Like most academics right now, I'm marking: dissertations, essays, presentations, performances and online collaborative work. Unlike many academics however, I'm actually enjoying it. Mostly, I must concede, because it distracts me from the multiple horrific things happening at my institution: the brutal dismembering of successful subjects and their teachers; the decision to fire 36 student support workers; the probable loss of one of the most brilliant PhD students I'll ever have because the university's support systems have failed her again and again (oh, and here's a tip for managers in case you're reading: if the director and deputy director of an essential department have left, UPDATE THE DAMNED WEBSITE – in pursuit of a single name I've been passed along a chain of 5 people's automated emails and still haven't achieved my goal); constant demands from bureaucrats for information that's fully available to them already; repeatedly correcting important information that's somehow been mangled; the discovery that my employer has (illegally) underpaid my pension due to using inadequate software and lied to me about it.
Against this background, you can probably understand why even grading 50 essays on the same topic is rather appealing. Marking is always a fraught operation: there are tensions over consistency, media claims of grade inflation, personal preferences about what constitutes quality and good practice, students' and teachers' understanding of how much support and guidance is appropriate… a whole host of issues coalesce over the award of a particular grade. We use the percentage marking system, with which I disagree. The idea that one can coherently justify the award of 56% over 57% in work about characterisation in medieval fabliaux, for instance, seems pseudoscientific. We all, to be honest, have a rough and ready mental model of whether an assignment is excellent (First - 70% and above), good (2.1 60-69%), decent (2.2 50-59%), acceptable (Third - 40-49%) or poor (anything under 40%), then assigning a percentage that communicates whether the piece is near the top, bottom or middle of those ranges. Other pressures include whether a failing piece will be compensatable (i.e. whether the module is a close fail with implications for final degree calculation) and whether the percentage grades will produce a borderline mark: algorithms for calculating final degree outcomes can throw up some weird, counter-intuitive results. The unspoken (actually sometimes spoken) advice is to avoid awarding marks that result in a module grade ending in a 9, whether or not the academic feels this is a fair mark. No wonder too many students get unhealthily fixated by the Degree Result Calculator, endlessly inputting potential marks and wondering whether to prioritise one module or essay over another. And don't get me started on Electronic Marking or Not To Electronically Mark. I found myself semi-ironically using the phrase 'Organic Artisanal Marking' to defend my use of ink on paper: I do type up the substantial feedback but cling to the idea that handwritten marginal comments communicate personalised engagement over the distancing effect of computerised comments.
Underneath all this, however, is an emotional and intellectual roller-coaster as I sit down with a student's ultimate thoughts on the texts I've set them. Although essays are marked anonymously, we obviously recognise the interests and writing styles of those students who have consulted us along the way. We're faced with an index of whether the texts we've asked students to read have struck any kind of chord, and with a whole host of ideas that quite often haven't occurred to me: some convincing, some intriguing, some plain bad. There's nothing like reading an essay to give you a sense of whether and what kind of intellectual communion you've achieved. I'm currently marking dissertations – having done 8 so far, I'm struck by the depth and range of what they're addressing. Some have gone far beyond what's been taught in other modules, and others have found niches I'd never have thought interesting, and have persuaded me otherwise. Not all of them have done a great analytical job, but there hasn't been a single boring or dutiful one so far. It's not just because everything else is rubbish now, but against this backdrop, being able to spend an hour or two on one person's view of a few interesting texts or ideas is just pure pleasure. Obviously I can't mention individual students, but I've read analyses of work by RL Stevenson, Mary Shelley, Ruskin, Gissing, Morrison (A Child of the Jago), Matthew Arnold, Roald Dahl, the Grimms, and Anthony Cartwright…so far. It's been a blast!
Not much time for reading at the moment, but I have devoured Diana Wallace's new biography of Christopher Meredith, Christopher Fowler's The Bleeding Heart (which was OK but I won't be reading the rest of the series), Lloyd Markham's intriguing novella Bad Ideas/Chemicals which actually would have justified another hundred pages, and Nancy Mitford's The Blessing which is just funny.
And now for a bank holiday. No marking, no email, no head/desk interfacing for a whole extra day. See you on the other side. Meanwhile, a musical interlude: the official anthem of simple course leaders pushed beyond their limits.
Showing posts with label marking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marking. Show all posts
Friday, 25 May 2018
Friday, 16 June 2017
The best I can say is, it's been another week.
I've (almost) nothing to say this week. Personally, it's been one of banal but necessary administrative labour the details of which I won't burden you, and one of social horror out there. This morning I watched a billionaire with a number of palaces make polite conversation with those burned out of their homes by capitalist greed, while yesterday the political figurehead of said capitalist greed took time out of her self-interested negotiations with the representatives of 17th-century Planter Bigotry to visit Grenfell without meeting any of her victims. What more is there to say?
Back here, it's results week: some of the students are thrilled, some are OK, some are resigned and others are very unhappy, and I'm hearing from all of them. Most of those who've failed or marginally passed have clearly worked hard, while a small minority fail because through lack of effort, and an even smaller minority cheat, but the key thing at this point is to encourage personal responsibility while not being a dick about it. We talk to those who come to see us about their academic practice and support them through the resit process, and we worry about those who for various reasons don't come to see us. I usually point out, too, that we submit work to journals and publishers and rarely get things accepted first time round.*
I'm keeping up culturally too: last night I went to a poetry reading organised by a PhD student and one of my ex-students, featuring their own work plus their favourite regional poets. It was really good - a range of styles and subject matter, and uniformly good delivery which isn't always the case. Sadly only one English student came along, and not a single Creative Writing student or teacher. No doubt they all had good reasons but it's a bit disheartening for the artists.
Except for the one on fan fiction-erotica and neoliberalism I wrote with one of my PhD students. Straight in! With the added joy of slightly freaking out the reviewers and editor. You quote one story about humans mating with anthropomorphised cats…
Back here, it's results week: some of the students are thrilled, some are OK, some are resigned and others are very unhappy, and I'm hearing from all of them. Most of those who've failed or marginally passed have clearly worked hard, while a small minority fail because through lack of effort, and an even smaller minority cheat, but the key thing at this point is to encourage personal responsibility while not being a dick about it. We talk to those who come to see us about their academic practice and support them through the resit process, and we worry about those who for various reasons don't come to see us. I usually point out, too, that we submit work to journals and publishers and rarely get things accepted first time round.*
I'm keeping up culturally too: last night I went to a poetry reading organised by a PhD student and one of my ex-students, featuring their own work plus their favourite regional poets. It was really good - a range of styles and subject matter, and uniformly good delivery which isn't always the case. Sadly only one English student came along, and not a single Creative Writing student or teacher. No doubt they all had good reasons but it's a bit disheartening for the artists.
Except for the one on fan fiction-erotica and neoliberalism I wrote with one of my PhD students. Straight in! With the added joy of slightly freaking out the reviewers and editor. You quote one story about humans mating with anthropomorphised cats…
Thursday, 1 June 2017
Incidental music
No insights into my working life or current affairs coverage this week, Vole fans! All I've done is mark essays and clean my house. Guess which one is most fun… Still, I'm down to my last 54 2500-word portfolios. Argh.
So as a placeholder: some music I've come across recently or returned to.
Phil Niblock's Works for Hurdy-Gurdy. I think I heard an extract on Radio 3 a few weeks ago and was hooked. Half-way between classical drone and kosmische, played on medieval instruments. If it wasn't such an effort I'd source some quality mushrooms for the full effect. This is one I can't play in the office while people are around – I think it might fray some nerves.
I've also got out my old Chumbawamba albums. Years before the awful hit they had, they played my SU as part of their pretty much permanent tour of anarchist squats and grubby student dives. Musically they're no great shakes and they're even more didactic than one of my more boring lectures, but I like their anarcho-syndicalist politics and they have a way with a tune. I also liked their adoption of postmodern remix and appropriation tactics: I bought their Jesus H. Christ album under the counter: made entirely of unapproved samples, it would have tied them up in court cases for decades. You can download it from various places or buy the 'official' (but still legally-problematic) version, Shhh.
Which as I'm now in a crusty-rap-rock frame of mind leads me straight to Blaggers ITA, which might be the very first thing I ever bought on CD.
Which leads naturally to Tystion:
Back in the present, I've fallen for the new Thomas Adès album, particularly Polaris, and Charlotte Bray's At The Speed of Stillness.
See you next week.
So as a placeholder: some music I've come across recently or returned to.
Phil Niblock's Works for Hurdy-Gurdy. I think I heard an extract on Radio 3 a few weeks ago and was hooked. Half-way between classical drone and kosmische, played on medieval instruments. If it wasn't such an effort I'd source some quality mushrooms for the full effect. This is one I can't play in the office while people are around – I think it might fray some nerves.
I've also got out my old Chumbawamba albums. Years before the awful hit they had, they played my SU as part of their pretty much permanent tour of anarchist squats and grubby student dives. Musically they're no great shakes and they're even more didactic than one of my more boring lectures, but I like their anarcho-syndicalist politics and they have a way with a tune. I also liked their adoption of postmodern remix and appropriation tactics: I bought their Jesus H. Christ album under the counter: made entirely of unapproved samples, it would have tied them up in court cases for decades. You can download it from various places or buy the 'official' (but still legally-problematic) version, Shhh.
