Roboprof is on the case

I probably shouldn't draw attention to this, as my superiors will think it's a great idea, but one of the PGCE people lauded the introduction of automatic marking systems, currently in use in the US.

The idea is that a computer program loaded with a sample essay can compare student work to the sample and grade it… so much for knowledge, expertise, skill and the human touch. I thought we were being McDonaldized, but clearly education's going to be a lot worse than that.

It's Christmas!

Despite my habitual whinging, this institution can be the source of great bounty: Neal and I have just acquired professional quality tripods (sadly, not Tripods), and a great extra birthday gift for Dan.

Now I'm off to 'discuss' with Registry where the missing essays are…

Country Life

Well I'm at home. I've done the mandatory religious observance to keep the Aged Parents happy, and am sitting in the sun. The thing about being out in the countryside is that it's so noisy - more birds than I can identify screaming to be fed by their parents, squirrels, rabbits, the occasional fox - all accentuated by the absence of my usual auditory input: sirens, gunshots, car stereos, bad music played on mobile phones, people hawking up mucus onto the streets, revving engines.

As it's a holiday, I'll offer some free advice to my media students. If you are going to use the web for 'additional resources', avoid sites like 'megaessays.com', 'freeessays.com' and most of all, '8thgradeessays.com'. 8th grade is US high school for 12 year-olds. My superpower is being able to detect plagiarism in seconds so I will catch you, and it's not worth it. You're all intelligent enough and resourceful enough to find your way to the library and read some university level texts. If you get away with using American high school essays, you might get your degree but you won't have become educated. There's a difference between having a certificate and having acquired the literary and critical skills which make you a unique, skilled reader. If you only care about the certificate, of course, then good luck to you, but I think that's rather depressing.

Barking and Marking

I'm marking essays this morning (or at least I'm meant to be). It's fascinating how some students can take what you've said in lectures and expand on it, cramming in detail and alternative points of view, while others can completely ignore even the basic factual stuff (and then object to low marks). Personality does play a part though. Even with anonymized marking, I can identify particular students by their approaches and interests.

What do we think of anonymized marking, by the way? The idea is that it enforces objectivity, cutting out pro- or anti- bias, sexism, racism etc. etc. and ensuring that the mark is based solely on the quality of the work. I can see the argument, but I would suggest that this implies that I am biased, sexist, racist and so on. More importantly, it replaces education with qualification. I don't see myself as a marker, a provider of grades, but as some sort of guide. Knowing who the students are allows me to contextualise the work according to my knowledge of a student's strengths and weakness, without necessarily marking more easily or harder (and perhaps able students should be pushed harder).

I don't think that students care about anonymized marking, as they usually put their names on their work (it's obscured on the cover-sheets). That may, of course, be because they haven't had any explanation of the purpose - we aren't very good at communicating our reasons for things.

No way!

Our esteemed leader has informed us that American software to mark essays is nearing completion - so clearly I should feck off and retrain at McDonald's because there's no need for actual learning, experience, ambiguity, creativity in either the teaching or studying process. This guy isn't worried - he clearly thinks it's a brilliant idea. I seem to remember Huxley's Brave New World positing a similar educational system.

The application I've found discussed on the web works on 'semantic similarity' - so that doctor/operate is linked by the computer to an answer which contains 'surgeon/scalpel'. Hmmm