Thursday 31st January 2013 - Borderline marks

I had 38 students in my final year option module this semester.  I finished marking their exam scripts (for two thirds of the marks - one third come from an essay submitted in November) on Sunday afternoon.  A colleague then took a sample of the scripts and second marked them, giving me them back yesterday and we had a discussion about overall standards (he agreed the marks for the scripts he had sampled).

But now that the exams secretary in my department has put the exam marks together with the essay marks I find that a number of students have ended up with a '9' mark - 69, 59 etc.

Given the UK classification system, and the way in which we decide degree classes in Sheffield, '9' marks are problematic.  We could leave these as marks indicating a student performance that is genuinely on the cusp between two degree classes.  But in my time as Pro-Vice-Chancellor I have had cases brought to me for final appeal where a student has ended up with a whole series of '9' marks for individual modules and no concerted discsusion has ever been had - by individual markers or by an exam board - as to whether a much clearer decision could be made, putting the student firmly into one class or another.  I remember one case where almost every module taken by the student in their second and third year had ended with a '9' mark, and where tipping only a couple of those over to the next class would have made a difference to the student's degree class. Equally, moving a couple of marks down would have provided clarity that this student was at the top end of the lower group.  But the student was left with the impression that everything had been done mechanistically and that there had been no discussion of his or her true merits to come to a sound judgement on overall standard.  There was nothing wrong in regulations with what the department was doing (or not doing).  But I suggested to them that they might change their procedures to give full consideration to candidates with such borderline performance - and that ultimately they should come up with a reasoned judgement for their final degree class recommendation rather than relying on a defence that 'that's what the numbers came out to.' 

So tomorrow I will be taking all the students on my final year module whose prima facie outcome is a '9' mark and I will be looking again at the marking of all three components of their assessment.  If they have got two Upper Second marks and one Lower Second, is that Lower Second of such a standard that it should not be compensated by the weight of Upper Second work?  Has my judgement that an exam essay be given a mark of 78 been too generous against two solid performances in the Upper Seconds that have put the stduent overall on 69?  After all, I am not certain that in a blind test I would assign the same mark in the 70s to a single essay if presented to me several times over an extended period.

Overall my view is that we owe it to our students to give them definite outcomes whenever we can - both at module and at degree level.  There will be genuine cases that we leave on the border, but we should have given serious consideration as to why they are there.  With a bit of reflection we can place most students very definitely.

But something else I have been doing this week is having discussions with colleageus elsewhere about the introduction of Grade Point Averages.  Now that would have a different set of issues ...

Tuesday 29th January 2013 - The increasingly monolingual (English-speaking) university

Let me say loud and clear at the outset that I know times have changed.  I know that the linguistic skills of students are today, on average, less than in the past.  When I applied to go to university part of my interview at Exeter University (for Geography, note) was conducted in German. I had no knowledge that this was going to be the case until the day itself.  Being the last candidate to be interviewed (the dreaded alphabetism affecting those with surnames like mine), I found the interviewers delighted to quiz me in German because, as they told me, all the other candidates that afternoon had selected French.  I actually went to Oxford instead, but there we were all faced with a translation paper involving geographical texts in either French, German or Russian.  My reading list contained books in both French and German, and I remember reading a French text on physical geography, and even quoting from a German text (Ratzel, on organic views of nation-state growth) in my finals exams.  The library (and I am talking about the departmental library, not the Bodleian) contained books and journals in many languages.    I will also point out that I am not and never have been a natural linguist: I failed my German O level the first time round and although I passed French it was with a grade only marginally above a fail.  It was just that it was expected that a student studying a humanities or social science subject at that time would be able to read material drawn from perspectives other than that of the English-speaking world. (Science also used to require linguistic abilities: I have a nephew who had to take a German exam as part of his PhD in Chemical Physics at Edinburgh - and that's only 20 years ago.)

The academic language on the international stage has now become English.  Bibliographic databases and search engines prioritise English-language materials.  Google scholar rarely comes up with anything in another language.  Of great importance is the fact that the 'big deals' on journals only include English-language publications.  An outcome of this is that if I go to a university library in the UK now I find it virtually impossible to find any foreign language books on the shelves (except for language and literature students); where there were once foreign language periodicals, they have all now gone.

It is ture that in some ways there is now better access to foreign language materials than in the past - most especially through the internet.  Yet I find that few third year students realise that they can switch Google search into any number of other languages simply by replacing .co.uk with .de (German), .it (italian), .fr (French) and so on.  And they can put material found on foreign web sites through Google translate - which improves year by year.  We can get foreign language stuff on our smartphones - I have the apps for both Le Monde (French newspaper) and La Repubblica (Italy) on my iPhone and can scan those papers over breakfast for free (for the moment - I used to get Suddeutsche Zeitung until they restricted it to subscriptions only).  But none of this is represented in university libraries or standard information sources.

