Marking spurt before the deadline

The dissertations have been submitted. And the last exam has been done. That means that marking time is now in full swing. And we always have a deadline, but at the end of the academic year we always have a more important one. At the end of the year, we have the exam board meetings where we discuss the students’ results, but that means the results have to be in. Normally, we have four weeks to mark anything; at the end of the year it can be less.

I started with the dissertations. First those of my own students; then the ones of the students for whom I am second marker. And then later, inevitably, some where the first and second marker didn't really agree, and a third was needed.

My exam work was very limited. I have three exams in the second semester; one is a first year exam which is an MCQ test and which get automatically marked by the software. And the other two have very small class sizes.

It was good, I suppose, that this was quite manageable; I would actually be in the Netherlands on the day of the deadline. So everything needed to have been marked before I would set off. That gave me less time than most.

There is also marking of essays of freshers and second year students, but for non-graduating students the deadline is later. We want to have the results done earlier for the students who should be graduating this summer.

Altogether the deadlines were tight, but the load was very manageable. Quite the opposite from the marking at the end of the first semester! This is nicer… 

A chinstrap penguin. They featured in one of the dissertations I marked. Pic by Andrew Shiva