Louise Dennis: Teaching Portfolio

Home The Six Areas of Competence Support of Learning Design and Planning of Learning Activities Assessment and Giving Feedback Developing Learning Environments Evaluating Practice Using Research to Inform Teaching Role as a Professional Access Disability Diversity Accountability and Quality Critical Appraisals Group Project Individual Project Other Teaching Philosophy Mapping Document Reflective Statement Reference (Word) Statement of Intent Evidence	G53IDS/J In their third year each student on any of the School's degree courses is required to do an individual project which contains a significant amount of programming. Each lecturer supervises between about 8 and 15 of these projects a year. The students have to find a supervisor and choose a project title themselves (although many lecturers offer lists of potential projects). If they fail to choose a supervisor by the end of their 2nd year they are randomly assigned to one. The supervisor's role is fairly loosely defined and consists primarily of guidance and advice. Formally it consists of a number of meetings between student and supervisor (determined by mutual agreement) where the supervisor directly advises the student on how to proceed. Supervisions As advised I use supervision meetings primarily to respond to questions and queries from the students themselves. However I tend to enforce fortnightly meetings since experience has shown me that many students start to fall behind without the spur of frequent supervision sessions. This may be the result of inexperience on my part in that I am unable to detect and pre-empt problems given a longer timespan between meetings. Feedback on Drafts I give students the opportunity to show me draft dissertations (the primary assessment artifact for the module) in advance of submission and have developed comment sheets (Example) to structure the feedback I give them. I also make notes on reports and drafts highlighting grammar and spelling problems and, in the case of drafts, suggesting ways to reorganise material etc. I photocopy and return interim reports to students so they can see these additional comments, obviously drafts are returned as originals. Assessment I originally used the pre-prepared comment sheets as the basis of a mark scheme but as I have grown more confident and experienced I have found I can dispense with this and have based my marks more on a judgement on the technical quality of the achievement and the quality of the technical writing in the report modified by judgement on the general quality of presentation. All final reports are double marked and this provides a useful mechanism for comparing my own judgement of a project's worth with that of other lecturers. In general where there is a large marks discrepancy it is usually because one marker has a more detailed knowledge of the subject area or degree of support the student required to complete the project. However occasionally I have found my opinion of the value of a project strongly contested by another staff member - for instance, in one case a student had produced something scientifically interesting but appeared to be unaware of the aspects of the work which were significant from a scientific point of view. The report also contained factual inaccuracies. I judged that in this situation the student should not be awarded a first while, in the opinion of the other marker, their work was worth a very high first. My impression is that I am more inclined to award marks in the 2(i) or 2(ii) category and less likely than other members of staff to award either very high or very low marks unless I feel I have seem something either unusually good or bad.

G53IDS/J

In their third year each student on any of the School's degree courses is required to do an individual project which contains a significant amount of programming. Each lecturer supervises between about 8 and 15 of these projects a year. The students have to find a supervisor and choose a project title themselves (although many lecturers offer lists of potential projects). If they fail to choose a supervisor by the end of their 2nd year they are randomly assigned to one. The supervisor's role is fairly loosely defined and consists primarily of guidance and advice. Formally it consists of a number of meetings between student and supervisor (determined by mutual agreement) where the supervisor directly advises the student on how to proceed.

Supervisions

As advised I use supervision meetings primarily to respond to questions and queries from the students themselves. However I tend to enforce fortnightly meetings since experience has shown me that many students start to fall behind without the spur of frequent supervision sessions. This may be the result of inexperience on my part in that I am unable to detect and pre-empt problems given a longer timespan between meetings.

Feedback on Drafts

I give students the opportunity to show me draft dissertations (the primary assessment artifact for the module) in advance of submission and have developed comment sheets (Example) to structure the feedback I give them. I also make notes on reports and drafts highlighting grammar and spelling problems and, in the case of drafts, suggesting ways to reorganise material etc. I photocopy and return interim reports to students so they can see these additional comments, obviously drafts are returned as originals.

Assessment

I originally used the pre-prepared comment sheets as the basis of a mark scheme but as I have grown more confident and experienced I have found I can dispense with this and have based my marks more on a judgement on the technical quality of the achievement and the quality of the technical writing in the report modified by judgement on the general quality of presentation.

All final reports are double marked and this provides a useful mechanism for comparing my own judgement of a project's worth with that of other lecturers. In general where there is a large marks discrepancy it is usually because one marker has a more detailed knowledge of the subject area or degree of support the student required to complete the project. However occasionally I have found my opinion of the value of a project strongly contested by another staff member - for instance, in one case a student had produced something scientifically interesting but appeared to be unaware of the aspects of the work which were significant from a scientific point of view. The report also contained factual inaccuracies. I judged that in this situation the student should not be awarded a first while, in the opinion of the other marker, their work was worth a very high first. My impression is that I am more inclined to award marks in the 2(i) or 2(ii) category and less likely than other members of staff to award either very high or very low marks unless I feel I have seem something either unusually good or bad.

Louise Dennis: Teaching Portfolio

The Six Areas of Competence

Role as a Professional

Critical Appraisals

Other

G53IDS/J

Supervisions

Feedback on Drafts

Assessment