Status: Full-Time
Rank: Assistant Professor
Department: Computer Technology
Other Information: Sir Clement Ong is currently the CT Chair of the College of Computer Studies. He is one of the batches who first graduated in DLSU with a course of BS-CS with specialization in Computer Technology and took his Master of Engineering in the University of Southern Queensland. After working for a company for a year, he was invited by a former professor to teach at DLSU. After two years of teaching, he became a full time professor in the University.
Source: http://www.dlsu.edu.ph
Transcript of Interview
Mr. Clement Ong: Okay, well, okay. I won’t turn on that, that’s not my area. Okay, so what can I do for...
Epi See: These are the questions.
Mr. Clement Ong: So these are questions that were generated and distributed in class, in other words. So thse are questions from your teacher? Or you guys generated it yourself?
Epi See: Uh, actually it’s generic questions.
Mr. Clement Ong: Ah, sige. So, what am I supposed to do, read each one and answer it one by one?
Epi See: I’ll ask them.
Mr. Clement Ong: Pwede rin. Sige, oh.
Epi See: Uh, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Mr. Clement Ong: Sige, we’ll try to see if we can fit all of these questions in one, one sort of long ano, with a little bit of, without giving away my age. It’s no big deal.
Epi See: We can hide the batch.
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, I was, well it doesn’t matter, you can probably research this anyway, I was the first, we were the first batch of Computer Technology graduates essentially. When we came to DLSU, having enrolled in Computer Science as a course, uhm, somewhere between the first and second year of college, they suddenly offered us the opportunity to get into a new course that was developed, which was essentially CT, and I would say perhaps that 30 to 40% of us decided that we want to try a new program. So in essence, what happened was, out of the batch that decided to get into the ComTech program, I think maybe, well, over 90% graduating on-time and on-the-dot as first batch and yeah, that was it. So you can really find out more or less my age by just looking at “Who were the first set of ComTech graduates?” and so on and so forth. And yeah, so that was way back. So after I graduated I decided, just like any aspiring student who just graduated, you have this high, you know, you have this nice idea that “Hey I want to be able to use what I’ve learned”, and you know, get a salary for it. So I went out to industry, I wound up absorbed and working at a company called Zilog. Zilog is a semiconductor firm actually which is into microprocessors and microcontrollers and stuff like that. And so I said “That’s a great match for my skill”. It’s an international, multinational company, and so.
Epi See: Is there Zilog Philippines?
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, there is. There is Zilog Philippines essentially, buy Zilog originates from the U.S. actually. So they do have a test facility here in the Philippines. It’s not a test, it’s actually a part of the manufacturing chain. So what happens here is that they send the wafers, which are the raw integrated circuits and it’s cut into small little chips here and packaged and is tested and then it is put into nice boxes and shipped out, and that’s the last of it. They are here about that because yun nga, it’s not for local consumption so they don’t sell the chips directly here. It just goes back to the U.S., it goes to Singapore, whatever, and we distribute it. It is eventually bought by a couple of individuals as imported stuff. So that’s the sad part. When you look at the chip, it says that “Made in the Philippines”, etcetera, because it is actually packaged here. All the magic, which is the chip in itself inside, was not done here. We don’t have way for fabrication facilities. So everything is made in the U.S. So it’s law by test and measurement. But it’s nice that it’s got its own challenges for that matter. I was there for about what, a year until I was contacted essentially by a former teacher, Mr. Richard Sia. It so happened that one of the guys, one of the faculty members was going to get married. And so we all met up at this guy’s wedding and during that time, Richard Sia asked if I may be interested in doing teaching. It’s not fun working for the semiconductor industry. It’s a high pressure kind of job and it didn’t help by the fact that Zilog happens to be located in Paranaque, and I live in Navotas. So that’s kind of, and yun nga, I go to that area everyday, I had to go through the traffic. So I was getting tired after about a year. And so I decided, okay, well, I’ll give teaching a try. So I taught as a part-time first for the first trimester. I said, okay, it was fun, it was okay. I started by teaching assembly language, programming. And then after trimester they asked, “Hey do you want to go full-time?” and I said “Okay, why not.” So I quit Zilog. And just when I was about to teach here full-time, this Taiwanese computer company runs an ad on the newspaper looking for people who are competent with computer technology and has a background on all of these electronic etcetera, etcetera, who would you know, be interested in working for a international company, basically what I want, as a technical support engineer. And I said (raises his eyebrows). So out of curiosity, I applied. I sent in my resume, etcetera. So I was contacted essentially by them and we were interviewed, they had a list of about a hundred or so people interested, who were trimmed down to about ten to twenty people. These Taiwanese guys came over, talked with us, and we were essentially cut down, which is three.