Which as I'm now in a crusty-rap-rock frame of mind leads me straight to Blaggers ITA, which might be the very first thing I ever bought on CD.
Which leads naturally to Tystion:
Back in the present, I've fallen for the new Thomas Adès album, particularly Polaris, and Charlotte Bray's At The Speed of Stillness.
See you next week.
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
A marker's cry for help.
The relentless searing heat is not conducive to the calm, dispassionate and rational state of mind required to fairly mark (screw you, split infinitive weirdos) re-submitted essays by students who failed the first time round.
And yet here we are and it's not going well. Some have actually managed to perform worse. Others have replaced poor but original work with plagiarised stuff.
For instance: if you're going to plonk in a beautifully modulated, sophisticated sentence amidst standard-to-poor first year work, expect me to Google it. What do you think I'm going to do if I find that the source is Plagiarist.com? What should you have learned from that site's title? For Christ's sake, students, try a little bit harder even at cheating. And while we're at it, if you continuously get the books' titles and protagonists' names wrong, you're not going to thrive.
Oh dear. I am getting a little tetchy. It's either time for a little lie-down or time for another meeting, the second of the day. And some calming music. Here's some Klaus Wunderlich.
I have quite a lot of Wunderlich albums on vinyl. Not in any spirit of postmodern irony. I just like Hammond organs and Klaus Wunderlich. They all cost about 10p in charity shops.
In other music news, I've just bought the 80s Indie compilation Scared To Get Happy. I've already got about half the tracks on the 5 CDs, and I'm quite surprised at the absence of certain bands, like The Field Mice, but it's good fun. It's weird looking across the office to see one of the featured musicians working away: I share a room with The Nightingales' guitarist. Some of the liner notes describe other bands as 'like The Nightingales crossed with X' and I laugh and ask Alan what he reckons. He usually laughs scornfully but it must be weird to be a critical influence on people. Especially a critical influence who gets no royalties!
The other intriguing LP I bought this week is Unreal, by Hebronix, and produced by Neil Hagerty of much-missed Royal Trux, whom Allmusic describe as a 'dissonant junkie nightmare'. It turns out that Hebronix is actually Daniel Blumberg of defunct indie-popsters Yuck. Which surprised me because I saw Hebronix peform recently, supporting Low. As I said at the time, it felt like watching someone having a nervous breakdown with gentle musical accompaniment. I'd have bet serious money that the man on stage had never performed to anyone other than his hamster before, so painfully withdrawn was he. And now it turns out he's a professional musician and the album's been reviewed in all the hip mags.
Is it any good? Yes. It's shoegaze with a bit of laudanum-infused pop. It's interior without being self-regarding or solipsistic, and really rather lovely.
OK. I'm in a slightly more serene state of mind now. Time to get back to the marking.
And yet here we are and it's not going well. Some have actually managed to perform worse. Others have replaced poor but original work with plagiarised stuff.
For instance: if you're going to plonk in a beautifully modulated, sophisticated sentence amidst standard-to-poor first year work, expect me to Google it. What do you think I'm going to do if I find that the source is Plagiarist.com? What should you have learned from that site's title? For Christ's sake, students, try a little bit harder even at cheating. And while we're at it, if you continuously get the books' titles and protagonists' names wrong, you're not going to thrive.
Oh dear. I am getting a little tetchy. It's either time for a little lie-down or time for another meeting, the second of the day. And some calming music. Here's some Klaus Wunderlich.
I have quite a lot of Wunderlich albums on vinyl. Not in any spirit of postmodern irony. I just like Hammond organs and Klaus Wunderlich. They all cost about 10p in charity shops.
In other music news, I've just bought the 80s Indie compilation Scared To Get Happy. I've already got about half the tracks on the 5 CDs, and I'm quite surprised at the absence of certain bands, like The Field Mice, but it's good fun. It's weird looking across the office to see one of the featured musicians working away: I share a room with The Nightingales' guitarist. Some of the liner notes describe other bands as 'like The Nightingales crossed with X' and I laugh and ask Alan what he reckons. He usually laughs scornfully but it must be weird to be a critical influence on people. Especially a critical influence who gets no royalties!
The other intriguing LP I bought this week is Unreal, by Hebronix, and produced by Neil Hagerty of much-missed Royal Trux, whom Allmusic describe as a 'dissonant junkie nightmare'. It turns out that Hebronix is actually Daniel Blumberg of defunct indie-popsters Yuck. Which surprised me because I saw Hebronix peform recently, supporting Low. As I said at the time, it felt like watching someone having a nervous breakdown with gentle musical accompaniment. I'd have bet serious money that the man on stage had never performed to anyone other than his hamster before, so painfully withdrawn was he. And now it turns out he's a professional musician and the album's been reviewed in all the hip mags.
Is it any good? Yes. It's shoegaze with a bit of laudanum-infused pop. It's interior without being self-regarding or solipsistic, and really rather lovely.
OK. I'm in a slightly more serene state of mind now. Time to get back to the marking.
Monday, 20 May 2013
My library / was Dukedom large enough
As you can tell from the title of this post, I saw The Tempest this weekend, at the Globe Theatre in London. The seating was hard and open to the air, props were minimal and the actors unaided by microphones. All very authentic, except for the distressing absence of jades, cutpurses, typhoid and the fragrance of Southwark in 1611.
Actually, the performance was rather wonderful. Prospero was wryly played by Roger Allam (Peter Mannion in The Thick of It), Miranda by Irish newcomer Jessie Buckley, Caliban by James Garnon and Ariel by the star of Merlin, Colin Morgan. They were superb, as were the supporting cast. Having taught The Tempest for several years, this production really demonstrated its dramatic qualities in surprising ways. In particular, the jokes worked, which is hard to pull off given the cultural gulf between then and now. Lots of physical humour (especially with codpieces), and a lusty version of Miranda. I hope the students on the trip enjoyed it - they seemed in high spirits anyway. I also got to meet one of my Twitter contacts in the flesh, which was lovely!
I did wonder about the Globe as a theatrical experience. Like going to performances of music on 'authentic' period instruments, I was wary of the possibility of experiencing it solely as a touristic curiosity - like going to a Sealed Knot Civil War re-enactment. You know - thrill to the rain and the smells and the backache and audience in the pit being sprayed by the actors - rather than experiencing the play for its intrinsic worth. And for the first few minutes I did watch the audience and admire the architecture and all that stuff, but the characteristics of this particular production soon took over and the experience rapidly became 'real' rather than an exercise in retro nostalgia.
I paid for the day's pleasure by spending yesterday marking dissertations. I seem to have hit a bad patch: a few unresearched, semi-literate, speculative ones. I now intend to automatically ban any thesis which claims to know what 'everyone' knows or does. As we keep telling the little darlings, 'the more sweeping the statement, the less likely it is to be true'. Statements like 'everybody knows' should be but into the same box as those starting with 'I'm not racist but…', which as we all know, actually means 'I AM a racist and…'.
I'm also sick of seeing 'would/could of', assertions that The Sun is a peer-reviewed journal, and dissertations which claim to analyse things using every single tool in the critical box. I've just read a thesis which claims to give a semiotic, Baudrillardian, Jamesonian and Bauman-influenced reading of 'the retro industry' (which 'everyone' is obsessed with, apparently). You wouldn't think they'd had an entire module on Research Methods…
Anyway, only 4 more dissertations. Then an MA thesis to read and 90 essays. All fitted round meetings. Wednesday: meetings at 10, 11, 12 and 2. And people wonder why I'm a grumpy red-faced blustering bully.
(And by the way, my library is languishing. Down to 2 additional books per week. Trips to the post room aren't nearly so much fun as heretofore).
Actually, the performance was rather wonderful. Prospero was wryly played by Roger Allam (Peter Mannion in The Thick of It), Miranda by Irish newcomer Jessie Buckley, Caliban by James Garnon and Ariel by the star of Merlin, Colin Morgan. They were superb, as were the supporting cast. Having taught The Tempest for several years, this production really demonstrated its dramatic qualities in surprising ways. In particular, the jokes worked, which is hard to pull off given the cultural gulf between then and now. Lots of physical humour (especially with codpieces), and a lusty version of Miranda. I hope the students on the trip enjoyed it - they seemed in high spirits anyway. I also got to meet one of my Twitter contacts in the flesh, which was lovely!
I did wonder about the Globe as a theatrical experience. Like going to performances of music on 'authentic' period instruments, I was wary of the possibility of experiencing it solely as a touristic curiosity - like going to a Sealed Knot Civil War re-enactment. You know - thrill to the rain and the smells and the backache and audience in the pit being sprayed by the actors - rather than experiencing the play for its intrinsic worth. And for the first few minutes I did watch the audience and admire the architecture and all that stuff, but the characteristics of this particular production soon took over and the experience rapidly became 'real' rather than an exercise in retro nostalgia.
