Marking Time Once More

Lecturers at Maynooth University are supposed to be available on the telephone to deal with queries from students concerning their examinations. And so it came to pass that yesterday I was “on call”. Since I live in Maynooth, I decided to come into campus in case of a query so I could go to the examination venue l to deal with it if required. In the event, however, the examination passed off without incident and nobody called.

I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs all morning though. It seemed a good opportunity to go through the accumulated coursework for this module, applying various exemptions for medical or other reasons, so that when I’ve marked the scripts I can immediately combine the results with the CA component.

The examination venue, incidentally, was not on campus but in the Glenroyal Hotel in Maynooth. The Sports Hall on campus is usually one of the places for examinations to be sat, but it is not available this year due to refurbishment. The other day I was in one of the shops in the shopping centre next to the hotel and there were some complaints about the lack of available car parking spaces owing to so many students parking there for their exams. Anyway, the exam scripts found their way to my office this morning and here I am again, back home with a stack of an examination scripts to mark. The picture shows about 40 papers from my module on Differential Equations and Transform Methods. I want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible as I have another paper coming up on Thursday and have a lot of other things to do before term starts at the beginning of February. All the usual displacement activities having been exahusted, I’ve already made a start. With a bit of luck I’ll complete this task by Thursday.

I’ve often discussed the process of marking examinations with my colleagues and they all have different techniques. What I do is mark one question at a time rather than one script at a time. What I mean by that is that I go through every script marking all the attempts at Question 1, then I start again and do Question 2, etc. I find that this is much quicker and more efficient than marking all the questions in each script then moving onto the next script. The reason for this is that I can upload into my mind the model answer for Question 1 so that it stays there while I mark dozens of attempts at it so I don’t have to keep referring to the marking scheme. Other advantages are that it’s easier to be consistent in giving partial credit when you’re doing the same question over and over again, and that also you spot what the common mistakes are more easily.

Anyway, I’ve decided to take a break for today. I’ll start again tomorrow.

#Correcting #Examinations #Marking #MaynoothUniversity #Scripts

Exam Time Yet Again

The January examination period at Maynooth starts tomorrow (Friday 9th January), so I thought I’d do a quick post on the topic of examinations. First of all let me wish the very best of luck to everyone at Maynooth or elsewhere taking examinations in the next few weeks. I hope at least that the exam halls are nice and warm! Actually, owing to the Sport Hall being unavailable for this examination period owing to building work, some exams will be off campus; my first exam paper is actually being sat in the GlenRoyal hotel.

Here’s a video produced by Maynooth University to remind those taking exams of some general points about preparation and, most importantly, to look after themselves before during the examination period. It’s directed at Maynooth students but students from elsewhere may find useful tips in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c02JFEBrbs

I completed the last of my revision sessions today but, as the first examination for which I have responsibility is not until Monday 12th, I’ll have to wait to find out how any of my own students have done but let me take this opportunity to pass on a few of my own tips more aimed at students in Physics:

Readers of this blog are welcome to add other tips through the comments box below!

#Examinations #HigherEducation #MaynoothUniversity #theoreticalPhysics

The Last Judgment

Walking home through Maynooth this evening, the streets filled with partying students, I was reminded of this:

It’s the central part of the triptych Das letzte Gericht (The Last Judgment) by  Hieronymus Bosch. The medium is oil on oak panel and it measures 164 x 127 cm. The original work is in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

The figures at the top, looking down on the chaos, are clearly identifiable as members of academic staff, while those below are students. I’m sure that if Christmas jumpers had been invented in 1486, when the work is thought to have been completed, Bosch would have painted a few in…

#DasLetzteGericht #HieronymousBosch #Maynooth #MaynoothUniversity #TheLastJudgment

Maynooth University Library Cat Update

I saw Maynooth University Library Cat on the way to my office this morning. Most students I saw were heading in the opposite direction, in their Christmas jumpers, to pubs, or at least to queue outside them as they weren’t yet open. I think it will be a quiet day on campus, if not in town. Such is the Maynooth Student Xmas I blogged about yesterday.

Anyway, as you can see, Séamus was looking a bit disgruntled, though as usual he was receptive to a stroke or two and a head scratch. It had been raining overnight and such food as was in his dish had turned to mush and was in need of replacement. At least his water bowl was full.

