I've just attended what will probably be my last 'final exam board' for the award of degrees. I cast my mind back to the first I attended as a new lecturer.
Everything then was done by reading out the names of each student in turn. We weren't far in when a senior colleague responded to one name by calling out "fishwife". Whilst I was surprised, others were used to this: it apparently indicated that the senior colleague felt her standard of written English was somewhat below par. I'm not sure why fishwives were presumed to be particularly illiterate.
At that time a great deal of extraneous information was brought into discussion about candidates - not all of it relating to the marked assessments. Contributions to field classes (and not just academic contributions but also social) were mentioned, along with performances in the cabaret at the annual GeogSoc Ball.
I for one was very happy when, a few years ago, we moved to anonymising each candidate on the mark sheet for decisions. We had already, under successive chairs of boards, moved to tighten up the conduct of board discussions to concentrate on academic performance.
Another thing that happened in my early days was the selection of a small number of candidates for viva voce examinations. Some were chosen because they were on borderlines and we wanted the external examiners to give an assessment of them overall. Others were chosen because they were somewhere in the middle of a class and the belief was that seeing these individuals would give the externals an idea of 'level' from which to base their assessments of the borderlines. Vivas were a nightmare for the poor students (and I later discovered that they were an equal nightmare for the externals). But they could also be manifestly unfair: I remember when I was an exams officer objecting to the suggestion that a particular student who was well below any borderline should be given a viva - the staff member putting the individual forward for this role knew that she was so articulate in oral discussion that she would wow the external into recommending a class of degree that would mean she leapfrogged several others with much better marks.
When I became an external examiner I had to conduct vivas at two institutions. At one I was put in a small room with students for whom I had not been given any of their exam papers, and asked to chat to the individuals for 30 minutes and come up with a view. The other place where I had to conduct vivas was rather different - there were accusations of serious misconduct and the viva was effectively a court of law where two accused individuals, gowned up, had to appear in front of a set of 6 examiners with the two externals present asking the questions. Perhaps fortunately for all concerned, the students pleaded guilty to their misdemeanors on arrival (having earlier denied them) and we were all spared the task of cross-examination.
Vivas had no quality control mechanism built into them and great weight was put on the opinion of the external examiner from a brief conversation. I was pleased when we (and almost all other) universities got rid of them - although I can see their value in certain subjects such as Architecture where an examiner can converse with, and challenge, a student about their creative work.
Many of these old practices survived because we were operating solely with 'gut instincts'. What changed the nature of exam board decisions - and of the whole context of examining from both student and staff perspectives - was the creation of criteria to identify different levels of performance. I think this is the biggest single factor explaining the rise in the proportion of good class degrees in UK universities.
When I did my finals - a long time ago - I had no idea about what it was the examiners were looking for. All I had was the marks on weekly essays as a guide. I was awarded a First Class degree without fully comprehending what that meant I had done (other than get good marks). That year there were 4 Firsts awarded in my degree school: when I acted as external examiner in the same department many years later we were awarding perhaps 15 to a cohort of about the same size. David Willetts challenged me in a public forum a couple of years ago to admit that standards had slipped. My argument was that that had not happened - but that we had now made clear to students what it is that constitutes a First class, an Upper Second and so on. And students have responded to that by sharpening up their acts in an attempt to fulfill those criteria.
Finally we have also, as universities, tightened up our regulations on the award of degree classifications. We now have rules about what average marks or what distributions of performance lead to a particular degree class. The whole system is much more transparent.
So today I have sat through an exam board that lasted an hour, with no special pleading for individual students (whose names were not known). (I should add that medical cases and special circumstances had already been considered by a small group.) We did not have long discussions about conversations in vivas, or about the dress sense, dancing ability or general sportsmanship of individual students. We had clear recommendations from the application of a detailed set of rules (which I had helped to write when I was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor). There were more Firsts awarded than when I first arrived in the Department. But we had no calls of "fishwife".
There has been progress.
(It might have been expected that I would blog today about the Brexit vote. But I haven't yet gathered my thoughts fully about what that might mean. For an earlier view readers might like to consider my blog of 13 June.)