I paid for the day's pleasure by spending yesterday marking dissertations. I seem to have hit a bad patch: a few unresearched, semi-literate, speculative ones. I now intend to automatically ban any thesis which claims to know what 'everyone' knows or does. As we keep telling the little darlings, 'the more sweeping the statement, the less likely it is to be true'. Statements like 'everybody knows' should be but into the same box as those starting with 'I'm not racist but…', which as we all know, actually means 'I AM a racist and…'.
I'm also sick of seeing 'would/could of', assertions that The Sun is a peer-reviewed journal, and dissertations which claim to analyse things using every single tool in the critical box. I've just read a thesis which claims to give a semiotic, Baudrillardian, Jamesonian and Bauman-influenced reading of 'the retro industry' (which 'everyone' is obsessed with, apparently). You wouldn't think they'd had an entire module on Research Methods…
Anyway, only 4 more dissertations. Then an MA thesis to read and 90 essays. All fitted round meetings. Wednesday: meetings at 10, 11, 12 and 2. And people wonder why I'm a grumpy red-faced blustering bully.
(And by the way, my library is languishing. Down to 2 additional books per week. Trips to the post room aren't nearly so much fun as heretofore).
Friday, 8 March 2013
On repeat…
The clip above is of Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato, which has provided my marking soundtrack for the day. It's a Dutch version of minimalism: much more melodious and European than the American version, which draws on rock, blues and African influences to a far greater extent. Canto Ostinato can last for a mere couple of hours or a full day, because it's built on repeated sections which the composer likened to genetic code. The weakness of the piece is its sweetness: it can quite easily turn into aural wallpaper in the wrong hands, whereas 'classic' minimalism's motorik rigour demands attention.
So in a way, ten Holt's piece is perfect for the marking I've been doing today: online forums examining a Satanic soliloquy in Milton's Paradise Lost (Book IV, 358-92) and asking them to draw on their close reading skills and critical reading to explore Satan's characterisation. Given that a large number of students are asked to consider the same few lines, the result is much like Canto Ostinato for the marker: lots of repetition, quite a lot of pleasure, but little variation or risk-taking. I find it hard to take in too much in a single session, and to reply with much originality 30 times, though I do my best. Certainly the standard was high and there are moments of light relief. 'What's Satan's state of mind here', I asked. 'Pissed off', came the reply, accurately enough.
What else has been going on? Well, talking of sterile repetition, I watched Question Time last night, despite knowing in advance the response of every panellist. Last night's crew could have formed the celebrity cast for Huis Clos ('l'enfer, c'est les autres): imagine being trapped forever with Melanie Phillips, Stephen Twigg, Bob Crow, Ken Clarke and a UKIP candidate, all endlessly rehearsing manufactured outrage. I'm used to the audience consisting of racists and conspiracists, but the BBC seems to have decided that panellists should all now essentially behave like trolls. Just once I'd like to watch an episode in which some of the commentators expressed a degree of humility or self-doubt. When David Miliband visited The Hegemon, I asked him if there was any room for self-doubt in modern politics and he literally did not understand the question. I think it's important to be open to challenge and self-examination. The other day I had a long exchange on Twitter with someone about education. We disagreed on absolutely everything, but did so thoughtfully and respectfully. It was really enjoyable to swap ideas without treating the other as a deluded moron. But political life has no room for complexity, ambiguity or doubt. To get anywhere, you have to behave as though whatever you're saying at any given moment is obviously and permanently and completely true, despite knowing that very few things outside gravity fulfil these conditions. We have always been at war with Oceania. If you remember otherwise, your memory is clearly at fault.
 |
| Melanie wrote a book calling London 'Londonistan' and tends to believe that if you disagree with her in the tiniest way on anything at all, then you personally are guilty for 9/11 and the Holocaust. |
 |
| Bob Crow: reminds me of the junior Vogon in The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: '"Resistance is useless," bellowed the guard, and then added, "You see if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there aren't usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think I'd better stick to what I know." |
Still, Mad Mel managed to be unhinged, insensitive, paranoid and viciously reactionary without denouncing Islam, which is a major achievement for her. Either that, or I've gone deaf. Between her reactionary certainty and Bob Crow's bellowing and blinkered brand of socialism (I like him, but I'd love a bit more nuance: I imagine he starts breakfast by demanding his wife provides THE WORKERS' MUESLI NOT AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE BUT IMMEDIATELY BEFORE CAPITALIST BANKERS TAKE IT AWAY TO FEED TO THEIR PONIES, whereas Melanie Phillips would merely announce that the cereal box is empty because Islamofascist anti-Semites have brainwashed ordinary people into renouncing their Traditional Breakfasting Values), before long, I was entertaining myself by imagining Bob and Mel scarfing down the free warm white wine backstage before rutting like animals in the Green Room.
An image that will not quickly go away, unfortunately.
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
The Afternoon Vole
Welcome, friends, to Marking Hell, In Marking Hell, academics are condemned to face the consequences of their teaching. Those little jokes, the examples that seemed clear enough at the time, the quotes that you thought you could bear seeing repeated back to you over and over again with added mis-spellings. In Marking Hell, we're made to realise how little of what we say actually goes in. For instance, when I say (and put up on screen in massive texts) things like YOU CANNOT CLAIM THAT VIDEO GAMES CAUSES VIOLENCE BECAUSE MEDIA EFFECTS RESEARCH IS TENUOUS AT BEST, I assume it means that the students are inured to Daily Mail claims about video games and violence. I even ask them to estimate how many 'people' they've killed on screen, then how many people they've killed in real life. They all laugh. Then they write things like 'Many mass murderers are associated with video games'.
While we're on the subject, we also ask 'do you believe everything you see on TV?'. They all say no. Then they write things like 'TV manipulates viewers into thinking x, y and z'. Oh, it's just other people who are stupid passive fleshbags is it? (This is another favourite Daily Mail line).
Today I've also had someone criticise EastEnders for featuring Muslim homosexuals, because 'the ethics of Islam forbid homosexuality'. Unfortunately, the Qu'ran must not forbid plagiarism because that particular essay is virtually completely downloaded from the web. I've also read a female student explaining that pornography is feminist because it allows women to exploit men from the safety and comfort of a TV studio. OK, it's a more sophisticated way of being wrong than simply asserting a load of inaccurate 'facts' or relying on the Ayn Rand Lexicon for definitions (seriously), but Marking Hell is one of those regular occasions when my hope that each generation becomes more liberal is dashed. If I had a pound for every time a female told me that feminism was 'boring' or 'pointless', I'd have a fully funded pension and would currently be putting on my snow-shoes for a Norwegian mountaineering trip.
I'm not normally this downcast by marking. There are always some excellent essays and it's rare that I don't learn something: one student turned in a ridiculously interesting analysis of Tumblr that was clearly all her own work and drew on most of the theory we'd mentioned and some more we hadn't. But I marked 15 essays today and failed 9 of them. I'm not going to generalise about a generation, and certainly not going to claim it was better in my day. Although it was harder to plagiarise: essays were handwritten, so you had to read every word you were copying out, which must have made people think about what they were writing, once they'd been to the library to find something worth copying out! Now it's all Wikipedia, freeessays.com or (I kid you not, it was in the bibliography) AS Level Media Studies: The Essentials.
I had a ridiculously easy time at university. Lectures, with a single tutorial each week, and tutors who wanted one essay a term. My students have a seminar with each lecture and two pieces of work per module – loads more than me. A lot more is expected of them, but they get a lot more support, attention and advice, not least on how to research and write essays.
Clearly with this failure level – and my colleagues report similar grades – something has gone wrong either with the teaching or how we train students to produce academic work. We'll have an inquest and talk to the students to get their point of view. Perhaps the concept of academic writing is problematic at first-year level, perhaps they take a mistaken instrumentalist approach that doesn't work, perhaps the sparkiness we see in class masks doubt and confusion. With some of them, there's a clear causal link between non-attendance and failure. We don't give them the answers in class, but we show them where to look for good leads!
Perhaps it's a subject thing: my English literature classes aren't as bad at the moment, though I have more leeway there to choose obscure texts that have no presence on the internet! One thing that really bothers me about the first-year media group at the moment though is the lack of curiosity. They're content to say 'everyone' does, watches, believes or uses x, y or z. Many of them tell us they have a strict diet of very limited media consumption and don't really care about anything else: channels they don't watch, ownership, regulation. Things just are – there's no political or cultural context worth examining for some of them.
One essay today told me that the media behaves badly because it doesn't let people carry on believing what they're taught but tries to make them think differently. Oddly enough, that's what I hope my lectures do!
So anyway, it's back to the drawing board…
While we're on the subject, we also ask 'do you believe everything you see on TV?'. They all say no. Then they write things like 'TV manipulates viewers into thinking x, y and z'. Oh, it's just other people who are stupid passive fleshbags is it? (This is another favourite Daily Mail line).
Today I've also had someone criticise EastEnders for featuring Muslim homosexuals, because 'the ethics of Islam forbid homosexuality'. Unfortunately, the Qu'ran must not forbid plagiarism because that particular essay is virtually completely downloaded from the web. I've also read a female student explaining that pornography is feminist because it allows women to exploit men from the safety and comfort of a TV studio. OK, it's a more sophisticated way of being wrong than simply asserting a load of inaccurate 'facts' or relying on the Ayn Rand Lexicon for definitions (seriously), but Marking Hell is one of those regular occasions when my hope that each generation becomes more liberal is dashed. If I had a pound for every time a female told me that feminism was 'boring' or 'pointless', I'd have a fully funded pension and would currently be putting on my snow-shoes for a Norwegian mountaineering trip.