Epi See: Out of that?
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, out of that. So these three individuals, two guys. One guy was from De La Salle University also but not a CCS student, not a CCS graduate, not sure kung engineering siya. Myself and another guy, we were the guys who went to Taiwan. So instead of having the full-time teaching thing, I want to go into Taiwan. I stayed there for about a year. It was fun, very interesting kind of job We were required essentially to answer technical support questions for the company, which was a problem. They had Taiwanese engineers.
Epi See: So you could speak Chinese?
Mr. Clement Ong: Hmm, no. We were hired because we could speak in English. So basically that was the idea. The biggest issue really, was that they couldn’t find, they had a problem answering technical support questions. They are an international company, they have branches of their office in France, in Germany, in the U.S., and so on and so forth, and you get technical support questions on their products: motherboard, hand scanners, mice, and so on and so forth. You know, technical support questions would come in from their offices in English, and you have the poor Taiwanese engineers read the question, they spend one day trying to figure out what the question was all about, because they have a painful process of translating in Chinese. After a while, you know, after that they say “Ah! So that’s what they want to know.” So they know the answer, and their answer is in Chinese and so they spend another day translating.
Epi See: They have a slow response.
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah! It takes 2-3 days, and you hear a customer getting pissed off. So they said, this can’t, obviously this can’t happen. They decided to hire us, Filipino-Chinese essentially. So we went there, I had zero background in Mandarin. First day I get there, somebody said “Ni hao?” and if you guys don’t know what ni hao means, it’s probably the most basic Mandarin anything, anybody can say, sort of translates to “How are you?”. So that’s a greeting, and so I said (makes a face). Anyway, but fortunately, we were hired not because of that. They wanted somebody who could speak in Mandarin and English. But I guess they settles for somebody who couldn’t speak Madarin and figured out, this guy can learn along the way anyway. So that was a very fruitful year because it wasn’t too difficult for me because I could obviously understand the questions. And so, it was fun because I helped the others out phrasing their answers. I turned out to be sort of editor for their answers. Our boss would come in every morning, you get nine technical support questions that you know, you fill out. You get three questions, you get three questions, you get three questions. After an hour, I’m finished.
Epi See: And you have nothing to do for the rest of the day?
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, sort of. That was sort of the start. They’re working on it and the president of the company walks in and looks angry, goes back out, and then my boss gets called, disappears, and comes back in. He’s laughing; he says “President of the company wants to know why you’re not doing anything.” And I told him “I gave you three questions, you finished it in one hour, you have nothing to do”. And so, he’s very happy now. So, that was good. And so, yun nga, they sort of changed my role a little bit. They said “Hey if you can answer so quickly, why don’t you help them out.” Okay fine.
Epi See: So you’re a little extended?
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, it was okay. The people in that office turned out to be generally very very nice people. So you know, you sort of had a swing time there. It also helped that the Taiwanese at that time seem to be infatuated with people who could speak English for some strange reasons. And you know, when you go there, it’s just like Manila in the 70’s where everybody, every kid on the street who sees an American says “Hi Joe” and you know, worships you. Sort of like that in Taiwan. If you say that you are an American, you got your education in the U.S., they sort of see you are in a higher rank for some reason. We get into Palms and we get a free drink. Everybody is lined up outside, “You you! Go in! Straight!”
Epi See: S you get special treatment.
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, you get special treatment. It was sort of fun for a year. Anyway, after about a year, that was the time to come back home, so that’s how I came back actually to teaching and finally got into the full-time kind of job. So, how long have I been teaching? Let’s just say that it’s probably close to 15 years.
