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Thoughts on 1st May

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on May 1, 2026 by telescoper

Today, 1st May, Beltane (Bealtaine in Irish), is an old Celtic festival that marks the mid-point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. It’s one of the so-called Cross-Quarter Days that lie exactly halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. These ancient festivals have been moved so that they take place earlier in the modern calendar than the astronomical events that represent their origin: the halfway point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice is actually next week. Anyway, “May Day”, Lá Bealtaine in Irish, is today – the name Bealtaine applies to the whole month of May.

In Ireland the Bank Holiday associated with Bealtaine is on Monday 4th May, so another long weekend beckons.

Workwise, after today we will have completed the penultimate teaching week of Semester 2 so after Monday’s Bank Holiday we will have just four official days of teaching left, before a Study Week and the start of examinations. Yesterday I correctedthe last of my Computational Physics class tests so I am up to date with the continuous assessment and feedback of both my modules. I now have a week before the Computational Physics projects are submitted, and another week before the exam period starts.On Wednesday last we had project presentations for about half of the final year class; the other half do their things next Wednesday.

Now, I have a particle physics lecture to give – the antepenultimate one of the semester – after which I’ll be launching myself into the long weekend.

Lá Bealtaine shona daoibh go leir!

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A Chatbot Masters?

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Education with tags , , , on April 30, 2026 by telescoper

I laughed out loud when I saw an item in the Times Higher about new Masters courses at the London School of Innovation (which I had never heard of before) that will be taught and assessed by AI. I see that for the new courses – apparently in subjects such as machine learning, digital innovation, entrepreneurship and business transformation

Content will be delivered through an online learning system that the university built from scratch. Students can choose to have content delivered in a written format or presented to them by an AI avatar.

Moreover,

…assignments will be assessed and given feedback by AI…

and

At the end of each module, students will engage in a “Socratic dialogue” with their AI tutor about the content to answer questions and reflect on their learning.

Whether the AI bot will end up corrupting young people and being compelled to drink hemlock is not specified…

I laughed when I read all this because it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that if you have a qualification that can be delivered and assessed by chatbots then the job that you think it will qualify you for can also be done by chatbots…

Still, the London School of Innovation has been granted degree-awarding powers by the “Regulator” so it must be kosher.

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Two Weeks To Go…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 27, 2026 by telescoper

There are just two weeks of teaching left in the Spring Semester at Maynooth University. Actually slightly less than that because next Monday (May 4th) is another bank holiday. That day doesn’t make any difference to my own teaching, however, as I have no teaching sessions on Mondays anyway.

As I mentioned last week, the formal teaching part of one of my modules (Computational Physics) is already over and the students are now – or should be – busy doing mini-projects.

My other module, Particle Physics, has four remaining lectures. That means that I’m on schedule, despite missing one lecture on Good Friday. The very last lecture for this module is on the last day of term, May 8th, so I don’t know how many students will be there. Come to think of it, because this is a final-year module, it may actually be the last lecture of all at Maynooth for some students…

The end of teaching does not mean the end of the term, however. We have a short “break” and then, on May 15th, the examinations start. In the break I’ll have to mark a stack of Computational Physics projects. That’s always quite hard work as I have to run the codes and check the results as well as read and grade the written reports.

This week and next we also have the final presentations for project students. That will take up two whole full afternoons (this Wednesday and next Wednesday). There’s usually a bit of a do after these to give the students a send-off, as these are projects done by the graduating class. I have been supervising two students this year, plus an MSc student (though the latter will not finish until August).

People sometimes ask me why we have such heavy teaching loads at Maynooth University. Four modules a year – other staff do five (as I did a few years ago when was also Head of Department) – plus projects is far more than one would expect of a “research-led” University outside Ireland. Part of the reason is what I mentioned yesterday – that the University (along with most others) spends far too much of its income on Management salaries and projects that have nothing to do with research or teaching. Other than that I can’t comment. According to this document, Maynooth University has committed to

Introduce a University Workload Allocation Model (WAM) enhancing transparent processes and procedures in the allocation of work.