I'm not normally this downcast by marking. There are always some excellent essays and it's rare that I don't learn something: one student turned in a ridiculously interesting analysis of Tumblr that was clearly all her own work and drew on most of the theory we'd mentioned and some more we hadn't. But I marked 15 essays today and failed 9 of them. I'm not going to generalise about a generation, and certainly not going to claim it was better in my day. Although it was harder to plagiarise: essays were handwritten, so you had to read every word you were copying out, which must have made people think about what they were writing, once they'd been to the library to find something worth copying out! Now it's all Wikipedia, freeessays.com or (I kid you not, it was in the bibliography) AS Level Media Studies: The Essentials.
I had a ridiculously easy time at university. Lectures, with a single tutorial each week, and tutors who wanted one essay a term. My students have a seminar with each lecture and two pieces of work per module – loads more than me. A lot more is expected of them, but they get a lot more support, attention and advice, not least on how to research and write essays.
Clearly with this failure level – and my colleagues report similar grades – something has gone wrong either with the teaching or how we train students to produce academic work. We'll have an inquest and talk to the students to get their point of view. Perhaps the concept of academic writing is problematic at first-year level, perhaps they take a mistaken instrumentalist approach that doesn't work, perhaps the sparkiness we see in class masks doubt and confusion. With some of them, there's a clear causal link between non-attendance and failure. We don't give them the answers in class, but we show them where to look for good leads!
Perhaps it's a subject thing: my English literature classes aren't as bad at the moment, though I have more leeway there to choose obscure texts that have no presence on the internet! One thing that really bothers me about the first-year media group at the moment though is the lack of curiosity. They're content to say 'everyone' does, watches, believes or uses x, y or z. Many of them tell us they have a strict diet of very limited media consumption and don't really care about anything else: channels they don't watch, ownership, regulation. Things just are – there's no political or cultural context worth examining for some of them.
One essay today told me that the media behaves badly because it doesn't let people carry on believing what they're taught but tries to make them think differently. Oddly enough, that's what I hope my lectures do!
So anyway, it's back to the drawing board…
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Something rotten in the state of Denmark?
Afternoon everybody! I haven't just got up, I've been marking essays all day, having sent off my Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (otherwise known as a journal article comparing George Borrow's Wild Wales and O. M. Edwards's Cartrefi Cymru).
This particular pile of essays is on a range of concepts presented to first-year Media and Culture students. They're asked to define one concept and apply it. The quality has been… mixed. Some have looked the term up in a couple of first-year textbooks, quoted them, applied them to an example and done a decent job. Some have done the same thing, then thought about the problems related to the concept, and done and excellent job. A few have cut-and-pasted essays from the internet or Wikipedia entries and failed. And one has submitted 2000 words on how John Terry is a nice bloke and the newspapers should stop being so nasty about him. In short, a pretty normal range of submissions.
This is pretty much the extent of my cultural horizon at the moment. The high point of the week so far has been watching Borgen, the Danish drama (if that's not pushing it a little) set in the Prime Minister's office. Think The Thick of It without any jokes at all, or The Killing without any vulgar killing (or knitwear). But with subtitles. As you might imagine, I am utterly enthralled, although I may be the only person on the entire planet who watched this season's episodes so far and thought 'Hmmm… it's getting a bit too exciting'. It's true, too.
The point of Season 1 is that however high the stakes (and we can all agree that they're pretty high: this is the Danish Government we're talking about), the day to day grind of office relationships and work rivalries drives events. The photography is calm, the lighting low, the dialogue often Pinteresque. It's a show which makes a virtue of slowness. Interesting, the first episode of the show implies that Danish politics has been poisoned by British practices: Hesselboe has to go to London to find a spin doctor, but it's not long before even the 'good' guys (Brigitte's 'Moderate Party') has an amoral spin doctor of its own. In other ways, Danish politics as it's represented here is rather delightful: even the PM lives in a normal house and there's a calmness about public affairs that's certainly absent here.
The other notable aspect of the show is it's twin presentation of politics and the political media: it's often hard to tell who (if anyone) is in charge. The credits (around six minutes in) make the mediatisation of public affairs even more explicit, framing the major players on TV monitors in an editing suite as if to emphasise the dominance of representation over principle.
And yet Season 2 betrays signs that the makers are a little too aware of their cultural cachet. Suddenly characters are behaving oddly. There's too much excitement. A suicide here, a coup there, a drunken prime ministerial shag, a tabloid rent-boy honey-trap - it's getting a little soapy for my taste: as though they've been reading too many British political columnists. That said, there's still an awful lot to savour. My favourite moment was the deposed Labour leader's mournful, hangdog final words 'I'm the last worker in the Labour Party'. That line was crossed here years ago…
So come on: let's put the Bore back into Borgen! It's still the best thing on global TV since The Wire.
This particular pile of essays is on a range of concepts presented to first-year Media and Culture students. They're asked to define one concept and apply it. The quality has been… mixed. Some have looked the term up in a couple of first-year textbooks, quoted them, applied them to an example and done a decent job. Some have done the same thing, then thought about the problems related to the concept, and done and excellent job. A few have cut-and-pasted essays from the internet or Wikipedia entries and failed. And one has submitted 2000 words on how John Terry is a nice bloke and the newspapers should stop being so nasty about him. In short, a pretty normal range of submissions.
This is pretty much the extent of my cultural horizon at the moment. The high point of the week so far has been watching Borgen, the Danish drama (if that's not pushing it a little) set in the Prime Minister's office. Think The Thick of It without any jokes at all, or The Killing without any vulgar killing (or knitwear). But with subtitles. As you might imagine, I am utterly enthralled, although I may be the only person on the entire planet who watched this season's episodes so far and thought 'Hmmm… it's getting a bit too exciting'. It's true, too.
The point of Season 1 is that however high the stakes (and we can all agree that they're pretty high: this is the Danish Government we're talking about), the day to day grind of office relationships and work rivalries drives events. The photography is calm, the lighting low, the dialogue often Pinteresque. It's a show which makes a virtue of slowness. Interesting, the first episode of the show implies that Danish politics has been poisoned by British practices: Hesselboe has to go to London to find a spin doctor, but it's not long before even the 'good' guys (Brigitte's 'Moderate Party') has an amoral spin doctor of its own. In other ways, Danish politics as it's represented here is rather delightful: even the PM lives in a normal house and there's a calmness about public affairs that's certainly absent here.
The other notable aspect of the show is it's twin presentation of politics and the political media: it's often hard to tell who (if anyone) is in charge. The credits (around six minutes in) make the mediatisation of public affairs even more explicit, framing the major players on TV monitors in an editing suite as if to emphasise the dominance of representation over principle.
And yet Season 2 betrays signs that the makers are a little too aware of their cultural cachet. Suddenly characters are behaving oddly. There's too much excitement. A suicide here, a coup there, a drunken prime ministerial shag, a tabloid rent-boy honey-trap - it's getting a little soapy for my taste: as though they've been reading too many British political columnists. That said, there's still an awful lot to savour. My favourite moment was the deposed Labour leader's mournful, hangdog final words 'I'm the last worker in the Labour Party'. That line was crossed here years ago…
So come on: let's put the Bore back into Borgen! It's still the best thing on global TV since The Wire.
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Academic Affairs
We had our school's staff conference today. Some of it was general briefing about the state of recruitment and so on (you suckas over in the School of Applied Science - we OWNED you this year, player-haters), and some of it explored issued like feedback, marking and so on.
Some general questions for you, following the brief chat we had on Twitter:
How do you persuade people to collect their marked work (let alone read it)? My shared office is stuffed with uncollected work. I spent an evening last week shredding essays written in first year by this year's graduates - and teasing them about it via Twitter. I've tried one-to-one sessions. Only the A students came. I've tried taking work to class - and carried a big pile back to the office. We could ask the Registry to return work - but that removes the opportunity to talk to the marker about the work. We could withhold grades until work is collected, or require the students to respond to our feedback as a requirement for the next assignment.
The major problems, as I see them, are that some students simply don't care about feedback: it's all about the grade, while others are scared of a potentially difficult encounter. Even if you've done well, judgement is a stressful event. Noting a bad grade might sting, but being forced to engage in a dialogue which requires instant and vocal self-reflection requires considerable emotional qualities.
We can enforce various systems to get work back to students, but to my mind, the systems should follow the culture. We need to persuade students that we're judging work, not the individual; that commentary and reflection are integral educational events; that grades aren't educational outcomes and that it's the conversation that matters.