Epi See: Sir, what made you just step into full-time teaching instead of going back to Taiwan and work there for the rest of your life?
Mr. Clement Ong: Hahaha. For the rest of my life. Well, one thing with Taiwan is that it sort of, it’s very alien in the sense that people like me have their huge disadvantage. I didn’t get Chinese education so I don’t read Chinese, my Mandarin is, well by the time that I went there it’s absolutely raw, by the time I got back after one year it was maybe a little better than absolutely raw, but not really that much more. So there’s a language barrier essentially, a lot of the things you need to do to get around independently of others requires you’re actually able to speak Chinese and read Chinese. And I couldn’t do that so it was sort of difficult for me because I was dependent on my fellow Filipino-Chinese. We had a lot of fun during weekends, parties and stuff like that. Kami kami lang. But when it came down to the fact that you have to do put up everything Monday to Friday kind of thing, it was difficult because you know, even just getting on the correct bus. What happens if the bus breaks down? Oh no! What will I ride now? I have no idea because I can’t read the signs. So it’s really difficult. If you try communicating with the people, they won’t understand you anyway. ‘Di ba? You can ask some kid, you know, and he who’s younger than you are couldn’t speak English and they won’t understand you at all. You have to write it down. They can read English but they can’t understand it, not if you talk to them. The accent, you know, they’re not familiar with the spoken but they can read. So after one year I said, it’s difficult I’ll just, you know, give up. Come back. The other thing was that, yun nga, we found out of course, that the reason that they were so happy was that they weren’t paying high their Taiwanese engineers. But I did not expect... Yun. Okay. What else do you want to know? So do you enjoy teaching? I guess. So I’ve been here for God knows how long. So I guess I have to enjoy it somehow. How much teaching do I do in terms of units in a school year? Okay, the normal load for a faculty member as a full-time is 12 units per term. So you just multiply that by 3 and that’s essentially how many units you’re supposed to be teaching in a year. However, this does not count as a chairperson or if you have administrative loads, if you have research projects that go through the university system and that are counted. So, you know it does...
Epi See: There’s a certain number of units.
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah. There’s a correlation. There’s a certain number of units that are allocated to that. So it depends on how many other things you are doing. Like right now I’m also the CT lab coordinator and that’s essentially equivalent to 2 units each. So...
Epi See: Sir, if I’m not mistaken, being CT chair also gives you a certain number of units right?
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, that’s right. Oo, but the chairpersonship is an administrative load and it’s dependent essentially on how big the department is. And they count the size of the department in terms of the number of units that we teach or handle. Okay, so ComTech for example, is a small department. So the corresponding number of units that we are allowed as administrative load is more say for example, compared to ST or IT
Epi See: How about sir, in terms of compensation, do you think it’s fair enough? Or is it too confidential?
Mr. Clement Ong: Well I can’t give, it’s not right if I were to give figures, but I think the compensation obviously that’s always the number one question. I mean, why don’t you go to industry, you can probably make a lot of more money. It’s true. It depends also a lot for example, on where you wind up in the tree of things ‘di ba? But if, take this GSIS thing, how many hundreds of thousands of pesos for people who don’t do anything. Well, that’s sort of a job that you know, you can “Sana ganun ang trabaho ko. Walang akong ginagawa” and yet you’re still paid with hell of a lot of money. But you know, only a few lucky *toot* get somthing like that ‘di ba. So I don’t know. Realistically speaking, I would say that for whatever amount of work that you actually put in which La Salle sees as an absolute requirement. You can do more if you wanna kill yourself. But relatively speaking, compared to industry, there’s a lot less pressure here in school. In industry, working on a project, you gotta be a great, you have deadlines to meet. You have competition, you have so many things to think about. That’s why you’re paid with the big bucks. Here, being in academe, it still requires you to perform a certain way, however, it’s more maybe for research and stuff like that so the pacing’s totally different. There’s a lot more. Actually there’s a lot less pressure, okay, and you have to be able to do things in your own time. So, in the end, the pay isn’t big, but it is probably what I consider as commensurate to the amount of pressure and effort that you’re putting into it. If it’s not for that I think obviously the bigger question in there is that you have a lot of talented individuals here who can do pretty well in industry. If it were not competitive if you stay here, why haven’t they gone into industry. And yeah, it does happen. I mean, you have a couple of individuals say okay, what if I take industry so on and so forth. Some of them stay, some of them come back. I think we’re not too far off in that sense because if we were, then everybody have gotten into industry, Period. Why would we stay here, ‘di ba? So yun.