#MaynoothUniversity #MaynoothUniversityLibraryCat #Séamus

Four Teaching Days to Christmas

The week ahead is the last week of the teaching term at Maynooth and, since I don’t have any sessions scheduled for Friday 19th December, I will finish on Thursday 18th and take the Friday off. I don’t think there’ll be many people – either staff or students – around on Friday anyway.

Tomorrow (Monday) is the infamous “Student Xmas” in Maynooth where many undergraduates spend the day getting drunk rather than attending lectures or tutorials. Many start drinking in the morning and carry on until the pubs close in the early hours. I wouldn’t mind this excess too much, but the town is usually in a terrible mess on Tuesday morning, with fast food containers, broken bottles and vomit littering the streets. I have a lecture at 2pm on Monday (tomorrow) which will go ahead and a telecon at 4pm. After those I’ll be making my way home and keeping well out of it until I have to navigate a passage through the debris on Tuesday morning.

Two pubs, Brady’s amd The Roost promote this pre-Chrtistmas celebration vigorously on social media. I imagine their takings are substantial. I wonder if they – or indeed the Student’s Union – pay a little to help clear up the aftermath?

On Tuesday I have three lectures, but one of them (at 11am) will be the final class test for Differential Equations and Complex Analysis so there’s little for me to do but sit there, invigilating. I have promised to get the answers corrected and returned before the break so I’ll have to do them by Thursday, the date of the last tutorial. Our Department Christmas Celebration is on the afternoon of Wednesday 17th, so I’ll have to fit the grading in on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.

The other two lectures on Tuesday are Engineering Mathematics, followed by another on Wednesday. I was going to use one of the Tuesday slots for the final class test for this module, but a number of students asked me to postpone it because they anticipate being hung over. I don’t mind but the only available time with a suitable room is Thursday, so they won’t get their marks until after the holiday, for which I feel no need to apologise. It’s good to have the three lecture slots because I missed an hour last week because of the power cut owing to Storm Bram.

#maynoothUniversity

Storm Bram Approaches…

The weather is rather strange today, as a result of Storm Bram which is approaching from the South. The storm is bringing warm air with it, so the temperature is around 15°C which is very mild for December. The prevailing winds are usually westerly or south-westerly.

Heavy rain fell overnight, especially in the South. It’s clearer now and the winds are starting to pick up. Although Maynooth is relatively sheltered we’re still expecting gusts up to 100 km/h. As a precaution, the large tent which is usually situated outside the John Hume building has been dismantled to stop it blowing away.

Campus remains open and lectures are going ahead as normal.

At least mine are…

UPDATE: 4.25pm. I spoke to soon. I have a teaching session between 2pm and 4pm on Tuesdays; I usually take a break halfway through, as I did this afternoon. Chatting with some students in the interval we noted the wind was picking up and discussed the possibility of a power cut. We obviously tempted fate, as no sooner had a resumed for the second half when all the power went off. It came on intermittently a few times, but at 3.30pm I called off the lecture. It was too dark to see the blackboard and no other AV equipment was working. When I got back to the Physics Department, where the power was also off, a colleague who lives nearby told me that our area of Maynooth still had power. So I headed home, via Dunnes (which has a generator) to buy a few things. As I walked through Maynooth some lights were on, some were off. The worst affected area seemed to be to the north-west and around campus. Anyway, I’m home safely and can continue working here as long as the power stays on.

P.S. The storm is named after Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, who was born in Dublin.

#maynoothUniversity #stormBram #weather

Maynooth University Library Cat (and Bat) Update

On my way to lunch today I saw Maynooth University Library Cat trying the well-known “staring at an empty dish” ploy. It worked, as it always does..

When I got to Pugin Hall for my own lunch I was confronted by this

I didn’t see the bat in question.

P.S. WordPress just told me that this is my 7,500th blog post!