I co-led a session on Tweeting for Academics. There seemed to be acceptance that participation could be useful for networking academics, but hostility to using Twitter for teaching ('tweaching'?). Partly for equity: not all students have the technology, but mostly because we're wary of pushing students in the direction of a proprietary, corporate product. It may not last, of course, and we shouldn't be encouraging students to surrender their personal information for sale to corporate interests. It was also felt that using Twitter for teaching opened colleagues up to continual demands on our time and attention, and blurred the boundaries between work and social life. I'm certainly sympathetic to these arguments. I wouldn't make Tweeting integral to any module, and I'm also wary of corporate incursions into academia and life. My weak solution is to give entirely false details to Twitter: I set up an otherwise unused email address for the purpose and don't give my real name. It's only a sticking plaster - what's your perspective on this?
Some general questions for you, following the brief chat we had on Twitter:
How do you persuade people to collect their marked work (let alone read it)? My shared office is stuffed with uncollected work. I spent an evening last week shredding essays written in first year by this year's graduates - and teasing them about it via Twitter. I've tried one-to-one sessions. Only the A students came. I've tried taking work to class - and carried a big pile back to the office. We could ask the Registry to return work - but that removes the opportunity to talk to the marker about the work. We could withhold grades until work is collected, or require the students to respond to our feedback as a requirement for the next assignment.
The major problems, as I see them, are that some students simply don't care about feedback: it's all about the grade, while others are scared of a potentially difficult encounter. Even if you've done well, judgement is a stressful event. Noting a bad grade might sting, but being forced to engage in a dialogue which requires instant and vocal self-reflection requires considerable emotional qualities.
We can enforce various systems to get work back to students, but to my mind, the systems should follow the culture. We need to persuade students that we're judging work, not the individual; that commentary and reflection are integral educational events; that grades aren't educational outcomes and that it's the conversation that matters.
I co-led a session on Tweeting for Academics. There seemed to be acceptance that participation could be useful for networking academics, but hostility to using Twitter for teaching ('tweaching'?). Partly for equity: not all students have the technology, but mostly because we're wary of pushing students in the direction of a proprietary, corporate product. It may not last, of course, and we shouldn't be encouraging students to surrender their personal information for sale to corporate interests. It was also felt that using Twitter for teaching opened colleagues up to continual demands on our time and attention, and blurred the boundaries between work and social life. I'm certainly sympathetic to these arguments. I wouldn't make Tweeting integral to any module, and I'm also wary of corporate incursions into academia and life. My weak solution is to give entirely false details to Twitter: I set up an otherwise unused email address for the purpose and don't give my real name. It's only a sticking plaster - what's your perspective on this?
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
By popular request…
Occasionally, I get fan mail and requests. One reader, whom we'll call Bruno di Gradi because that's his online identity, suggested this:
In no particular order (and apologies if some of this seems patronising, but I promise that it's all based in true-life experience).
1. Read the texts you're writing about. Read them again. Underline bits. If you're writing about news, watch some. Read some. Read some more. Reference every idea: you get credit for this.
2. Have an opinion. This is a scary one. I keep telling my students that I can find out what the critics think by reaching for a book. What I want from you is an informed opinion. Obviously you haven't the time and experience to lock horns with the Lacanians, but you can demonstrate that you've looked around the various ways to read texts, understood them, and find a particular approach more compelling. Opinion - as Martin Eve points out to me - doesn't mean a free-for-all, even if you've inhaled the entire corpus of reader-response criticism ('meanings are created in the space between the reader and the text'). 'Argument' is better.
Don't let your reading dominate your response (I struggle with this one) but draw on them for support and also to show that you know there are other options. It's NOT a matter of listing critics who agree with you: it's about using critical work to situate your argument, (in Martin's words), saying something in a shorter space, or to add originality by pointing out where previous critics have overlooked or misinterpreted something. I frequently find myself writing 'I totally disagree with you - but you make a good case. Have an A grade'.
3. Engage with the text. Don't airily state that X is an idiotic character - show me.
4. Don't be afraid to confront complexity and ambiguity. When an essay tells me that an author, character, plot, genre, event or whatever is 'obviously' anything, I sigh and shake my head and get out the extra-red red pen. Everything's complicated. If you think something's simple, you haven't been looking closely enough. If your essay recognises that the subject is more complicated - and therefore more interesting - than it first appears, then you're on the way to having an argument. There's no answer: only potential answers.
5. Bibliography. Have one. It's the first thing I look at. An honest one: just the stuff you've read and/or cited. Remember: I've read everything on the reading list and I know what's in the library (so don't distort quotations to suit your point either). If you come up with a text printed in a limited edition Mayan-language edition, I'm going to be a teensy bit suspicious. While we're on the subject, Googling key words and then citing the single page of Google Books that comes up is not research.
Ask yourself if you've done the right kind of research. If your bibliography includes school-level crammer texts, you're not taking it seriously. If you cite - as more than one student did recently - X for Dummies, ask yourself this: are you a dummy? If you got into university, the answer should be 'no, therefore I do not need books designed explicitly for dummies'.
If your bibliography looks lazy or stolen, I'm likely to be suspicious for the rest of the essay-reading experience. Don't nick stuff - you just generate ill-feeling and rip yourself off.
The point is this: we're not testing your data mining skills. We're not really testing you: we're giving academic credibility to your own process of education. If you pretend to have read an essay when really you've only nicked a sentence to make you look informed, you're ripping yourself off. On the other hand, if you've read that chapter, struggled with it and still don't feel quite sure you've understood it, I'm happy. We can talk about it and you've taken control of your own education.
6. Proof-read. Get someone else to proof-read it. Twice. Put your work away for a couple of days and go back to it with fresh eyes. Obviously this requires a degree of forethought and planning, but it really helps… or so I'm told. Don't try to copy the academic style you see in books and articles. Some of those people could make a volcano tedious (I was recently shown a piece which made penis-size the most boring subject on earth, which is some feat given the amount of email I get on the subject). Also, the good ones have been doing it for a long time. It takes practice. Aim for clarity and simplicity. Build complexity from there if you need to: don't be tempted by the idea that you become an academic by performing like one. There are enough charlatans in here already.
7. Enjoy it. This might sound silly, but if you're not interested, you'll produce a humdrum text. You don't have to like every text on which you write. You might think it's the worst thing you've ever read. But trust us: there's a point to it. Look for that point. Ask yourself (or us) why we've picked this. Enthusiasm goes a hell of a long way.
8. Avoid the broad, sweeping and unprovable assertion. I know that Shakespeare was a great writer. You don't have to prove it. What you need to do is explain the odd bits. How does a text work (or not)? Why does media ownership matter?
9. Think about your reader. Treat her/him as ignorant but intelligent: like a detective in the mansion library, guide them through the maze until they see it your way, without patronising them. Also, ask yourself whether they'd want to read it: is the structure clear and logical? Is it written literately? Would you like it passed around the office for the admiration (or scorn) of your marker's colleagues? Does your opening paragraph grab my attention, or is it a mimsy bit of cliche-ridden tedium? Right from the start, tell me what you're doing, how you're doing it and why you're doing it like that. Then do it. I mark well-written essays really quickly because I can get straight to the ideas. If I have to decode every sentence, then marking becomes a test of attrition in which there's only one loser: you.
Imagine having to read this piece of work out in front of me. Would you do it, or would you like to shrivel up into an atom? If the latter, rewrite it.
10. Mean it. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I'm always kinder to people who've wrestled with a topic and been defeated than those who've clearly breezed in and winged it on their wits. Talk to us well in advance, however scared or confident you are. Some of my favourite students have been people who got third-class degrees by the sweat of their brows, because they've been transformed: the eventual grade is nowhere near as important as the degree to which your understanding of and approach to the world has been changed.
11. Presentation: the academic requirements are about clarity. Use them. Think about physical things too: Comic Sans, for instance, just makes meunreasonably angry.
12. Think about the piece of work. How are you imagining it? If it's as an imposition, a punishment, a drag, then it's going to be rubbish (unless you're very good at faking it). Imagine it as a conversation between two learned people: you're part of an academic community, not a beggar at the gates. If you have the confidence to behave like a colleague in this process, my marking will reflect this. With good essays, I never have to write 'this isn't a sentence' or 'try to spell Shakespeare's name correctly': instead, I write further questions or ideas in the margins, or 'I never thought about it like this before'. Please make me do this more often.
Conversely, the students who get first-class degrees are the ones who are passionate - analytical skills alone won't get you there. I like people who argue, in class and on paper. Awkward people who've read around the subject and trip me up in the midst of my lecture are brilliant. Pour it all out on paper and take risks: you might go astray, but that's an educational experience in itself.
In summary: enthusiasm and dedication will get you there. We're here for you. The work is designed to help you. It shouldn't even be called work. The whole discourse and marking thing seems like a punishment process but it's disciplinary in a different sense: it's meant to help you grasp the requirements of the discipline. I want you to remain passionate or acquire passion, but along the way to abandon naivety in exchange for a more purposeful excitement. My boss has a good line about the importance of joining in seminar discussions rather than lounging silently at the back relying on other people to do the work: 'you don't get fit by going down to the gym and watching someone else's workout'.
13. If it seemed easy to you, check again. Could you have done better? Maybe you are on top of the whole thing - good for you. But too often uninformed essays are the most confident ones. If you haven't stretched your brain for this one, you've missed the point of the whole exercise.