Epi See: Sir, if you can go towards your teaching strategies, what would you consider to be?
Mr. Clement Ong: Okay, I don’t have one. I sure everybody has. I don’t know. You know, having been here for so long, I really don’t know what it is. I can’t really put it into words. Or I don’t really see what the big thing is. It’s something that you sort of develop maybe overtime. It’s also, it’s, well having been in this for this long, there’s probably a code of characteristic that make a teacher stand out perhaps, that gives the teacher a higher ITEO score, and so on and so forth, assuming we believe in the ITEO score. I don’t. Personally, I tend to take the ITEO score as you know, it’s a guide but you can’t always rely on it 100%, correct? Because you know, yeah, it’s so dependent on the judgement and sometimes, you know...
Epi See: It’s very subjective.
Mr. Clement Ong: I think it’s right that it’s subjective. I think it’s right that it’s subjective in the sense that you try to tease out what the students see. Unfortunately, it’s supposed to be subjective on the other hand, you’re assuming that the students are totally objective. ‘Di ba? So your objective as a student but it take you, your viewpoint that what makes it subjective ‘di ba. But yun nga, sometimes it doesn’t work that way. So, you can have a teacher who’s for example, you know, intelligent and knows what he’s teaching and yet he gets a low ITEO score, maybe because the teacher fails to connect with the students. That has happened and the solution was so simple, you know, this teacher decide to okay, I’ll try to go down and talk to these people on a personal level. Like I say “Hello” to you in the morning, “Kamusta ka na?”, “What’s your problem?”. And tell them a little bit about your personal life. I don’t do things like that personally. I mean, I can’t. I don’t open up to people in that way. And surprise surprise! Next time, the teacher’s score suddenly goes up, ‘di ba? So, hello? Hindi naman niya pinalitan yung teaching style niya pero naging personal siya. That has had an effect on the person’s ITEO. That’s essentially why I tend not to believe in the ITEO scores too much. I know that it’s influenced by many factors which are not necessarily into with the teaching per se. But we also don’t doubt the fact that, you know, a part of the reflection there obviously you know, coming really from how well the teacher does teach. A few things do stand out I guess. It’s the ability of the teacher to bring the materials down to the level of the student, that’s one. The other, to be able to relate these, what he or she is teaching to you know, things in everyday life. And to be able to provide, you know, greater depth in the discussion by bringing in his or her experience on the topic that is outside what the book or what the theory has told you. Like for example, you know, you discuss this and say “Okay, here’s what the book says and that’s straight from the book” and gees “Prof, I can read that from the book too. You don’t have to tell me that”. But it’s personal experience about these things that make the difference, for example. Sometimes, that’s exactly what is lacking with the fresh graduates who are starting out just teaching. I mean, you don’t have much of a background so you can’t really expound on it. For example, for those who are teaching network engineering, we got a couple of people who work in industry although they’re very young but they have a handful of experience because that is what they work in their everyday basis. Say, they say something about hacking or phishing, and then makakakwento sila in real life, “Okay, this is exactly what happened with one of our clients”. And automatically, you know, everybody just listens because “Hey, this is real. Ito talaga ang nangyari.” Which is why reality TV works so well. Ayun. I guess probably the person’s style is a bit more animated. If you’re into the topic or if your enthusiasm for the way you deliver the topic, I think, has an effect. I mean, (makes funny sounds). ‘Di ba? Wala. Yun.
Epi See: So sir, how do you deal with let’s say, certain scenarios that these students are starting to get bored with the lecture. Do you do something about it to keep them interested?
