Degree classifications: take 2

All this post-Burgess, league tables era discussion of degree classifications and grade inflation is shifting my viewpoint: The Burgess report pretty-much suggests we do away with the 1st/2:1/2:2/3rd/unclassified degree class system & replace it with a transcript ... when I first read about it, I was annoyed: I like the idea of a 1st etc (it's what I'm used to). However, a natural institutional response to all this measuring/league-tabling/student-satisfaction-scoring malarkey is to fiddle things (that's easier than fixing things!) and the emails from MMU, the discussion on the Beeb and stuff that's happening internally here are devaluing the classification system so that it's not fit for purpose any more. How will an employer treat a 1st in Maths from MMU, Nottingham Trent, Oxford Brookes and Thames Valley? By giving it partial credence as a primary filter and then concentrating on the real evidence: Grades, references and interviews. So for future students it's even more important to get a good profile (as well as a "good" degree). I suspect it's all a subtle plan to make 1st/2:1/… meaningless so that it dies a natural death, and that would be closing a chapter in UK HE history :-(

Degree classifications

The BBC article is based on a leaked email from Manchester Metropolitan University quoting an email from their Maths & Computing dept's "academic standards manager" not-so-subtly hinting that a failure to award as many 1st/2:1 degrees as other Universities is a bad thing. I disagree that it's necessarily bad to have some institutions with a smaller rate of 1st/2:1 (variability is natural) and I am wholeheartedly against the implied hint to "drop your standards, the institution needs better statistics". Professional University staff work hard to (a) maintain standards (internally) and (b) maintain comparable standards (with the help of external examiners etc.) and we should continue to do-so.

I and my colleagues are under the same pressure: The institution where I work also awards fewer 1st/2:1 than the sector average. So what? It's a meaningless statistic! What about intake? Compare like with like! Where I work we're proud of the fact that we take students with lower A-level grades than at some other places and give 1st/2:1 degrees to a good proportion of those who make it to final year ... we add value, they work hard to reach the standard. I say to students: Keep it up! And to staff: Resist grade deflation!

Student threats

I've never had abusive threats from a student, but I know people who have ... shocking state of affairs.

IE8

OK, so I missed the initial IE8 furore, have now caught-up with a few views and here's my tuppence:

• A proprietary <meta> tag to say "Use IE6/7/8/… rendering mode" is an olive branch to the web design community (it says "Hey, you don't have to redo the IE7-compatible layout right now but please do-so later, when you have time.")
• The IE7 default layout says "We're about to push IE7 through Windows Update to everyone and we know you've invested time/money/effort into getting those old IE6 sites working in IE7" now:

  Optimistic head?

  "We'd like to keep updating IE8 and beyond but just so's you don't have to everytime we do, get it working in IE7 and we'll guarantee that IE>7 won't break the site (unlike last time.)"

  Pessimistic head?

  "We'll pre-announce IE8 to make it look like we're committed now and in the future to improving IE's web standards support but by telling everyone that IE7 will be the future default we can happily let IE8+ languish if it looks like there's insufficient ROI to continue developing IE."

I'm happy to be optimistic and believe the IE development team guys will be allowed and willing to continue their efforts towards moving-target-standards-compliance, I just wouldn't be surprised if in the not-too-distant future IEx once again was left to moulder.

Head First JavaScript (O'Reilly)

Couldn't say it better than Web Teacher so I won't bother: Head First JavaScript by Michael Morrison (O’Reilly, 2008) may not ring up five stars for everyone, but I like the Head First books so much so that it'll be going on my "strongly recommended" (short) list of core texts for "Web Technologies" next year.

Marking n papers (for sufficiently large values of n)

:-) been there, done that!

(from http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=974)

Hallelujah

I'm totally with this RYS post:

Not all students act horribly...and it's those students I worry most about. When Paula Plagiarist gets a C because she whined to a faculty-hating administrator about her F, what does that do to Marvin Mediocre who actually earned his C by performing with a basic level of competency? When Big-Mouth Barry bombs a class, bitches his way through a grade grievance and is awarded a C just to go away, what does that do to Sally the C-Student, who had some health problems and earned a C because she came to the final exam with a sinus infection?

I love (platonically, you understand!) the student that works and deserves the grade they get, even if they're not the most academically gifted (there's a real thrill in working with the student who suddenly "gets it" after some hard graft). I do my damnedest, & consider it my job, to make sure that they all get the grade they deserve, including

• Whining William and his endless set of excuses,
• Cheating Charlene and her group of plagiarists who paid "some bloke off the internet" to do their project,
• Loophole Larry who thinks that exerting effort getting around the regulations is academically-equivalent to doing the work,
• Mike the Muppet whose idea of catching-up after a prolonged (genuine, mit. circ. style) absence is to copy a pile of work off the internet etc.

If you're not one of these (or those listed on RYS) then make sure you take advantage of the opportunities we try to provide -- I hope I'll never turn away a deserving student (not permanently, anyway: we are all busy people, after all...)

Bare-faced cheek

Today was final assessment day for this year's Web Technologies module: A Questionmark Perception test and short JavaScript assignment. Sadly the start to the test malfunctioned and I was forced to remove the Blackboard setting that restricted students to one attempt at the test. Happily Perception gives easy access to all attempts by every student (something Blackboard does not, easily anyway); unhappily, in hindsight, I should have restricted them to a few attempts rather than unlimited...

Amusingly, one student assumed I wouldn't check and he used this lapse to attempt the assessment over-and-over until his time ran out, utilising the fact that the assessment showed the marks to gain an unfair advantage. Happily I did check and so we'll be enacting the relevant part of the "Cheating in Assessment" regulations on his behalf. What a waste of time!!

And the bare faced cheek? He had the chutzpah to complain at the end of the test (before I'd discovered his perfidy) that he'd arrived late & unfairly lost time. This fell on my unsympathetic ears -- no good excuse => no extra time. Tough monkeys! But cheeky, nonetheless...

JavaScript tips

You know how occasionally you read a tip and have a "wow" or "lighbulb" moment? Well, this collection of seven JS techniques from Dustin Diaz contained six such events for me (seriously: I read them over several days and had a "ding!" moment from all six code tips -- nice!)

Possum Death Spree!

Sick but funny! Get ready for Possum Death Spree! ... I particularly liked the they've been frozen in the permafrost ... now global warming has set them free and:

Dying cop:

They killed the dinosaurs?

Handcuffed scientist-guy

No, they killed half the dinosaurs; they made the other half watch!