Teacher's Thoughts

Double marking is a standard procedure when marking writing.  It should not be a box ticking exercise, but taken seriously as it is yet another chance to develop and improve our markng skills in addition to standardisaton meetings. Below are some observations and reflection on the topic from my own practice as a double marker. The buddy system Very often a seasoned tutor on the module is paired off with a less experienced tutor to help them gain an understanding of the criteria and common issues quicker. Thus your expertise is used to teach others - but what's in there for you? It is good to vary marking pairs and sometimes pair equal skill tutors so they can exchange expertise and learn from each other. They can even enrich each others repertoirs in terms of framing feedback to students. The timing issue The general guidance is to do the double marking in the beginning of the marking period so each marker would then moderate their own scirpts in relation to that. In practice this ...

A lot has been written and is flooding LinkedIn and other social media spaces regarding the use of AI in the higher education classroom. In this piece I will address some points including the harms it will inflict as well as point at some ways in which it has been pushed and accepted by those involved in HE teaching. In no way does this blog purport to be exhaustive on the topic. It is a result of my observations, reading and reflections on the issues discussed below. One reason (turned mantra if you ask me) frequently pointed out in favour of implementing AI in the curriculum is that "AI is the new normal" in the workplace. OK, but I am not preparing students for the workplace; I am preparing them for academic study requiring critical thinking, working with sources, building an informed argument when researching a topic and presenting their conclusions in a coherent way using appropriate language and style. If they can rely for all of that on AI, then AI will be doing it in ...