Mr. Clement Ong: I think that’s you know, kind of a gray line. Personally for example, I have a tendency to be quite, I’m not the type of person kasi who likes to or bothers to, I guess I’m too tamad, I don’t bother to take attendance, for example. I rationalize that by saying “They’re college kids, they’re old enough”. You know, it’s up to them if they want to. So, in the same light, you can argue for example, that if I’m in class and here’s a couple of students who aren’t listening, I could probably do the same thing and say that “What the hell, you’re old enough”, you know. And I generally, I tell them that, you know, if you can pass my tests and quizzes and exams and do the projects and get a hundred in each and every one of those, even if you don’t come to class, or even if you sleep in my class, I don’t care. ‘Di ba? If you deserve a 4.0 because of your score, then you will get a 4.0. I don’t have any problems with that.
Epi See: So you give them a high sense of freedom?
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah. Essentially, I do. On the other hand, if they happened to be you know, disruptive and on the other hand, “Kilala ko ito, itongmga tatlong itlog” for example, the three eggs, and I know that they’re not performing well, then, you know, I will stop and call their attention and I don’t think anybody could by interviewing the older, you know, the upper class men and I don’t have any problems about you know, unleashing the torrent of words and so you know, a lot of people are sort of scared in that sense. So I can discipline the class of I want to quite easy. I don’t have any problems of the like.
Epi See: So sir, do you think your students like you?
Mr. Clement Ong: Nah. I don’t care if they like me or not. No, maybe that’s not entirely true but, you know, I try to, one of the traits that I would probably try to emphasize is the divide between the professional and the personal. So when you say like, I don’t know exactly what that means. Because if you’re saying about like on a personal kind of like, I couldn’t care less. I really don’t. I shouldn’t care, actually. I should not care. Of course it would be nice if they actually really like, but if they don’t, fine, doesn’t matter. On the other hand, if you’re talking about like in the sense that they think I can actually deliver a good lecture, a good class, then that’s something that’s probably important. If that is the trait that people are trying to be then that’s good. I won’t deny that there have been some instances that I’ve been nominated for best teacher but I never won. Because when they come to interview me, “Nge? Ano ba ‘to.” ‘Di ba? Kasi yun nga. I don’t know, I don’t know what the difference is. But I try, I tend not to bother with things like that, I mean, in the perception of the student is that the teacher or mind the way I teach is great then great. You know, people interview me and they’re shocked that I say like a lot of people complain that my exams are too difficult, my answer is good, you know. “Wala compassion pala ito, hindi pwede itong manalong best teacher”. Fine, I don’t care. You know, ganun eh. A lot of people, for example, complain that they can’t answer the test questions and I tell them “Hey, I’m just trying not to insult your intelligence”. I don’t bother asking questions I know you can’t answer. Why should I ask that. ‘Di ba? Things like that. Don’t tell me I’ll put in the test “What is my first name?”. Hello? Magugulat ka may blangko. They don’t know my first name. Okay, nevermind. Yung mga ganun. So, that’s always been my style as far as I know. So, yeah.
Epi See: So sir, do you have any strategies, yeah, as you’ve said, you don’t have any strategies in your teaching.
Mr. Clement Ong: It just... Yeah, maybe that’s the difficulty at this point. I know I could probably become a better teacher, I mean, you look at all of these materials, all the theories about learning, all of these teaching techniques. Transformative learning, for example, you look at it and you say, yeah, probably there’s a lot of potential there. Probably. I don’t really know if that’s gonna happen. But teaching your teaching style and honing your ability at that line, it’s not something that you can do overnight. It would take a lot of hard work if you try things a little bit at a time until you’re comfortable with the idea or you polished it up to the point that you can deliver it or you know your expectations are right or the way you present something or you lead the student particularly the transformative learning is very very, you know, you can spend an enormous amount of time and trying to teach that for a particular concept because you’re waiting for the student to realize something. ‘Di ba? That’s the whole idea, you know. You give these little sketches and clues and lead the student so that they are enlightened. ‘Di ba? And you know, yeah. Once people find in this concept, I think you’ll have one and a half hour. I don’t know. I have several meetings I have to get to and... In a technical field, that’s really not going to, that’s not gonna work, personally speaking. I don’t think it will. The alternative is problem-based approaches wherein you know, it’s more project-based etcetera etcetera. We’re more comfortable with that. Yun nga. Like saying you can become a better teacher but it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s gonna take a lot of work, you can take a lot of experimentation. And so yeah, eventually you’ll probably get there. But not...