Everything then was done by reading out the names of each student in turn. We weren't far in when a senior colleague responded to one name by calling out "fishwife". Whilst I was surprised, others were used to this: it apparently indicated that the senior colleague felt her standard of written English was somewhat below par. I'm not sure why fishwives were presumed to be particularly illiterate.
At that time a great deal of extraneous information was brought into discussion about candidates - not all of it relating to the marked assessments. Contributions to field classes (and not just academic contributions but also social) were mentioned, along with performances in the cabaret at the annual GeogSoc Ball.
I for one was very happy when, a few years ago, we moved to anonymising each candidate on the mark sheet for decisions. We had already, under successive chairs of boards, moved to tighten up the conduct of board discussions to concentrate on academic performance.
Another thing that happened in my early days was the selection of a small number of candidates for viva voce examinations. Some were chosen because they were on borderlines and we wanted the external examiners to give an assessment of them overall. Others were chosen because they were somewhere in the middle of a class and the belief was that seeing these individuals would give the externals an idea of 'level' from which to base their assessments of the borderlines. Vivas were a nightmare for the poor students (and I later discovered that they were an equal nightmare for the externals). But they could also be manifestly unfair: I remember when I was an exams officer objecting to the suggestion that a particular student who was well below any borderline should be given a viva - the staff member putting the individual forward for this role knew that she was so articulate in oral discussion that she would wow the external into recommending a class of degree that would mean she leapfrogged several others with much better marks.
When I became an external examiner I had to conduct vivas at two institutions. At one I was put in a small room with students for whom I had not been given any of their exam papers, and asked to chat to the individuals for 30 minutes and come up with a view. The other place where I had to conduct vivas was rather different - there were accusations of serious misconduct and the viva was effectively a court of law where two accused individuals, gowned up, had to appear in front of a set of 6 examiners with the two externals present asking the questions. Perhaps fortunately for all concerned, the students pleaded guilty to their misdemeanors on arrival (having earlier denied them) and we were all spared the task of cross-examination.
Vivas had no quality control mechanism built into them and great weight was put on the opinion of the external examiner from a brief conversation. I was pleased when we (and almost all other) universities got rid of them - although I can see their value in certain subjects such as Architecture where an examiner can converse with, and challenge, a student about their creative work.
Many of these old practices survived because we were operating solely with 'gut instincts'. What changed the nature of exam board decisions - and of the whole context of examining from both student and staff perspectives - was the creation of criteria to identify different levels of performance. I think this is the biggest single factor explaining the rise in the proportion of good class degrees in UK universities.
When I did my finals - a long time ago - I had no idea about what it was the examiners were looking for. All I had was the marks on weekly essays as a guide. I was awarded a First Class degree without fully comprehending what that meant I had done (other than get good marks). That year there were 4 Firsts awarded in my degree school: when I acted as external examiner in the same department many years later we were awarding perhaps 15 to a cohort of about the same size. David Willetts challenged me in a public forum a couple of years ago to admit that standards had slipped. My argument was that that had not happened - but that we had now made clear to students what it is that constitutes a First class, an Upper Second and so on. And students have responded to that by sharpening up their acts in an attempt to fulfill those criteria.
Finally we have also, as universities, tightened up our regulations on the award of degree classifications. We now have rules about what average marks or what distributions of performance lead to a particular degree class. The whole system is much more transparent.
So today I have sat through an exam board that lasted an hour, with no special pleading for individual students (whose names were not known). (I should add that medical cases and special circumstances had already been considered by a small group.) We did not have long discussions about conversations in vivas, or about the dress sense, dancing ability or general sportsmanship of individual students. We had clear recommendations from the application of a detailed set of rules (which I had helped to write when I was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor). There were more Firsts awarded than when I first arrived in the Department. But we had no calls of "fishwife".
There has been progress.
(It might have been expected that I would blog today about the Brexit vote. But I haven't yet gathered my thoughts fully about what that might mean. For an earlier view readers might like to consider my blog of 13 June.)
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