The worst so far
I got my mark back for the Strategies for Research presentation today, and I can honestly say that this is the first time I've actually thought I might not be able to get the 2:1 I need to teach.
Identification of Sources: C
Analysis: C/B
Structure: B
Impact: C/B
Skills and Techniques: C
Comments: Some interesting ideas were posed, but there was an underlying lack of clarity about whether schizophrenia, as a modern psychological term, can be applied to some areas of theatrical presentation, especially older texts. As the presentation progressed the term tended to slip into more generalised ideas of mental disorder rather then that precise one. A clearer idea of what particular films or plays might be used would have helped, as well as a clearer sense of potential sources. The sub-questions showed more precision, but again might be better dealt with without a precise clinical condition.
Suggestions for further improvement: When dealing with areas outside your specialist area it is important to make very clear how you are using specific terms and how they apply. If developing this, consider carefully the degree to which you would have to draw on psychiatric material, and whether this is a distraction to what you really want to investigate.
Overall mark: 58
This is the back of my pad of paper. When I'm bored, and have nothing I can write down, I doodle on the pad (not the paper of course, that would be wasteful :D). As you can see, there was a slump in drawing in weeks 3 (the week before the presentation) and 4 (the week of the presentation), but all other weeks, I've found time to draw pretty patterns. I use this notepad for all my classes, and all drawing seems to take place in Strategies. May I also emphasise at this point that this is the Okea lecture's module.
I rest my case.
This module is
Identification of Sources: C
Analysis: C/B
Structure: B
Impact: C/B
Skills and Techniques: C
Comments: Some interesting ideas were posed, but there was an underlying lack of clarity about whether schizophrenia, as a modern psychological term, can be applied to some areas of theatrical presentation, especially older texts. As the presentation progressed the term tended to slip into more generalised ideas of mental disorder rather then that precise one. A clearer idea of what particular films or plays might be used would have helped, as well as a clearer sense of potential sources. The sub-questions showed more precision, but again might be better dealt with without a precise clinical condition.
Suggestions for further improvement: When dealing with areas outside your specialist area it is important to make very clear how you are using specific terms and how they apply. If developing this, consider carefully the degree to which you would have to draw on psychiatric material, and whether this is a distraction to what you really want to investigate.
Overall mark: 58
That's a 2:2. A 2:2 for a presentation where all you had to explain was the topic you wanted to research and show, in a preliminary sense, how you might go about researching it. I actually can't believe it. This is going to be the easiest assessment all year, and I managed to make a complete mess of it. Ah... but did I?
You see, I've got a few points of contention here, since it seems she can't actually remember the content of our presentation.
1) "Some interesting ideas were posed, but there was an underlying lack of clarity about whether schizophrenia, as a modern psychological term, can be applied to some areas of theatrical presentation, especially older texts."
Actually, we were clear about whether it could be applied to older texts, as we stated that we were going to be looking at C20th texts as they would be more tangible than a time where the disorder had not been categorised. A short answer, but I could go into this for ages.
You see, I've got a few points of contention here, since it seems she can't actually remember the content of our presentation.
1) "Some interesting ideas were posed, but there was an underlying lack of clarity about whether schizophrenia, as a modern psychological term, can be applied to some areas of theatrical presentation, especially older texts."
Actually, we were clear about whether it could be applied to older texts, as we stated that we were going to be looking at C20th texts as they would be more tangible than a time where the disorder had not been categorised. A short answer, but I could go into this for ages.
2) As the presentation progressed the term tended to slip into more generalised ideas of mental disorder rather then that precise one.
I can't actually ever remember slipping up about "mental illness" and "schizophrenia", although I do remember Sarah doing so. I wasn't aware that we would receive the same marks, and if I HAD known this, I would have actively tried to work on my own.
3) A clearer idea of what particular films or plays might be used would have helped, as well as a clearer sense of potential sources.
We detailed two example plays that we would look into, even though it wasn't specified that we NEEDED to show the tutor exactly which texts, books, films etc that we would be using. If I had known this, I had a list of plays and films I was going to look into, but, yet again, lack of communication on HER part meant that I didn't fully understand what was expected of us. (In fact, I actually asked what she wanted and what she'd be marking us on, and she just said to look in the assessment criteria - WHICH ISN'T SPECIFIC TO THE MODULE).
4) The sub-questions showed more precision, but again might be better dealt with without a precise clinical condition.
This is what riles me more than anything. WE WERE TOLD that the topic of mental illness was too broad, and we actually had a section of the presentation where we discussed WHY we had narrowed down the question to one particular disorder. It is my belief, from my initial research, that a conclusion to the question, or in fact, a tangible way to approach the question, could not be achieved if we had to focus on the thousands of disorders out there. She clearly didn't listen to the first 3 minutes of the presentation.