Epi See: So sir as of now, would you consider you teaching ways to be the conventional kind of teaching?
Mr. Clement Ong: Pretty much so. I tend to believe that there are pretty much conventional way of that. We’ve been doubted certain technologies like you know, going from the chalkboard to the yeah, white board, to the projector system where you know, you’re doing multimedia presentations. But it’s still basically what you call the “meat and potatoes” kind of thing, you know, you lecture, you wait for the sponges to absorb the lecture, you know, you cross your fingers. And then you find out if people absorb the lecture by giving out some kind of seatwork and, you know, evaluating.
Epi See: It’s practically the same thing regarding what teaching strategy...
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. To tell you the truth, some of these teaching strategies that we’re talking about are nothing but... No, no naman. They’re maybe formalizations of what technique you’ve already been using ever since. You just never had a name for it. Like that. Kung baga finormalize lang. “Ah, yun ba yung tawag dun?”. Okay, fine. ‘Di ba? I think, I think it’s... Sometimes what we present may not necessarily work like I’ve seen presentations... A lot of people seem to like this kind of presentation. It’s way of presenting the multimedia where you sort of, the idea or the topic you want to put through, you try to put into these 3 or 4, 5 letters that, you know, M is for ganyan, I is for ganyan. ‘Di ba?
Epi See: Anagram?
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah. Something like that ‘di ba? And try to give too so that it becomes supposedly easier for the people to remember it and they call it and, you know. I try through go on a session like that to give me a “1 plus 1”. Okay, I have no idea. What the? Nevermind. So I don’t know. It may work for some, but for others, maybe not, ‘di ba? So yun nga, yun lang yung ano ko dun. Me? I try to, I try to give examples that I think would stick. I try to make it, you know, so that the examples aren’t always fixed in that sense. You try to think of a way to make it easier for the students to relate whatever is best for that situation, that’s what I will use. I don’t have a particular way of... And sometimes these things you know, it does take time, you try out something, it doesn’t work. Then try presenting it in a different way.
Epi See: Can you share an example of your examples?
Mr. Clement Ong: Okay, let’s see. What is the most difficult... It doesn’t work without the board eh. It doesn’t work unless you have some kind of technical background already in it. But, one of the... Okay. Maybe, one of the hardest things for the ComTech students to understand is the microprocessor timing. It’s always the waterloo. Everybody gets zero. Yun nga, I feel very... I’ve used various ways of presenting this so, you know, and that’s one of the things students look back on to and you know, they say “Oh, the concepts are actually simple but why couldn’t we get it at that time before”. It’s just a question of, I think it’s a question of how it’s presented, and the problem here is that the concept or the things that are presented are probably too large to actually absorb in one shot. So what I do is I try to use a simplistic example. And that’s a funny thing, you know, people manage to actually understand it and get it. So eventually, they sort... The problem really here, often the concept being taught is easy, it’s not really that ano, but translating it to something that’s really integrated and acknowledged or you can actually use it for yourself, that’s the hard part. It’s where we’re not getting really anything, yeah, yun ang issue dun actually. So, how that’s gonna be solved? You know. That is essentially why they have a thesis and all that. That’s why we have a project. Until you have that integration to really work with something, it’s not really gonna get to where you are. That’s the thing. So going back to that, I don’t know. I think it’s either you can see or if you... Maybe you’ll be able to pick that up when, if you attend one of my lectures for example.
Epi See: Sir we...
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah you’re supposed to be attending my lecture, I know. There’s another guy actually, who’s doing a video of me this morning.
Mark Nolasco: Sir, our group.
Mr. Clement Ong: Ah, it’s your group. Kagrupo mo ba yun? Ah okay. So that’s a lecture on mobile robotics. It’s a very trivial topic. Okay, I don’t know. Maybe you’ll see something there. ‘Di ba? Yung mga ibang grupo hindi pa yata nagvivideo. Sana nga nagsabay-sabay na lang eh.
