Marking and herding

The dissertation module always creates a lot of marking at the end of the academic year. The presentations are rather quickly got over with; most students just present live on the day, are marked there and then, and the various markers agree on a combined grade right after the session if they can. Some people have to leave right after their session, obviously, so some staff will have to communicate after the actual two days which the presentations are held in order to agree on a mark. And then, of course, they need to put these marks online; the marks as given by the individual markers so the external examiner can have a look at that, and the agreed mark somewhere where the students can see them as soon as the grades and feedback are released to them. And I am module organiser, and I have to make sure all of that happens. We have a deadline for this.

The same week we had the presentations was also the deadline for the submission of the actual dissertation theses. These are not marked instantly! And I suppose there is the risk that people get distracted by all the dissertation marking on them forget to put their presentation grades online. So I need to keep an eye on all of that. And do my own share of the marking. Ideally, all presentation grades would be logged in the very week the presentations are held, but that is clearly not the case. I just keep bugging people! I'm sure we'll manage by the deadline. Although I don't think we'll manage a long time before that…