librarian and possibly TECH to figure out the best way to have these courses somewhere on the STF server without losing too much of their original formatting. We had an earlier discussion on that kind of stalled, so I made the decision to move forward on individual course discussions for now. I know that a new library is in the works, so we could do a temporary solution of having the google docs links (like the GM department does for their course). It’s not an ideal solution and nor is it a permanent one, but it could work in a temporary capacity.

I’m going to focus on various points, starting with the assessment itself:
1. While I like the idea of having long-form and short-form questions, maybe separate them? I.e. questions 1-5 in the first/left column then questions 1-5 in the right column. It just seems weird to me to have them all lumped together like that.

1. Any questions asking for an actual post (S2 q2, S4 q2, etc) give a word minimum. There are some people who will want to knock it out quickly and will thus do as little as possible and be as undescriptive as they can. While it’d then be up to the proctor/grader to mark that down, it’s still possible to get posts that’d waste a lot of the proctor’s time grading that are just really short and pointless.

It’s an interesting point and I agree. We have that now with courses (I see it a lot in the CO course and I’ve seen it on a few other recent submissions). James, any thoughts on this as proctor?

Now for the rest of it:

1. Can I just say I LOVE the chart of the duties? I’ve been looking for a breakdown of that and never been able to find one that explains it that well and I may or may not yeet a bookmark onto that just so I can reference in the future

2. Something I’d mention in Lesson 2 is how a security officer doesn’t just have access to everywhere on the ship. I once learned, outside the club, that there’s a thing called “variable access level” specifically for security. Basically, they gain a higher access level while actively performing their duties, but that then drops down to their normal when off duty.

And example of this would be an Ensign who has the access level of a Lieutenant when on duty, to access critical areas of the ship on patrol, but when off duty and thus not needing to go to those areas, has their normal access level. Otherwise, that’s a bit of a hole in the overall security level of the ship if a lower-ranking security officer can just waltz around the ship willy nilly because they’re security.

It might be a good point to outline that your security access will probably depend upon your rank, current duty status and possibly your particular role within the department. I agree that on a ship, you’ll probably have the level of access necessary to perform your duty tasks and nothing much beyond that.

1. points 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Lesson 4 all fall under the title of “godmoding” regardless of the degree of it. They’re all basically the same concept: an uber-powerful never-killable character that is a jack of all trades and a master of all of them as well. While I like the idea of separating all of them, it’s also redundant as well, in my eyes.

2. When can I take this? Are older members allowed to take these new ones?

Yep, old members can take new courses. If you’ve already previously passed a older version, your original graduation date still stands, but there’s absolutely no rule prohibiting anyone from retaking the exam. :)

One final overall nitpick: maybe include the proctor forward in the exam, as not everyone has them memorized.

Katy

Thanks for your pointers Katy and thank you for participating.

-Kat