I know that a lot of this is very naive. And that I'll think of other criteria at random points over the next few days - but I'd really like to hear from you. Is this stuff fair? Unfair? Helpful?
Do you know what would make a good blog post from your good self? One where you outline your thought process for marking essaysAs it happens, I'm in the office until 10 tonight, marking essays and I need a break, so I'll take this one on. Maybe it will help.
In no particular order (and apologies if some of this seems patronising, but I promise that it's all based in true-life experience).
1. Read the texts you're writing about. Read them again. Underline bits. If you're writing about news, watch some. Read some. Read some more. Reference every idea: you get credit for this.
2. Have an opinion. This is a scary one. I keep telling my students that I can find out what the critics think by reaching for a book. What I want from you is an informed opinion. Obviously you haven't the time and experience to lock horns with the Lacanians, but you can demonstrate that you've looked around the various ways to read texts, understood them, and find a particular approach more compelling. Opinion - as Martin Eve points out to me - doesn't mean a free-for-all, even if you've inhaled the entire corpus of reader-response criticism ('meanings are created in the space between the reader and the text'). 'Argument' is better.
Don't let your reading dominate your response (I struggle with this one) but draw on them for support and also to show that you know there are other options. It's NOT a matter of listing critics who agree with you: it's about using critical work to situate your argument, (in Martin's words), saying something in a shorter space, or to add originality by pointing out where previous critics have overlooked or misinterpreted something. I frequently find myself writing 'I totally disagree with you - but you make a good case. Have an A grade'.
3. Engage with the text. Don't airily state that X is an idiotic character - show me.
4. Don't be afraid to confront complexity and ambiguity. When an essay tells me that an author, character, plot, genre, event or whatever is 'obviously' anything, I sigh and shake my head and get out the extra-red red pen. Everything's complicated. If you think something's simple, you haven't been looking closely enough. If your essay recognises that the subject is more complicated - and therefore more interesting - than it first appears, then you're on the way to having an argument. There's no answer: only potential answers.
5. Bibliography. Have one. It's the first thing I look at. An honest one: just the stuff you've read and/or cited. Remember: I've read everything on the reading list and I know what's in the library (so don't distort quotations to suit your point either). If you come up with a text printed in a limited edition Mayan-language edition, I'm going to be a teensy bit suspicious. While we're on the subject, Googling key words and then citing the single page of Google Books that comes up is not research.
Ask yourself if you've done the right kind of research. If your bibliography includes school-level crammer texts, you're not taking it seriously. If you cite - as more than one student did recently - X for Dummies, ask yourself this: are you a dummy? If you got into university, the answer should be 'no, therefore I do not need books designed explicitly for dummies'.
If your bibliography looks lazy or stolen, I'm likely to be suspicious for the rest of the essay-reading experience. Don't nick stuff - you just generate ill-feeling and rip yourself off.
The point is this: we're not testing your data mining skills. We're not really testing you: we're giving academic credibility to your own process of education. If you pretend to have read an essay when really you've only nicked a sentence to make you look informed, you're ripping yourself off. On the other hand, if you've read that chapter, struggled with it and still don't feel quite sure you've understood it, I'm happy. We can talk about it and you've taken control of your own education.
7. Enjoy it. This might sound silly, but if you're not interested, you'll produce a humdrum text. You don't have to like every text on which you write. You might think it's the worst thing you've ever read. But trust us: there's a point to it. Look for that point. Ask yourself (or us) why we've picked this. Enthusiasm goes a hell of a long way.
8. Avoid the broad, sweeping and unprovable assertion. I know that Shakespeare was a great writer. You don't have to prove it. What you need to do is explain the odd bits. How does a text work (or not)? Why does media ownership matter?
9. Think about your reader. Treat her/him as ignorant but intelligent: like a detective in the mansion library, guide them through the maze until they see it your way, without patronising them. Also, ask yourself whether they'd want to read it: is the structure clear and logical? Is it written literately? Would you like it passed around the office for the admiration (or scorn) of your marker's colleagues? Does your opening paragraph grab my attention, or is it a mimsy bit of cliche-ridden tedium? Right from the start, tell me what you're doing, how you're doing it and why you're doing it like that. Then do it. I mark well-written essays really quickly because I can get straight to the ideas. If I have to decode every sentence, then marking becomes a test of attrition in which there's only one loser: you.
Every teacher's inspiration - Severus Snape
Imagine having to read this piece of work out in front of me. Would you do it, or would you like to shrivel up into an atom? If the latter, rewrite it.
10. Mean it. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I'm always kinder to people who've wrestled with a topic and been defeated than those who've clearly breezed in and winged it on their wits. Talk to us well in advance, however scared or confident you are. Some of my favourite students have been people who got third-class degrees by the sweat of their brows, because they've been transformed: the eventual grade is nowhere near as important as the degree to which your understanding of and approach to the world has been changed.
11. Presentation: the academic requirements are about clarity. Use them. Think about physical things too: Comic Sans, for instance, just makes me
This isn't what I want.
Conversely, the students who get first-class degrees are the ones who are passionate - analytical skills alone won't get you there. I like people who argue, in class and on paper. Awkward people who've read around the subject and trip me up in the midst of my lecture are brilliant. Pour it all out on paper and take risks: you might go astray, but that's an educational experience in itself.
In summary: enthusiasm and dedication will get you there. We're here for you. The work is designed to help you. It shouldn't even be called work. The whole discourse and marking thing seems like a punishment process but it's disciplinary in a different sense: it's meant to help you grasp the requirements of the discipline. I want you to remain passionate or acquire passion, but along the way to abandon naivety in exchange for a more purposeful excitement. My boss has a good line about the importance of joining in seminar discussions rather than lounging silently at the back relying on other people to do the work: 'you don't get fit by going down to the gym and watching someone else's workout'.
13. If it seemed easy to you, check again. Could you have done better? Maybe you are on top of the whole thing - good for you. But too often uninformed essays are the most confident ones. If you haven't stretched your brain for this one, you've missed the point of the whole exercise.
I know that a lot of this is very naive. And that I'll think of other criteria at random points over the next few days - but I'd really like to hear from you. Is this stuff fair? Unfair? Helpful?
Monday, 14 May 2012
The marking playlist
A marking playlist isn't quite as simple as you might think. Anything too catchy is distracting. Anything too soporific means you may wake up face down on a pile of essays soaked in your own drool. Anything too upbeat may find you handing out the A-grades like O'Leary scattering LSD tabs at a happening. Conversely, play one too many requiem masses or blasts of Maxwell-Davies and you'll suddenly realise that you've failed every last mofo in the room. Then there's the vexed question of what your office colleagues can stand.
I've gone for a mixed bag today - a lot of the Leveson Inquiry which, while catchy, is a bit too distracting, given that I've exploded with cries of 'You LYING BASTARD' every few minutes. Well, it was Alastair Campbell, and I couldn't take his sanctimonious claim that his professional approach was to discuss only abstract philosophy with anyone who asked, while patting journalists' puppies and giving sweets to their children. Listening to him, you'd think he was an innocent abroad in a sea of vicious, slathering media attack dogs. I'm glad he was on our side(ish), but the idea that he wasn't part of the problem is laughable. He lied and lied and lied, and his pet hacks lapped it up because the stories he fed them were good copy and they had no time or inclination for actual journalism. He didn't start it. Nor did they. Neither of them wanted to end it. No doubt they all started with good intentions, but they all ended up selling the citizens down the river in pursuit of one more vote, one good headline, one quiet word.
Anyway, back to the playlist, which is what I started writing about in the first place only two paragraphs ago. Apart from Leveson, I played the new Nightingales album, No Love Lost. Horribly, I find myself in agreement with The Sun, which reviewed it a few days ago: it's seriously good (thankfully the hipsters' touchstone The Quietus loved it too. Unlike several previous Gales albums, it's got hooks, tunes and sounds like it was recorded on something more sophisticated than a taxi's CB radio. Obviously I wouldn't say anything if I hated it, given I share an office with the guitarist and am friends with them all, but it is a brilliant album and they're on tour now (in the words of Modern Toss: 'Alan, you bastard' - we're all marking essays). Is it any good for marking too? No. Too skronky, too many catchy hooks and arresting lyrical lines - it demanded my attention far too much.
The same goes for the new Richard Hawley album, Standing At The Sky's Edge. It's a departure from his previous alternative-crooner albums: louder, odder, darker but also folkier - everyone in pop has dusted down their Pentangle and Giltrap albums. Utterly brilliant, but won't fade into the background. This, I guess, is the mark of good music.
My default position for marking is the more contemplative end of classical: medieval and Renaissance choral music, or modern classical stuff. The same problem holds: you'd have thought that the abstract nature of Ligeti's 'The Viola In My Life' and similar pieces would be ideal, but with so few notes per minute, I find myself waiting eagerly for the next one, wondering what it's going to be - it too refuses to fade into the background.
Some stuff is now too familiar to surprise me though - all the Glass, Reich, Riley, Andriessen and Adams I've mainlined over the past twenty years no longer feels shocking, more warm and welcoming as the motorik grooves of the repetition beckon me in - very good for marking but it's sad to think that I'll never feel that thrill of a genre that felt so transgressive compared with the pretty stuff I grew up around.