I think this is a shame for a number of reasons. I will give some of them via examples:
1. As an international university we welcome students from around the world.  Yet they cannot find any familiar materials to support their learning here.  A Chinese engineering student who wants to revise her or his understanding of a basic concept cannot do it through the language where they first learned it. It is as if all the prior learning, and the sound textbooks they learned from, have to be put on one side when they arrive here.
2. A visiting student who wants to write a project comparing a social situation in their home country with a similar situation in the UK can not get key materials on their homeland unless they have been translated into English and published by an English-language publisher.
3. Researchers are largely confined to interpretations from the English-speaking world.  Valid viewpoints from other language communities are much harder to access.
4. All students get the impression that it is only English that matters.  It is a form of cultural supremacism.

Whilst I lament these things I am pragmatic enough to recognise that relatively few English students today are competent in foreign languages (although I was delighted this semester when two of my students did a little project on the reporting of racism in Spanish newspapers).   Probably relatively few UK national staff have such competence, although the rapidly increasing numbers of staff recruited from elsewhere alomst certainly includes a high proportion of bilinguals.  And with the dominance of English language materials, the reduiction in student linguistic competence,  and tight squeezes on library budgets, it is completely understandable where the priorities lie for content purchase and journal subscriptions.

I suspect Sheffield is no different from the vast majority of UK universities in this respect. I am not 'having a go' at our library.  But I do wonder whether there might be scope for the librarians and information scientists of this country to come up with a strategy to ensure that international universities like ours can, in future, make more accessible the academic, cultural and other productions of language communities other than English.    

Friday 18th January 2013 - Taking the bigger view in public lectures

Singers and other musicians have a repertoire which they repeat in different places to different audiences. Lecturers can do the same.

This morning I gave a lecture to a Univerity of the Third Age (U3A) group here in Sheffield.   It is a lecture that I have been giving in one form or another for about 10 years now.  I have given it to schoolchildren, to local community organisations, to international audiences of strategic leaders, and to senior officials in the UK government.  The theme is global population change, and my aim in the lecture is to dispel some commonly-held myths about the dangers of global overpopulation by telling the story of the decline in family sizes almost everywhere around the world since the late 1960s.  It also goes on to look at some of the implications of these changes for issues such as future labour supply, demographic ageing, and future world economic development.  The lecture is changed every time I give it, of course. There is always a new set of demographic statistcis tot ake into account, and I also adjust the content to match the likely concerns of the audience.  The basic argument has remained largely unchanged, but the details, the examples and the material on consequences have all evolved over the years.

Those who know my recent research interests will know that this topic is not something I have been actively working on. Indeed, there is virtually no working academic writing on large-scale population change.  Although it is a vital topic, there is little mileage in it from the perspective of research funding, or publication in a major journal.  What policy implications are likely to come from it?  What impact will the research have?  It is not, therefore, a topic that lends itself to a good REF return.  It is the sort of topic that would require a whole book to do it justice, and a lot of the material would be empirical rather than highly analytical and theoretical.  Yet the public at large outside academia is keen to hear us on such major issues.  It is a shame that it falls largely to senior academic figures to provide these discussions in public lectures, rather than younger colleagues who might find innovative ways of conceptualising the issues.

My oft-repeated but constantly evolving talk on global population change is based on the fact that I have in the past served as both the secretary and the chair of the Population Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society.  In those capacities I, in the past, learned much from the work of colleageus working in other countries on their own local population issues and from them I also learned how to find my way around national and international data sources.  But I do worry that younger colleagues are not encouraged by today's system to develop these interests.  However, as long as they don't do so I can still take my lecture on tour.

Wednesday 16th January 2013 - Dealing with bad weather

The coincidence of semester 1 exams and bad weather always has the prospect of causing problems.  Last weekend we had a series of colleagues on call for key decision making if the forecast snow on Sunday created transport difficulties for the following day.  There are a number of dimensions to what might happen. 
1. Snowy or icy conditions across the campus might make walking dangerous.  That can be dealt with by our facilities management team, and indeed they have done an excellent job this week of keeping all footpaths clear of ice.
2. Staff may not be able to get in to act as invigilators.
3. Students may not be able to get in to take their exams.
In reality issue 2 is likely to be a greater problem than issue 3.  Although I don't have firm data on this, I would be pretty certain that the average student journey-to-exam distance is much much shorter than the average staff journey-to-exam.  That will be particularly so for first year students who predominantly live in the student residences.  However, we also have to bear in mind the commuter students who live within the wider Sheffield region and whose journeys could be disrupted.
4. Where we are holding exams off-site (particularly at the Sheffield Wednesday ground) disruption to the tram, caused by snow or ice, would create very great difficulties for everyone trying to get there.