If there is such a model, it is news to me…

P.S. There’s an even older document here (dated 2014) that says:

The University is committed to ensuring that the allocation of work is reasonable and fair across and within academic units. It is also required to exercise oversight of the implementation of academic workload management. In support of this, the Head of Department / School / Institute will monitor and record workload allocations and will provide to the university, via the Faculty Dean, an annual report on the procedure and model used to allocate workloads, and also an anonymised summary of the average and range of workload distributions between teaching, research and service among all academic staff in the Department/School/Institute.

The design and implementation of workload allocation models will be undertaken by Departments/Schools/Institutes in accordance with the general principles outlined above.

Will it? When?

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The University Malaise

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , on April 26, 2026 by telescoper

The UK University sector is currently struggling very badly. The latest piece of news I have seen is from the University of Nottingham, where it seems the Management is planning to cut over 600 jobs. New appointments are being frozen and a voluntary severance scheme launched, but it may well come to compulsory redundancies given the scale of the proposal. I feel sorry for anyone there caught up in this because the mood must be very gloomy right now. None of this is the fault of the academics or support staff on whose positions the axe will fall.

The financial predicament of the University of Nottingham is largely the result of a reckless management decision to acquire a new campus called the Castle Meadow complex.

I worked in Nottingham from 1999 to 2007. At that time the Castle Meadow campus (left) was owned by HM Revenue & Customs. It’s next to the canal and not far from the Railway Station, but not very close to the main campus. I remember passing it many times on the train going in and out of Nottingham.

The University of Nottingham bought the campus from HMRC in 2021 for £37.5 million and spend over £45 million redeveloping it, with the idea of siting the Business School there (among other things), but there was no demand for it and in 2025, the university announced plans to sell the campus at a considerable loss.

Now you would think that the people responsible for this fiasco would be held to account and pay at least some of the price for their incompetence. But no. The former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, Prof. Shearer West, with whom the responsbility for the Castle Meadow campus disaster, left her post in 2024 to take up the position of Vice-Chancelor at the University of Leeds on a salary of more than £330K, leaving others to clean up the mess. I’m sure the staff and students at Leeds are waiting nervously to see what plans she has in store for their ruination. No doubt she received a glowing reference from Nottingham.

Anyone who thinks that positions with high salaries are always held by highly skilled people need only look at the Higher Education sector for definitive counter-examples.

The pattern of incompetent “leaders” switching jobs before the impact of their incompetence is revealed is a well-established one, but it’s not only the fault of the people at the very top. The entire system of governance is rotten, and not only in the UK. universities and other higher-education institutions have forgotten that the exist above all for education and research. Nowadays they have been captured by a self-serving management class that has lost sight of this and instead acts as if the only purpose is the generation of revenue, not to be spent on teaching and research but on vanity projects (like the Castle Meadow campus) and employing even more managers. Even if they were not being steered unerringly onto the rocks, universities would in any case be in danger of sinking because they are unable to support the weight of their bloated management superstructure.

I saw a post on Bluesky recently that included the following:


I asked a senior administrator what’s causing the University budget deficit.

‘Research & teaching,’ he said, ‘both lose money, not financially viable’

I said, ‘Funny, then, we weren’t losing money in the past when central administration was half the size’

That’s it in a nutshell.

I only wish this were an isolated example. It’s a systemic problem. Management bloat, expensive vanity projects requiring the diversion of funds from teaching and research, and deeply flawed strategic decisions, are symptoms of a widespread malaise. Unless there are drastic changes, the HE sector is going to shrivel and die.

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The Sharp End of Term

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 23, 2026 by telescoper

So here I am, sitting in the (empty) Physics Computer Lab. The formal Computational Physics lab sessions are over, but I’m on duty to provide help the students with their project work, which will take up the remaining two-and-a-bit weeks of term. It’s a lovely day outside which explains why there are very few people in the lab, and none of them have asked for help so I’ve been busy getting on with some work. Past experience with these sessions suggests that they’ll all come just before the project deadline, which is May 8th.

Up until last week I had a Computational Physics lecture at 9am on Thursdays, but the last one of those happened last Thursday. It was nice to have a more leisurely start this morning. I did think I might get a haircut on the way to work but when I passed my usual barber’s I saw it was full of people waiting their turn so I walked on. It seems that the good weather gave quite a few people the same urge to have shorter hair.

