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Examination Times

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , , on May 19, 2014 by telescoper

After a gloriously sunny weekend, it’s now a gloriously sunny Monday. There always seems to be good weather when students are revising for, or actually taking, their examinations. It’s Mother Nature’s special torture. The bus I was on this morning went past a large crowd of students waiting outside the Sports Hall in the bright sunshine for some examination or other.  The sight did remind me that I usually post something about examinations at this time of year, so here’s a lazy rehash of my previous offerings on the subject.

My feelings about examinations agree pretty much with those of  William Wordsworth, who studied at the same University as me, as expressed in this quotation from The Prelude:

Of College labours, of the Lecturer’s room
All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand,
With loyal students, faithful to their books,
Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants,
And honest dunces–of important days,
Examinations, when the man was weighed
As in a balance! of excessive hopes,
Tremblings withal and commendable fears,
Small jealousies, and triumphs good or bad–
Let others that know more speak as they know.
Such glory was but little sought by me,
And little won.

It seems to me a great a pity that our system of education – both at School and University – places such a great emphasis on examination and assessment to the detriment of real learning. On previous occasions, before I moved to the University of Sussex, I’ve bemoaned the role that modularisation has played in this process, especially in my own discipline of physics.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to modularisation in principle. I just think the way modules are used in many British universities fails to develop any understanding of the interconnection between different aspects of the subject. That’s an educational disaster because what is most exciting and compelling about physics is its essential unity. Splitting it into little boxes, taught on their own with no relationship to the other boxes, provides us with no scope to nurture the kind of lateral thinking that is key to the way physicists attempt to solve problems. The small size of many module makes the syllabus very “bitty” and fragmented. No sooner have you started to explore something at a proper level than the module is over. More advanced modules, following perhaps the following year, have to recap a large fraction of the earlier modules so there isn’t time to go as deep as one would like even over the whole curriculum.

In most UK universities (including Sussex), tudents take 120 “credits” in a year, split into two semesters. In many institutions, these are split into 10-credit modules with an examination at the end of each semester; there are two semesters per year. Laboratories, projects, and other continuously-assessed work do not involve a written examination, so the system means that a typical  student will have 5 written examination papers in January and another 5 in May. Each paper is usually of two hours’ duration.

Such an arrangement means a heavy ratio of assessment to education, one that has risen sharply over the last decades,  with the undeniable result that academic standards in physics have fallen across the sector. The system encourages students to think of modules as little bit-sized bits of education to be consumed and then forgotten. Instead of learning to rely on their brains to solve problems, students tend to approach learning by memorising chunks of their notes and regurgitating them in the exam. I find it very sad when students ask me what derivations they should memorize to prepare for examinations. A brain is so much more than a memory device. What we should be doing is giving students the confidence to think for themselves and use their intellect to its full potential rather than encouraging rote learning.

You can contrast this diet of examinations with the regime when I was an undergraduate. My entire degree result was based on six three-hour written examinations taken at the end of my final year, rather than something like 30 examinations taken over 3 years. Moreover, my finals were all in a three-day period. Morning and afternoon exams for three consecutive days is an ordeal I wouldn’t wish on anyone so I’m not saying the old days were better, but I do think we’ve gone far too far to the opposite extreme. The one good thing about the system I went through was that there was no possibility of passing examinations on memory alone. Since they were so close together there was no way of mugging up anything in between them. I only got through  by figuring things out in the exam room.

I think the system we have here at the University of Sussex is much better than I’ve experienced elsewhere. For a start the basic module size is 15 credits. This means that students are usually only doing four things in parallel, and they consequently have fewer examinations, especially since they also take laboratory classes and other modules which don’t have a set examination at the end. There’s also a sizeable continuously assessed component (30%) for most modules so it doesn’t all rest on one paper. Unusually compared with the rest of the University, Physics students don’t have many examinations in the January mid-year examination period either. Although there’s still in my view too much emphasis on assessment and too little on the joy of finding things out, it’s much less pronounced than elsewhere. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the Department of Physics & Astronomy does so consistently well in the National Student Survey?