Mark Nolasco: Sir, how about your experience on honesty? Naka-encounter na ba kayo ng students na cheating?
Mr. Clement Ong: Oh yeah, sure, why not.
Mark Nolasco: In what way?
Mr. Clement Ong: Well, yun nga. Cheating takes many different forms. There’s mild cheating, there’s blatant. All of them are cheating, but...
Epi See: Sir, what’s your principle again? What’s your stand sir?
Mr. Clement Ong: Cheating robs the student off the learning opportunity basically. Particularly, you know, I give assignments, seatworks, etcetera, and typically students don’t manage to finish the seatwork, particularly if the topic is not so easy. So you, know, you give it and you wait, and you wait, and you wait. Hello? Okay. Nothing so “Isubmit niyo na lang yan mamaya ah, bago matapos ang araw”. And you know, you get the papers back and everybody has the same answer, they’re all wrong. Same answer and all wrong. ‘Di ba? So “Okay, what does this mean?” Obviously they cheated in the sense that everybody just you know, sort of “Ano ba yung sagot mo?”, “Sige yan na lang”. Hindi na nag-isip ‘di ba? So since it’s a seatwork, okay, no big deal. I don’t do anything about it, in fact, I don’t bother checking the seatworks anymore. I just look at a couple of papers. Nevermind. They’re wrong anyway. Then come the next day or the next session, and I say “Your answers are all the same eh, you’re all wrong”. Okay, so “How do you solve that?”. Then fine, I’ll discuss it. Okay, so hopefully, they get the idea. So yun nga, then there’s a more blatant kind of cheating where particularly for elective subjects I always give an project where a lot of the grades are on that project, 50% maybe, something. It’s a big project, it ties everything in, etcetera etcetera, and yun nga. There’s a location when a group tries to submit something that obviously they didn’t do.
Epi See: So you found out na...
Mr. Clement Ong: They presented it and showed it to me and I said “Who are you trying to joke? I know you didn’t do that”. ‘Di ba? I don’t know, I don’t know. Sometimes kasi it’s so blatantly ridiculous like you did the project, and the things that they submit, I look at it and you know, I told them “You know what, this PCV doesn’t get this kind of color unless it’s a bit 4 or 5 years old. So unless you can suddenly, magically go back in time or go forward in time and do this, and make it age like it’s 5 years old, okay. Either you know, you guys didn’t do this, or something you know”, yeah, there or, you know, yeah, exactly. Pagka ganyan, they’re sort of cornered and they can’t do anything. So, that’s it ‘di ba? You automatically I think there’s no argument as long as it’s very very clear to the student. I do not give a flat out 0.0 to the final grade. I never do that. But mind the grades, whatever you submit, accordingly ‘di ba. So you may have done a certain amount of work here, but this final thing is a zero. This one is zero. If I calculate the grades and it turned out that you passed, you pass. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. If it turned that out you failed, you fail.
Epi See: So it applies likewise when there is a departmental exam, exams, quizzes.
Mr. Clement Ong: Yeah, oo, same thing. So I will not fail the student outright just because I see the person’s cheating. But you know, that aspect you get a zero. If that causes you to lose and get a 0.0, sorry na lang. The students are pretty much aware of that. At the end of the day, when it comes to grade consultation, I get very very few questions. That’s it. People don’t complain.
Epi See: Sir, do students ever complain with you about these matters?
Mr. Clement Ong: No, they don’t. They know that whatever is there is not complainable essentially. I tell them very very explicitly and very very clearly “If you think that I made a mistake in checking which means that you know, this one your answer is correct or I miscounted, that’s fine, come to me. But don’t argue that you deserve more points or something because that’s probably not going to get you anywhere”. That’s it.
Epi See: So you don’t give like grace points like during consultation, they beg you for a certain grade. They’re almost reaching that grade and then you just give it away.
Mr. Clement Ong: Very often, that’s automatic, very automatic. I look at it and I say “Almost, you’re on the borderline, you’re almost 2.5 or whatever”, very often it’s automatic. You don’t have to ask me, I’ll just give it.
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