Once upon a time, we had a PhD student called Tom, who also worked for a while as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) in our School. He left years ago. But suddenly his name popped up again. He had got in touch because he had a thought for some pedagogical research, and figured we might be willing to team up with him.
What was his idea? He had been wondering about full marks. Here in Britain, you mark out of 100. But what does it take for someone to award the full 100%? And the answer, of course, is "it depends". We have some physical oceanographers here, who sometimes set mathematical assignments, and if the mathematics are correct I assume they award full marks. It's a completely different kettle of fish with something like an essay.
There probably is more to it though. For instance, we have an American colleague, and she was wondering about how we mark. She said that Americans do have a habit of giving marks all the way up to 100%, while here, basically anything above 85% is unusual. So it was said that if you give a British student an 85%, they are crying with happiness, but an American student would be crying with disappointment. So there is more to it than just assessment type.
This guy, who now works for what I suppose I could explain to a British audience as the Dutch equivalent of a polytechnic in Frisia, had been wondering if there was any literature about this topic. And he found there wasn't. And that gave him the idea that someone should create it. And if not him, then who? But this didn’t sound like a one person job so he reached out to us.
We are now regularly meeting up (online) to discuss how we will go about this. It’s all still in an early phase. I hope we’ll pull this off! But at least it’s good to think about these things!
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