A general summary of my mood at the moment: absolutely livid.
Oh, and the wonderfulness of my day doesn't stop there. After leaving off a little earlier than Isa (she had decided it would be a good idea to come to the 9am lecture in full Halloween garb, and as well as being a tad.. well, embarrassing, this proved to be time consuming and we didn't want to be late), we entered into a rather interesting-looking lecture. We were given multi-coloured pieces of card with numbers on and HANDOUTS. Yep, they were actually trying to help us. However, the content of the lecture left a lot to be desired.
The handouts we were given? These were a complete copy of the Powerpoint presentation for the lecture, which happened to be a word-for-word script for the lecturer. In other words, I could have read the paper at home and NOT at 9am and got exactly the same amount of knowledge from the session. Also, I felt that we should have been given the session either last year, or at the beginning of the module. We were given really important information about how to track down articles, info I desperately needed last year and some of this year when journal articles were set as reading and I didn't know how to find them. The rest? A lecture on the internet, how unreliable wikipedia is, and how "great" blogs and the wonderful "world of web 2.0" are. I could have died.
Further to the uselessness of this whole module, here's a good indicator of the interesting and/or useful content of each weeks' session:
I can't actually ever remember slipping up about "mental illness" and "schizophrenia", although I do remember Sarah doing so. I wasn't aware that we would receive the same marks, and if I HAD known this, I would have actively tried to work on my own.
3) A clearer idea of what particular films or plays might be used would have helped, as well as a clearer sense of potential sources.
We detailed two example plays that we would look into, even though it wasn't specified that we NEEDED to show the tutor exactly which texts, books, films etc that we would be using. If I had known this, I had a list of plays and films I was going to look into, but, yet again, lack of communication on HER part meant that I didn't fully understand what was expected of us. (In fact, I actually asked what she wanted and what she'd be marking us on, and she just said to look in the assessment criteria - WHICH ISN'T SPECIFIC TO THE MODULE).
4) The sub-questions showed more precision, but again might be better dealt with without a precise clinical condition.
This is what riles me more than anything. WE WERE TOLD that the topic of mental illness was too broad, and we actually had a section of the presentation where we discussed WHY we had narrowed down the question to one particular disorder. It is my belief, from my initial research, that a conclusion to the question, or in fact, a tangible way to approach the question, could not be achieved if we had to focus on the thousands of disorders out there. She clearly didn't listen to the first 3 minutes of the presentation.
A general summary of my mood at the moment: absolutely livid.
Oh, and the wonderfulness of my day doesn't stop there. After leaving off a little earlier than Isa (she had decided it would be a good idea to come to the 9am lecture in full Halloween garb, and as well as being a tad.. well, embarrassing, this proved to be time consuming and we didn't want to be late), we entered into a rather interesting-looking lecture. We were given multi-coloured pieces of card with numbers on and HANDOUTS. Yep, they were actually trying to help us. However, the content of the lecture left a lot to be desired.
The handouts we were given? These were a complete copy of the Powerpoint presentation for the lecture, which happened to be a word-for-word script for the lecturer. In other words, I could have read the paper at home and NOT at 9am and got exactly the same amount of knowledge from the session. Also, I felt that we should have been given the session either last year, or at the beginning of the module. We were given really important information about how to track down articles, info I desperately needed last year and some of this year when journal articles were set as reading and I didn't know how to find them. The rest? A lecture on the internet, how unreliable wikipedia is, and how "great" blogs and the wonderful "world of web 2.0" are. I could have died.
Further to the uselessness of this whole module, here's a good indicator of the interesting and/or useful content of each weeks' session:
This is the back of my pad of paper. When I'm bored, and have nothing I can write down, I doodle on the pad (not the paper of course, that would be wasteful :D). As you can see, there was a slump in drawing in weeks 3 (the week before the presentation) and 4 (the week of the presentation), but all other weeks, I've found time to draw pretty patterns. I use this notepad for all my classes, and all drawing seems to take place in Strategies. May I also emphasise at this point that this is the Okea lecture's module.
I rest my case.
This module is
Now, hopefully we can lighten this day up a little with some "Theatre/Archaeology" (a charming book I have to read parts of for Friday) and a refined visit to the cinema to see Brief Encounter.
With Minstrels.
The chocolate's got to do it.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 3:55 pm.
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Sounds like you do have a grounds for complaint, I do hope shes not one of the lectures who refuse to think they could be wrong. its harsh leaving you one mark of a 2:1 too, almost seems spiteful.
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