Travel tales, Part 1 - Edinburgh

That's Edin-bur-ah, not Edin-berg. Well it took me 2 days to find someone who spoke with any kind of Scottish accent! So the "bur-ah" vs "berg" story was relayed to me via an American delegate at the Nitrogen deposition workshop I attended. What a culturally diverse city with many many foreign nationals doing the business end of dealing with the public. To start with the young lady in customs at Edinburgh airport (story to be told in person to protect the not so innocent) had family in South Africa, but she hadn't been to visit them yet. And then the hotel I stayed at, on the dodgier side of town, had staff mainly from Eastern Europe. And the lady at Subway(TM) who was from some part of Asia and I struggled to understand her - although she probably wondered where I was from too. I later found out that there are a lot of young Polish people moving to the UK looking for work. The point-at-item-when-there's-no-other-option-system is well in place in Edinburgh.

The weather was typically fine, and much warmer than I expected, for the 3 days we were cooped up inside for meetings. Then the wet weather arrived with a serious gust of wind that blew for the next 1.5 days until I left. I felt really sad for the people in South West Scotland who had their neighbourhoods washed away. At least I could get a train down the east coast and not be too affected by the flooding.

I did find a way to spend some time in the wet weather before I left on the train; possibly one of the most amazing museums I've ever visited, Our Dynamic Earth. Loved the interactive style, touching an 'ice-berg' and being shaken by an earthquake, being sprinkled by a rain-shower in the rain-forest and being an astronomer for 20 mins.

Some photos are in a collection on Flickr.

Oh the workshop went well too: met lots of new contacts, got good feedback on the research our group is doing, and good feedback on my talk too.

Exam are fun...

... when you're the other end of the question. Not the writing end but the assessing end. While invigilating exams can be boring: watching 60 students write for 2 or 3 hours while you twiddle your thumbs and creatively imagine that they're writing sense and that judging by the furious rate of pen-to-teeth-tapping, the eye-rolling and the frantic hand-cramping scribbling that they all rose to the challenge.

The marking can be seen as labourious, spending precious weekend time getting through the ink-filled pages. I had such hope with this year's Functional Ecology exam. And up until the last 2 questions - grant it the longest and highest stakes - they were doing almost too well. Enough to be simultaneously suspicious and proud.

The dashing of those creative images can be very frustrating. Keeping conscious record of all the "What the heck!?" moments does serve a comic relief purpose. This years best of the 'Real answers to exam questions' is now on view. The names of the innocent have been excluded to protect their dignity.

P.S. The site is not exclusively mine; a bunch of teaching assistants and lecturers have been making light relief of student answers all year. Thanks Luke and Leia for this frustration-outlet!

Have I passed the Sustainable assessment test?

While working on my assignment for a certificate as Higher Education Assessor and Moderator, I've been pondering how to measure, I mean, assess my own efficacy. So I came up with an equation: insight gained + output product = f(time on task). Yes how nerdy of me - who else would consider describing their experiences by means of a mathematical relationship.

My pondering came from the fact that I've been working on this assignment and my insight gained has showed substantial increase and resulted in some implementation success. However the output product lags behind. So I'm now rethinking my equation - I think that there's an exponent or variable missing.

Maybe that variable is procrastination. It's been my honest opinion that procrastination as a life-skill is an emergent learning outcome of post-graduate study. Meaning that it's not planned on and sometimes has no intrinsic value - it serves only to delay submission. This blog serves as case in point: instead of working on the assignment I'm contemplating the impact of the insight gained on life outside of teaching. Does that mean I've learnt the art of sustainable assessment for life-long learning? Did I pass the test? Have I met the learning outcomes?

Make no mistake, this post will be in my assignment. Then it's not procrastination. Back to the chalk-board for equation derivation...