I saw this performed live last year - one of the most sublime experiences of my life.
The older choral works are better: even if they're works of utter sublimity like the Gesualdo madrigals I bought the other day (actually, his music and his life were weirder than you might think), or Tallis at his best, the limpid, flowing lines and the language helps: I can follow the Latin if I try hard, but it's easy not to.
The other album I've been listening to today is Richard James's new one, Pictures in the Morning. I know this makes me sound old, but I remember when his first band, Gorkys Zygotic Mynci were teenage psychedelic punks, and now they're all making baroque folk-country loveliness. Only they could persuade me down the country route. Richard's new album isn't on Youtube, but here's one from his first album:
So now I've had a break from marking to write this, what shall I play until I get out of the office in a couple of hours? Easy: Slowdive.
I've gone for a mixed bag today - a lot of the Leveson Inquiry which, while catchy, is a bit too distracting, given that I've exploded with cries of 'You LYING BASTARD' every few minutes. Well, it was Alastair Campbell, and I couldn't take his sanctimonious claim that his professional approach was to discuss only abstract philosophy with anyone who asked, while patting journalists' puppies and giving sweets to their children. Listening to him, you'd think he was an innocent abroad in a sea of vicious, slathering media attack dogs. I'm glad he was on our side(ish), but the idea that he wasn't part of the problem is laughable. He lied and lied and lied, and his pet hacks lapped it up because the stories he fed them were good copy and they had no time or inclination for actual journalism. He didn't start it. Nor did they. Neither of them wanted to end it. No doubt they all started with good intentions, but they all ended up selling the citizens down the river in pursuit of one more vote, one good headline, one quiet word.
Anyway, back to the playlist, which is what I started writing about in the first place only two paragraphs ago. Apart from Leveson, I played the new Nightingales album, No Love Lost. Horribly, I find myself in agreement with The Sun, which reviewed it a few days ago: it's seriously good (thankfully the hipsters' touchstone The Quietus loved it too. Unlike several previous Gales albums, it's got hooks, tunes and sounds like it was recorded on something more sophisticated than a taxi's CB radio. Obviously I wouldn't say anything if I hated it, given I share an office with the guitarist and am friends with them all, but it is a brilliant album and they're on tour now (in the words of Modern Toss: 'Alan, you bastard' - we're all marking essays). Is it any good for marking too? No. Too skronky, too many catchy hooks and arresting lyrical lines - it demanded my attention far too much.
The same goes for the new Richard Hawley album, Standing At The Sky's Edge. It's a departure from his previous alternative-crooner albums: louder, odder, darker but also folkier - everyone in pop has dusted down their Pentangle and Giltrap albums. Utterly brilliant, but won't fade into the background. This, I guess, is the mark of good music.
My default position for marking is the more contemplative end of classical: medieval and Renaissance choral music, or modern classical stuff. The same problem holds: you'd have thought that the abstract nature of Ligeti's 'The Viola In My Life' and similar pieces would be ideal, but with so few notes per minute, I find myself waiting eagerly for the next one, wondering what it's going to be - it too refuses to fade into the background.
Some stuff is now too familiar to surprise me though - all the Glass, Reich, Riley, Andriessen and Adams I've mainlined over the past twenty years no longer feels shocking, more warm and welcoming as the motorik grooves of the repetition beckon me in - very good for marking but it's sad to think that I'll never feel that thrill of a genre that felt so transgressive compared with the pretty stuff I grew up around.
I saw this performed live last year - one of the most sublime experiences of my life.
The older choral works are better: even if they're works of utter sublimity like the Gesualdo madrigals I bought the other day (actually, his music and his life were weirder than you might think), or Tallis at his best, the limpid, flowing lines and the language helps: I can follow the Latin if I try hard, but it's easy not to.
The other album I've been listening to today is Richard James's new one, Pictures in the Morning. I know this makes me sound old, but I remember when his first band, Gorkys Zygotic Mynci were teenage psychedelic punks, and now they're all making baroque folk-country loveliness. Only they could persuade me down the country route. Richard's new album isn't on Youtube, but here's one from his first album:
So now I've had a break from marking to write this, what shall I play until I get out of the office in a couple of hours? Easy: Slowdive.
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Reading matter…
A big pile of books in today:
Tanith Carey's Never Kiss A Man In A Canoe: Words of Wisdom from the Golden Age of Agony Aunts.
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (old, but good. I must have loaned my copy to some thieving hound)
Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire
Dillard, Star Trek: First Contact (your opinion on this is a matter of supreme indifference to me)
Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire and Marriage in Victorian England. I was reading round the subject of women's magazines last week, and this caught my eye.
Unfortunately, I have this lot to read - and then more due in - before I can touch any of these. Dissertations… shudder.
Tanith Carey's Never Kiss A Man In A Canoe: Words of Wisdom from the Golden Age of Agony Aunts.
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (old, but good. I must have loaned my copy to some thieving hound)
Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire
Dillard, Star Trek: First Contact (your opinion on this is a matter of supreme indifference to me)
Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire and Marriage in Victorian England. I was reading round the subject of women's magazines last week, and this caught my eye.
Unfortunately, I have this lot to read - and then more due in - before I can touch any of these. Dissertations… shudder.
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Let it snow, let it snow
I'm a happy Vole now the wind's howling and the rain's falling. A good dump of lovely snow over the benighted Dark Place would be wonderful. What could be more seasonal than eating Easter eggs in front of a roaring fire? If we live that long, of course: the Daily Express thinks that we're all going to die from 'extreme' weather this week, despite devoting most of its pages to Was Princess Diana Murdered Before She Exposed Global Warming As Hoax?' stories.
Anyway, I appear to have found myself in quite a good mood. Despite being tortured in the quiet coach by a chap who put headphones on then proceeded to play Heart FM (imagine Céline Dion's lovemaking mix tape) on the his phone's speaker, I've regained my natural bonhomie. Mostly as the result of writing a 3000 word stinking review of the worst book I've ever read, Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society. I know that I mocked P D James's inept and weird Death Comes To Pemberley last week but she didn't say things like American liberals have 'very similar goals' to 'people whom the left repudiates and anathematizes, such as Fascists in general and Nazis in particular'. He says this shortly after claiming that lefties are rude arrogant and vicious, while those on the right are polite and measured. Apparently liberals and Nazis are the same because they both wanted a minimum wage, state old-age care and regulated markets. So when the Lib Dems start building gas ovens, don't say you weren't warned.
Anyway, enough of this nonsense. I spent lunchtime discussing Baudrillard and spree-killing over vegetable samosas, and now it's time to read draft dissertation chapters by my final-year students. If you're reading, tutees, keep banging the rocks together.
Obviously for this kind of task, I'll need some soothing music to reduce the blood pressure. Here's some Trespassers William doing one of my favourite Ride tracks.
Which obviously leads me to Ride themselves - one of the wonderful bands killed off by Britpop. Most of the bands then only had one syllable. Pulp, Blur, Lush… Anyway, Ride were kings of Shoegaze, now happily revived for a new generation. Play these. They're ace.
Anyway, I appear to have found myself in quite a good mood. Despite being tortured in the quiet coach by a chap who put headphones on then proceeded to play Heart FM (imagine Céline Dion's lovemaking mix tape) on the his phone's speaker, I've regained my natural bonhomie. Mostly as the result of writing a 3000 word stinking review of the worst book I've ever read, Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society. I know that I mocked P D James's inept and weird Death Comes To Pemberley last week but she didn't say things like American liberals have 'very similar goals' to 'people whom the left repudiates and anathematizes, such as Fascists in general and Nazis in particular'. He says this shortly after claiming that lefties are rude arrogant and vicious, while those on the right are polite and measured. Apparently liberals and Nazis are the same because they both wanted a minimum wage, state old-age care and regulated markets. So when the Lib Dems start building gas ovens, don't say you weren't warned.
Anyway, enough of this nonsense. I spent lunchtime discussing Baudrillard and spree-killing over vegetable samosas, and now it's time to read draft dissertation chapters by my final-year students. If you're reading, tutees, keep banging the rocks together.
Obviously for this kind of task, I'll need some soothing music to reduce the blood pressure. Here's some Trespassers William doing one of my favourite Ride tracks.
Which obviously leads me to Ride themselves - one of the wonderful bands killed off by Britpop. Most of the bands then only had one syllable. Pulp, Blur, Lush… Anyway, Ride were kings of Shoegaze, now happily revived for a new generation. Play these. They're ace.
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Bah…
Teaching from 11-4 without a break today - exciting but very wearing, and I'll miss my daily hit of the Leveson Inquiry. Nothing will top yesterday's blustering, dishonest, pompous and arrogant appearance by the Daily Mail's editor Paul Dacre (virtually none of which makes it into his paper's account of the hero's singlehanded salvation of the newspaper industry), but the whole thing is a wonderful, tawdry exposure of the vainglories and pettiness of a trade rotten to the core.