#bat #maynoothUniversity #maynoothUniversityLibraryCat #puginHall

A month to go

I’ve been a bit preoccupied these recent weeks so it was with a shock that I realised that we’re into Week 9, which means just four weeks (including this one) until the end of term and just a month before Christmas. Teaching finishes here in Maynooth on Friday 19th December, but I don’t have any lectures on Fridays so in my case it will finish the day before (with a tutorial). I don’t know how many students will be there, but the module concerned is my 4th year Mathematical Physics module and the students are very hard-working, so I think most will attend. After such a busy term I’m sure that they will need a break as much as I will.

I had to rejig the schedule for both modules I am teaching this semester to accommodate the introduction of in-class tests to replace take-home assignments (for reasons I outlined here). I’ve also been handing out voluntary exercises for practice, not counting towards the module mark but for formative reasons. Both modules are mathematical in nature, and I think the best way to learn mathematics is by doing it…

Despite the changes with respect to last year, I am still roughly on track. In my Engineering Mathematics module I’ve just finished Laplace transforms, and will start Fourier methods tomorrow. With the mathematical physicists, I am in the middle of complex analysis, having done complex differentiation and conformal mappings and starting complex integration next week.

I still have a couple more class tests to get through. On the positive side, the students are turning up for them and have expressed approval for the fact that they don’t have compulsory homework to do off-campus. This form of assessment is undoubtedly harder work for the students, it’s also better preparation for the examination that take-home assignments.

We’ve just received the draft examination timetable for January, and I’m pleased that both of the examinations for which I am responsible will take place quite early in the examination period (on 12th and 15th January, respectively) so I should be able to get them corrected in time to have a break for some research before teaching resumes at the start of February.

#complexAnalysis #engineeringMathematics #genai #generativeAi #mathematics #maynoothUniversity

Visiting Speaker

I’ve been playing host today to my former PhD student, now at the University of Vienna, Mateja Gosenca, who gave a talk on “Ultralight Dark Matter: Phenomenology and Observational Constraints”. Mateja did an MSc at the University of Sussex before doing a PhD under my supervision, so it is very nice to have her visit us in Maynooth.

It was only when I started to think about how to introduce her Colloquium that I remembered that Mateja was co-author of the very first paper published by the Open Journal of Astrophysics, way back in 2016. At that time we were running an experimental prototype site before switching to the Scholastica platform we now use, but it was still a landmark. We’ve now published 415 papers.

Update: Obligatory pub photograph

#matejaGosenca #maynoothUniversity #theOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

Queen’s University Belfast and Dundalk IT (not Maynooth?)

A couple of years ago I posted an item about the news of a proposed merger of Maynooth University and Dundalk Institute of Technology. That piece began with the following:

Life is full of surprises, especially if you’re a member of academic staff at Maynooth University.

Today it was revealed that the institution that employs me is planning to merge with Dundalk Institute of Technology. It was revealed not in a direct message to staff, but through an article in the national media, in this case the Sunday Independent. The article there is paywalled but there is another piece here.

This is astonishing news, not least because of the way it has come out. Yet again, the only way that staff at Maynooth can find out what’s going on is through the newspapers. Senior Management don’t deign to inform us of anything…

Not surprisingly I hadn’t heard anything about how the proposed merger was progressing except for a couple of items in the national media. For example, in May this year, there was an announcement of the formation of a Regional Graduate Academy linking postgraduate education in Dundalk and Maynooth.

Today, however, I saw another news item announcing that Dundalk IT has now decided to become a College of Queen’s University Belfast. It explains:

The new partnership between Queens University Belfast and Dundalk Institute of Technology is not a “parent child relationship,” and represents the first “all-Ireland university”, the Minister for Further and Higher Education has said.

DkIT is set to become a University College following the agreement with QUB, which will see it change from an IT to a University College of Queen’s University Belfast.

What does this new new relationship between DkIT and QUB mean for the old new relationship between DkIT and Maynooth University? Have they called the Maynooth-Dundalk merger off? Or will the three institutions form a ménage à trois?

Don’t ask me. I only work here. Perhaps I’ll be able to find out by reading the newspapers.

P.S. Coincidentally, the next “President’s Update” for staff at Maynooth, scheduled for December, has been postponed until the New Year.

P.P.S. It is about 80km from Belfast to Dundalk and about 100km from Dundalk to Maynooth.

#dundalkInstituteOfTechnology #maynoothUniversity #merger #queensUniversityBelfast