Yesterday was the last Class Test for my other class, Particle Physics, and I’ve taken the opportunity to correct all the scripts for that. I even had time to type up the solutions all neatly and tidily in Latex (including doing Feynman diagrams, which is fun).The end of that job means no more grading for that module until the main examination, which is about a month away. I do however, have lectures and tutorials still to do, including two at 9am on Tuesdays.

The finest weather is usually reserved for the exam period, of course, to maximize the annoyance of students. In my memory all my undergraduate examinations took place in very fine weather, with the exception of my Physics practical the night before which there was an enormous thunderstorm. Come to think of it, that could well have been a portent that warned me off experiments and made me become a theorist.

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Back for the Last Four Weeks…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 13, 2026 by telescoper

So the Easter break is over and I was back to campus today armed with a very long to-do list. I’m pleased to say I’ve ticked all the items off except the last, which was to prepare my lecture for 9am tomorrow. I’ll do that after supper.

I was very tired this morning after doing a bit of gallivanting for a couple of days. Am I too old to be carrying on like that? Yes. Do I intend to stop? No. Although I had a lot to do I didn’t have any lectures or tutorials so I was able to knuckle down and get on with things, interrupted only by an obligatory telecon.

We have four weeks left until the end of lectures for Semester 2. To be precise it’s four weeks minus one Bank Holiday (on Monday 4th May) which makes it 3.8 (working) weeks, but I don’t have lectures on Mondays so this isn’t very relevant to me. My Particle Physics module will continue in the same vein until the end of teaching but Computational Physics changes after this week, with lectures and formal lab sessions ending allowing the students time to do their mini-projects (which they have already started). They will still have access to the labs and be able to consult the demonstrators for help on their projects, though they can work at home (or somewhere else) instead if they prefer.

Other signs of the approaching end of term is that the May Examination timetable has been published, the required papers are being printed, schedules of student presentations are being circulated, and arrangements being made to mark projects.

When teaching is over for the academic year , and before exam marking starts, assuming a whole day of decent weather arrives, I plan to walk from Maynooth into Dublin along the Royal Canal. That’s a distance of 27 km. I do intend to walk the length of the National Famine Way later this year, but I was convinced to do one stage first to see if my knees can take it. The final leg of the Famine Way is from Maynooth to Dublin, which is convenient because if I’m forced to give up I can easily get the bus or train home, as I can if I reach the end.

Now for a quick supper, write my lecture for tomorrow morning, and have an early night!

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Winding Down for Easter

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 2, 2026 by telescoper

When I was a lad, back in England, the name for the Thursday before Good Friday was Maundy Thursday. That term isn’t used here in Ireland, where it seems to be known as Holy Thursday. Anyway, Maynooth University is closed tomorrow (Good Friday) but not today (Holy Thursday). Although today is not an official holiday, some campus facilities are in fact closed – including Pugin Hall, where I often have lunch. This helped me plan my activities for the day.

My agenda for Holy Thursday included:

  • giving a 9am Computational Physics lecture;
  • grading the submissions from the last Computational Physics lab test and writing feedback;
  • meeting with my masters project student;
  • supervising a computer lab session,;
  • meeting with my undergraduate project student;
  • going home, and collapse in a state of exhaustion.

To get to the last item as quickly as possible, I decided my strategy to make use of the lack of availability of food on campus would be to work all the way through lunch to get my grading done.

On the way to campus for the first item on the agenda I noticed how quiet the town was this morning. The schools are on holiday this week and next so there was no school run. The lack of people was even more noticeable when I got to campus, with many fewer students than usual, even at 8.45am. I did consider the possibility that nobody might appear for my lecture, but in the end I had about 30% of those expected. That’s a disappointing number but I gather it’s a better attendance than some of my colleagues got today. When I finished at about 10am, I walked back to my office through a still very quiet North campus.

As usual happens in a day’s work, there were quite a few interruptions – mainly to do with postgraduate matters – but I managed to do all my corrections ahead of the lab this afternoon. I also had my two project meetings, just to keep up-to-date before the break next week. It’s a stressful time for students as we approach the end of the academic year, so I advised them to make sure they book took at least a bit of time off to regroup for the final push and the submission of their reports.