What's on my agenda today? A 2 hour lecture on Derrida to media students, which I fully expect will go down like a bucket of cold sick, followed by three hours on Propp's Morphology of the Folktale applied to Joanna Davies' Freshers/Ffreshars. There's nothing like a dose of structuralism to make first-year students feel confident of their analytical abilities.
Meanwhile, I've found a new phrase to add to my marking repertoire. Given the fractured syntax and tangential logic, I'm convinced that many of them are in fact generated by automated systems. 'Are you a spambot?' will do nicely. The similarities are too strong to be coincidental.
What's on my agenda today? A 2 hour lecture on Derrida to media students, which I fully expect will go down like a bucket of cold sick, followed by three hours on Propp's Morphology of the Folktale applied to Joanna Davies' Freshers/Ffreshars. There's nothing like a dose of structuralism to make first-year students feel confident of their analytical abilities.
Meanwhile, I've found a new phrase to add to my marking repertoire. Given the fractured syntax and tangential logic, I'm convinced that many of them are in fact generated by automated systems. 'Are you a spambot?' will do nicely. The similarities are too strong to be coincidental.
Monday, 30 January 2012
We know where you live
Here's an interesting piece for you students and academics:
On the other hand - shouldn't the student get a grade? What happens when I have two essays written in poor English and fail them both, not realising that one is by a dyslexic student? Should the direct entrant from another country get some extra credit for catching up so quickly, and in a second language? Should I not mark according to my knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of individuals? Why should a student who disrupts classes or doesn't bother to prepare get the same consideration as one who works hard but struggles? The balance is between the academic standards of the institution and the good of the student - and it's difficult. Anonymous marking assumes that individuality is a negative - I'm not so sure.
Then the administrators changed the form - without consulting any academics - so that students' names are fully visible on the essay coversheet and marking sheeting. Voila: goodbye anonymous marking, whether we like it or not.
Anonymous marking is also - as the article suggests - a tacit assumption that academics are bigoted and biased. I should be trusted not to mark down women, or black students, or a student with whom I have political differences. If I can't be trusted to do this, I shouldn't be in the job. The point of marking isn't to play 'gotcha': it's like being a doctor diagnosing a patient. We're here to help rather than judge. It's a long time since people wrote things like 'This is a disgrace: you should leave the university immediately' (true story). If we're open to students about what we're looking for, we shouldn't need anonymous marking (though given the sizes of our classes these days, an awful lot of marking is essentially anonymous because we don't know most of the students' names, which is awful).
Maybe there is a problem which needs the heavy hand of anonymity though - I haven't the resources to analyse all my marking over the years to see whether I've been biased in some way. What's your experience?
And how do you feel about this marking system?
With the best of intentions and the worst of outcomes, anonymous marking discredits lecturers and serves students badly.We used to do anonymous marking here. The idea was that it would lead to personality-blind results: no favouritism, no revenge on those who never turn up or ruin classes, no racism, sexism etc. I can see the point: it treats every student equally, wherever they're from and whatever they're like. The work gets a grade, not the student.
On the other hand - shouldn't the student get a grade? What happens when I have two essays written in poor English and fail them both, not realising that one is by a dyslexic student? Should the direct entrant from another country get some extra credit for catching up so quickly, and in a second language? Should I not mark according to my knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of individuals? Why should a student who disrupts classes or doesn't bother to prepare get the same consideration as one who works hard but struggles? The balance is between the academic standards of the institution and the good of the student - and it's difficult. Anonymous marking assumes that individuality is a negative - I'm not so sure.
Then the administrators changed the form - without consulting any academics - so that students' names are fully visible on the essay coversheet and marking sheeting. Voila: goodbye anonymous marking, whether we like it or not.
Anonymous marking is also - as the article suggests - a tacit assumption that academics are bigoted and biased. I should be trusted not to mark down women, or black students, or a student with whom I have political differences. If I can't be trusted to do this, I shouldn't be in the job. The point of marking isn't to play 'gotcha': it's like being a doctor diagnosing a patient. We're here to help rather than judge. It's a long time since people wrote things like 'This is a disgrace: you should leave the university immediately' (true story). If we're open to students about what we're looking for, we shouldn't need anonymous marking (though given the sizes of our classes these days, an awful lot of marking is essentially anonymous because we don't know most of the students' names, which is awful).
Maybe there is a problem which needs the heavy hand of anonymity though - I haven't the resources to analyse all my marking over the years to see whether I've been biased in some way. What's your experience?
And how do you feel about this marking system?
On the last course I taught there were no complaints about my marking, even though none of it was anonymous. I returned essays with an evaluation of how students had performed against each assessment criterion, but without telling them the mark (it is well known that if you give a mark, most students will read the mark but will pay less attention to the comments). I then asked them to come and see me for a brief one-to-one tutorial, and tell me what mark they thought they had got and why. I was impressed by the accuracy of their guesses, and on the rare occasions when there was a serious discrepancy, we had a useful discussion about how the essay did or did not conform to the criteria - occasionally resulting in my revising the mark upwards.
My solution would be to follow the lead of Alverno College in the US and abandon grades altogether. This would release assessors from the absurdity of trying to distil complex qualitative judgements about a student's performance over a range of incommensurable assessment criteria into a single numerical grade. It would also wean students off their current obsession with grades, encouraging them to focus instead on developing the diverse range of skills a university education fosters.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
It's marking day…
OK. I'm wearing my new (old) Curve t-shirt to remind me of when I was young and hopeful. Music is playing (Sugar, Copper Blue) and the beta-blockers are at hand. All that's needed now is some inspiration.
And here it is:
And here it is:
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Marking Music solved
OK, Seefeel were quite a good suggestion (thanks Dan) and I'll check out everbody else's suggestions soon. But most of all, I've been listening to Kings of Convenience and Cara Dillon: soothing after a day's infuriation…
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
A good morning's work
Well, I'm back at work less than ten hours after I left the office last night. I've already managed to send an e-mail with:
to 400 people, so I'm not in the clearest frame of mind.
Still, only 200 essays and several complicated online fora to mark by Thursday. At least the next essay in the pile is by someone I know will have good things to say. We're meant to have anonymous marking for very good reasons, but the administration people have deliberately and arbitrarily abandoned that without consulting the students or the staff. So if you have pissed me off, I'll try my very best not to hold it against you, but I can't answer for my subconscious. Sue the university, not me.
- the wrong date
- a broken link
to 400 people, so I'm not in the clearest frame of mind.
Still, only 200 essays and several complicated online fora to mark by Thursday. At least the next essay in the pile is by someone I know will have good things to say. We're meant to have anonymous marking for very good reasons, but the administration people have deliberately and arbitrarily abandoned that without consulting the students or the staff. So if you have pissed me off, I'll try my very best not to hold it against you, but I can't answer for my subconscious. Sue the university, not me.
Friday, 20 May 2011
From Misery to Absurdity
I am, as you may know, knee deep in essay and dissertation marking. As always, work goes from the absurd to the wonderful (though nobody has approached the Olympian heights of Ed's dissertation).
One of the worst aspects is marking poor work by people you either personally like, or whom you respect for their abilities. I have infinite patience for people who work hard but still struggle, and none for the lazy or dishonest. But it's emotionally draining to mark down or fail people when you know they've worked seriously hard. Responsibility is an issue, especially with dissertation supervision. If the piece has failed, isn't this an indictment of my supervision?
They say at PhD level that a supervisor shouldn't allow a potential failure to be examined: if they tell you to send it off, it's probably OK. Does this apply at undergraduate level? Of course, some people haven't bothered attending much supervision. Others have turned up to chat about ideas but not provided written material for discussion. Yet others present work you know is weak and all you can do is cajole them into the right frame of mind.
Anyway, light relief tonight: I've got a free ticket to see Karl Spain, a comedian who is supporting Ed Byrne in town tonight. He'd better be funny: I'll be sitting next to his cousin…
One of the worst aspects is marking poor work by people you either personally like, or whom you respect for their abilities. I have infinite patience for people who work hard but still struggle, and none for the lazy or dishonest. But it's emotionally draining to mark down or fail people when you know they've worked seriously hard. Responsibility is an issue, especially with dissertation supervision. If the piece has failed, isn't this an indictment of my supervision?
They say at PhD level that a supervisor shouldn't allow a potential failure to be examined: if they tell you to send it off, it's probably OK. Does this apply at undergraduate level? Of course, some people haven't bothered attending much supervision. Others have turned up to chat about ideas but not provided written material for discussion. Yet others present work you know is weak and all you can do is cajole them into the right frame of mind.
Anyway, light relief tonight: I've got a free ticket to see Karl Spain, a comedian who is supporting Ed Byrne in town tonight. He'd better be funny: I'll be sitting next to his cousin…
Monday, 18 April 2011
Who's been a naughty boy then?
Today's task is marking resit essays - fresh attempts by those who've fallen short, or tried to cheat. I'm particularly looking forward to marking the one by a chap who came to one class, handed in an essay which didn't mention either of the two philosophers (Kant and Mill) who formed the core of the module, then claimed he'd been there the whole time. I hope today doesn't turn into an extended episode of Plagiarist Patrol ('When a footnote's wrong/And there's a suspicious pong/Who ya gonna call?/Cheat Busters!')
Sigh…
Sigh…
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