What is the meaning of "decade" in the following context?

Question

I came across a "pharmacology book for practical classes for foreign students". In this book on the first pages (page 3), there is a place where the students should fill their name, course, group, decade, faculty (medicine / dentistry / pharmacology) and teacher's name and finally academic year (2017/2018).
look at the picture below. It is marked by red arrow.

Now, I am not sure about the meaning of the word "decade" in this context, therefore I've consult a Cambridge dictionary which gives one meaning for the word "decade":

"Decade: a period of ten years, especially a period such as 2010 to 2019"

Does it says that the students should write there "2010-2019"? (it seems to me weird because I didn't see it in such context in the past, also I don't understand what it's needed for.) .

Answer 1

Decade is a word that actually means any group of ten. Nowadays its most common popular usage is "a group of ten years" which is formally a decennium.

It's used in the physical sciences to indicate a ten-fold increase in a value, particularly on log graphs. In religion a decade is a group of ten beads upon which one counts prayers.

In the asker's context, it is asking about a group of ten students, similar to how somewhere around 100 military men made up a Roman century. If there are exactly ten students in the decade, I'd be surprised since you'd hardly expect there be exactly 10 or 20 or 30... students.

The Course might be taken by, say, 500 students. Those 500 students might be broken in five groups. Group 1 has a lecture on Monday, Group 2 on Tuesday, etc. Group 1 is broken in ten decades and after the lecture Decade 1 meets in room 101, Decade 2 meets in room 102 etc. where they can talk about the reading material or explore the subject.

In other universities these might be called study groups, tutor groups, reading groups, tutorials, etc.

Answer 2

Regarding your question above, I haven't the faintest clue what it means except that it is asking the person to right down what decade it is now (i.e. 2010-2019).

Now, let's move on, shall we? You said to feel free to correct you on your profile, so I shall oblige. On your profile, you say,

"Feel free to correct me about anything that you think it will make me better:)"

and

"n.b. I used to change my nickname often because it helps me to remember the words that I put in my nickname..."

The first one is definitely an error. the relative pronoun "that" between "anything" and "you" replaces the pronoun "it" in this relative clause; therefore, it should just read,

"Feel free to correct me about anything that you think will make me better."

For the second sentence, I think you're trying to say that you "used to" or "would" always change your name to help you remember words and then you stopped. If this should be the case, then it should read,

"n.b. I used to change my nickname often because it would help me to remember the words that I put in my nickname; [however, I don't do this anymore.]"

NOTE: [ ] mean that the the clause is unnecessary because I have reworded it for you so that it say what you want it to say.

I hope that might have been informative for you.