Yesterday I spent a complicated morning dealing with students whose papers presented evidence or suspicion of plagiarism. It used to be the case that students plagiarised from solid academic sources in full knowledge of what they did. The explanation that our very surprised students are now offering is that they have no idea how a […]
I have already written several entries about the matter of salaries. This one is prompted by a news item published in many media on 13th January regarding a seminar and a report by the ACUP (Associació Catalana d’Universitats Públiques). Their web (www.acup.cat) has detailed information about the seminar, including an interesting document which compares university […]
I have mentioned exams now and then here but have not really got around writing specifically about them. After marking a batch of 63 during two very intense working days (that’s 126 short essays on Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) this seems a good moment […]
The Office for the Quality of Teaching (Oficina per la Qualitat Docent, or OQD) of my university asks me to pass onto the Department’s students a link where they’ll find a survey about which competences are desirable in a teacher. Curioser and curioser, I discover that the survey demands no ID, so I take it […]
This post is, particularly, for our second-year Victorian Literature students who must be this week hurrying up to finish their paper proposals and thus meet the 18th November deadline. They have been asked to write a paper (1,500 words with three secondary sources) on the narrator(s) in either Oliver Twist or The Tenant of Wildfell […]
Last week, during the opening of the current academic year, our Rector, Ferran Sancho, explained that the University of California at Berkeley, roughly the same size as UAB in students and staff, has a budget of 300 million euros –ours is 30 (and fast diminishing). Since then the sing-song ‘ten times more money’ has taken […]
A couple of days ago the PIAAC results were published. This is a test designed to measure the educational competences of adults (16-65) in the 23 countries that are members of OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). The Spanish Government’s webpage summarises the catastrophe (see http://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/ServiciosdePrensa/NotasPrensa/MinisteriorEducacionCulturayDeporte/2013/081013InformePIAAC). Spanish adults occupy the second last position in […]
Trying to find an adequate novel for a student’s BA dissertation (or Treball de Fi de Grau), I finally read Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Sunset Song (1932). I say finally because I am indeed very much interested in Scottish fiction but have huge gaps in my reading list, like this one. Reviews and academic criticism […]
If you care to check my entries for mid-September 2011 and 2012 you will find more or less the same content. In 2011, I was given recently revamped classroom 302 and I commented that “We have two tiny windows, a blind is broken and temperatures inside the classroom were yesterday at 15:00 in the afternoon […]
I have just checked my personal teaching account, wondering whether hours I’m owed had been finally counted. Yes, whoever does this has entered the hours corresponding to my supervision of a PhD dissertation (or is it for two dissertations? I’m confused). Not yet, however, the 21 hours corresponding to the three BA dissertations submitted in […]