Anyway, I’ve now ticked off every item on my to-do list except the last and will shortly make my way home to complete the job.

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Ahead of a Four-Day Week…

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Biographical, Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , on March 29, 2026 by telescoper

It’s Sunday 29th March – Palm Sunday in fact – and Friday 3rd April is Good Friday, which is followed by a break of a week for Easter, so I’ve been looking at what I have to do in the four days between Monday and Thursday.

On Tuesday afternoon part of my 3rd Year Computational Physics class will be doing a supervised test in the computer lab. I (foolishly) promised to ensure they would get their grades before Easter, so I’m going to have to mark them straight away. This is a larger group than usual because some students who would normally be in the lab on Thursdays swtiched to Tuesday so they could go on a trip to Armagh. Anyway, this is the third lab test and at least I have graded the first two tests for all groups in time for the arrival of the new ones.

There will be one more of these lab tests after the Easter break but after that the students will be working full-time for 3 weeks or so on mini-projects. That is the part they usually enjoy most and I’m very happy to see that some have already started work.

Then, on Wednesday I have the second class test for my 4th year Particle Physics module. This is the second such test, and it will be held during a tutorial session. This is a pen-and-paper test rather than a coding test to be done in the lab. For such tests I allow students to bring whatever they like on paper but phones, laptops and tablets are banned. This is the easiest way I could think of to avoid students using AI to solve the problems. In previous years I gave take-home assignments for this module, and I still hand out exercise sheets to be gone over in tutorials, but these are for formative purposes only. The summative assessments are the class tests. There will be three of those, which means they will have to endure one more after Easter. In a normal week I would have a Particle lecture on Friday, but that won’t happen because it’s Good Friday and my lectures apparently aren’t good enough to happen on that day.

As well as the Computational Physics lab test and the Particle Physics class test, next I have two lectures, both at 9am – one on Tuesday and one on Thursday – and another lab session on Thursday which is not a test, but a practical session about solving ODEs.

Then it will be the Easter Break. After that, according to my calculations, there will be four more teaching weeks before the examination period. The last day of teaching is May 8th. Between that and the examinations there is a gap of a week during which I will have to mark all the completed Computational Physics project reports, as well as giving some revision classes if there is demand for them.

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From the Study Break…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, Poetry with tags , , , , , on March 22, 2026 by telescoper

So now after a half-term mid-semester study break, including one day of actual holiday, that was both pleasant and eventful it will soon be time to return to the fray, at least for 9 working days. A full week of lectures, labs and tutorials starts tomorrow but the following week end a day early, on Thursday 2nd April, because 3rd April is Good Friday. Campus is closed then, as it is on Easter Monday and there are no lectures for the rest of that week. I’ll miss a lecture on Good Friday. I’m sure the students will be distraught, but that’s the way of things.

Anyway, with the Eastertide coming in and yesterday being World Poetry Day I thought I’d share a couple of pictures (taken two days apart) of the Japanese cherry trree in my back garden along with this haiku on a theme by A.E. Housman:

Loveliest of trees?
Not yet, but soon there will be
Bloom along the bough...

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Writing as Thinking

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Education with tags , , , , , on March 10, 2026 by telescoper

The other day I was informed that WordPress has an “AI Tool” which can write blog posts for me. I suspect most people think writing a blog is a waste of time, and that is even more the case if you get AI to write posts for you. I write a blog for many reasons apart from that after 17 years it has become a habit. One reason is that writing a post sometimes helps me tease out what I actually think about things. If I don’t feel I can express my thoughts in a reasonably coherent way, it is possible that my thoughts are themselves incoherent. Of course sometimes the lack of clarity in a post is indeed because I didn’t write it very well. Nevertheless, the process of writing helps even if it doesn’t lead to anything like a perfect result.

Writing isn’t just about blog posts, of course. In academic life we write articles and books and other pieces. Some academics give the impression that we do the writing after we’ve done the thinking – or, in scientific fields, after doing the calculations or measurements – but I think writing is an intrinsic part of the process, not something done right at the end.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I decided to share the following post, written by Pat Thomson a former Professor of Education in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham which makes a number of points that are valid across different disciplines.

getting comfortable with being uncomfortable 

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