The actual dissertation presentations

After a tiring day I got up to have another one. This one would be tiring in a different way. The first day of the dissertation presentations! I would have to be in the office quite early. They started at 9 am, and I hadn't been able to put all the paperwork in the rooms, as several of them had been in use for an open day over the weekend. So I needed to sort that out. And make sure the door of the building would open automatically. And see if there was anything wrong.

Putting the paperwork in the rooms (and putting the room numbers on the doors) went fine. And while doing that, I bumped into one of the technicians who sorted out the front door for me. But then the first problem arrived! There was a technical problem in one of the rooms. The staff member in that room managed to circumvent it by using her laptop, but that wasn't ideal. So I got on the phone to the main campus. And they would send a technician. 

Room number! 

There was another problem; one of the staff mailed that he was ill, and couldn't come. Could someone step in? Luckily, one of my other colleagues immediately realised that there was one session with three members of staff, so we could transplant one of them. That went well! 

I also had to finish putting all the student presentations in dedicated session folders, and finalising the abstract booklets for the next day. And I obviously had quite a lot of student enquiries to answer! And when I figured the morning sessions might finished, I collected all the leftover paperwork, and put in paperwork for the afternoon instead. And then I had lunch. And by the time I had eaten it, main campus had sorted the technical problem. Great!

That afternoon I had my own session. It wasn't a long one! I had a rather high percentage of students who didn't present. And when it was done, I agreed marks with Martyn, with whom I had shared the session. And then I did another round of sweeping the rooms and getting them ready for the next session, the next morning.

Then I could go home. Unsurprisingly, I was a bit late arriving in Welsh class. But so be it.

The next morning I was back in post. And again, there was a problem! I had accidentally put two students in a session where they didn't belong. Luckily, I had also put them in the session where they did. I'm sure they never even looked at the documentation of the other session. Why would they? So they never panicked about being listed as a speaker in two different sessions. So that was easily solved. Otherwise all went well!

Around lunchtime, I did my usual round of collecting paperwork left over from the morning from the rooms, and putting the afternoon papers in. At the end of the day I could just sweep all the rooms, and take the numbers down. And I managed to put my grades and feedback where it belonged.

My next task was to find out which students had actually presented. With the presentations, it is not so easy to see if a student has done the assignment. Uploading your slides is one thing, but presenting is another! So I had to email all the staff to tell me who hadn't shown up. And then I had to make sure I sorted a mop up session for these students. And somehow get the staff to provide grades and feedback for all the students who had shown up. That can be a bit of a job!

Before all this will have died down, the actual dissertation will have hit. But that will be another post!