A couple of years ago we agreed on a firm mechanism for making any decision about whether or not to close the university (and thus postpone exams) in the case of bad weather.  Corporate Information and Computer Services receive a specific forecast from the Met Office.  That is circulated to relevant individuals.  With a forecast of weather that could cause difficulties, or if the bad weather is actually with us, the Director of CiCS, the Registrar and me hold a twice daily phone conference (or physically meet up) to make a decision.  We make a decision at 0600 about morning opening, and by 1200 about afternoon opening.  The decision is publicised on the 'snow page' on the web, and can be highlighted on the home page.  If necessary we can send an e-mail message, or even a text, to students to tell them what is happening.  The Faculty Directors of Learning and Teaching have agreed that if a department wishes to make a decision to close that is not in accordance with the university's overall decision then they must make it clear to their own students that this is only a 'local' action.  Two years ago the Institute of Lifelong Learning (TILL) had a message broadcast on Radio Sheffield to say that their evening classes would not go ahead, but it was not clear that this only applied to TILL and did not apply to all other teaching in the University.

So far this year, despite the forecast over the weekend, we have not had to make any decisions on closure.  And one good thing about that is that I have been spared the 0600 phone round with senior colleagues!  But we are gearing up for the possibility of action this weekend, with snow forecast once again.  The head of the exams team and I have already been in contact about specific issues relating to this weekend's scheduling.  Normally we only pray for rain when there is drought: at the moment it seems appropriate to pray for rain instead of snow. .  

Friday 4th January 2013 - Cuts in Southern European universities

Over the years I have done a lot of work, and made a  lot of contacts, in Southern Europe.  I have had spells as visiting professor in Cagliari (Italy) and Zaragoza (Spain) and I have lectured at a number of other Southern European universities, including the Autonoma in Barcelona and the Sapienza in Rome.  I have been adviser to research bodies and to particular projects in Portugal and have connections with a number of universities in that country.

The university world of Southern Europe, both for staff and for students, is often a difficult one.  With no cap on entry numbers, class sizes are often very large indeed; personal contact and support from lecturer to student is virtually non-existent until late in the course; dissertation supervision is sometiems capriciously allocated; and (at least in Italy) the examination system and marking regime, based almost entirely on oral exams, leaves a lot to be desired - not least in terms of student anonymity.  The blame for many of these problems lies with university administrations, and with central governments that are unwilling to tackle abuses of systems since if the dominance of patronage were to be reduced the necessary consequence would need to be an increase in resource.

While the undergraduate experience suffers, the work of research institutes and researchers is often outstanding.  Such institutes are more often somewhat apart from the politics of the main university, and secure their funding direct from government or from foundations.

Today I had a seasonal e-mail exchange with a Portuguese colleague.  She and I share an interest in immigrant settlement in Europe, and we have won research money together in the past.  She works for the Portuguese Open University, but is also head of the migration research centre there - an important team that undertakes work of national and international importance.  We have published together - anyone particularly interested in an interpretation of the contrasting trajectories of thinking on post-colonial citizenship in Portugal and the UK can go to the article below if they are really keen - published (in English) in the major Portuguese journal of migration studies.  For those who want a one sentence synopsis: we suggest that in the UK there was initially considerable openness to citizenship for those who had migrated from the ex-colonies, but that this has progressively been tightened up - whilst in Portugal the opposite has been the case, with accession to citizenship for those from the ex-colonies now being much easier than in the days immediately after decolonisation and independence.

http://www.oi.acidi.gov.pt/docs/Revista_4/Migr4_Art2.pdf
In today's e-mail exchange my colleague reported that the financial cuts in Portugal have resulted in a 35% reduction in all academics' salaries over the past year; that research money is now almost impossible to obtain; and that the whole situation in the university world is bleak. Her son should graduate this year in Economics with little propsect of a job for him in Portugal.  Fortunately he is fluent in English since he was partly brought up in Canada while his mother was at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver: he can look elsewhere. 

I know this Portuguese story is repeated elsewhere in Southern Europe - or will be very soon.  Conditions in Southern European universities will deteriorate, staff will flee if they can, and graduates will look elsewhere.  The individual tragedies add up to a real set-back for higher education, and the wider economy, in countries where the need for research and for skilled graduates is immense.  I do my fair share of grumbling about aspects of educational and higher educational policy in the UK, but we are extremely lucky in comparison with some other places.