We also have modules called Skills in Physics which focus on developing the problem-solving skills I mentioned above; these are taught through a mixture of lectures and small-group tutorials. I don’t know what the students think of these sessions, but I always enjoy them because the problems set for each session are generally a bit wacky, some of them being very testing. In fact I’d say that I’m very impressed at the technical level of the modules in the Department of Physics & Astronomy generally. I’ve been teaching Green’s Functions, Conformal Transformations and the Calculus of Variations to second-year students this semester. Those topics weren’t on the syllabus at all in my previous institution!

Anyway, my Theoretical Physics paper is next week (on 28th May) so I’ll find out if the students managed to learn anything despite having such a lousy lecturer. Which reminds me, I must get the rest of their revision notes onto the Study Direct website…

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Your Chance to Influence UK Government Investment in Science

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags , , , , on May 4, 2014 by telescoper

A recent piece of bloggery by esteemed Professor Jon Butterworth 0f the Grauniad reminded me that an important government consultation has just opened. In fact it opened on 25th April, but I neglected to post about it then as I was on my Easter break. I’m now passing it on to you via this blog, by way of a sort of community service.

Anyway, the consultation, which is being adminstered through the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, can be found here; there’s a large (110 page) document as well as information on how to respond. Basically about £5.8 billion in capital expenditure has been set aside for science research, and the government is asking how it should be divvied up. Such funds could be used to build big ticket items such as new telescopes, particle accelerators, lasers or other infrastructure including new laboratory buildings. It has to be capital, though, which means it can’t be used on staffing for such facilities that are funded. You might argue that this is a weakness (because ultimately science is done by people not by facilities) but, on the other hand if the government stumps up additional money for capital that might free up funds for more people to be employed.

Anyway, do read the consultation document and submit your responses. You could do a lot worse than reading Jon Butterworth’s commentary on it too. The deadline is some way off, July 4th to be exact, but this is very important so you should all get your thinking caps on right away.

One thing I’ll be including in my response concerns funding for university laboratories. The funding body responsible for English universities, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), is currently underfunding STEM subjects across the country. I’ve blogged about this before so I won’t repeat the argument in detail, but severe reductions in the unit of resource applied to laboratory-based subjects have meant that the new tuition fee regime does not provide anything like sufficient income to cover the costs of, say, physics undergraduate teaching. All students pay a flat-rate fee of £9K across all disciplines (including arts, humanities and science subjects) but science subjects only get £1.4K per student on top of this. The withdrawal of capital allowances has also made it very difficult for universities to invest in teaching laboratory space.

The cost of educating a physics student is actually about twice that of educating a student of, say, English, so this differential acts as a deterrent for universities to expand  STEM disciplines. Shortage of teaching laboratory space is a major factor limiting the intake of students in these areas, whereas other disciplines are able to grow without restriction.

So my vote will go for a sizeable chunk of the £5.8 billion capital  to be allocated to improving, refurbishing, expanding and building new teaching laboratories across all STEM disciplines to train the next generation of scientists and engineers that will be vital to sustain the UK’s economic recovery.

I’d be interested in people’s views about other aspects of the consultation (e.g. what big new facilities should be prioritized). Please therefore feel free to use the comment box, but not as a substitute for participating in the actual consultation.

Over to you!

 

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Promoting Women in Physics at Sussex

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on April 28, 2014 by telescoper

At the end of a very busy day of meetings I suddenly remembered that I forgot to pass on a nice bit of news about the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex.

It doesn’t seem very long ago at all that I announced the promotion of its first ever female Professor of Physics in the Department, Prof. Antonella de Santo. In fact it was in July last year. Well, just before the Easter break I was delighted at the promotion panel’s decision  to appoint the second female Professor in the Department. The successful candidate this time was Clauda Eberlein, who has been promoted to a Chair in Theoretical Physics with immediate effect.

I’ve already posted about how the proportion of female undergraduates studying physics as been stuck at around the 20% mark for a decade despite strenuous efforts to widen participation. A recent (2012) study by the Institute of Physics contains a wealth of statistical information about staff in Physics departments, which I encourage people to read if they’re interested in the overall issue with equality and diversity in physics. Here I’ll just pull out the figure (based on a 2010 survey) that out of a total of 650 Professors of Physics (and/or Astronomy) in the UK, just 5.5% were female. At that date about 20 physics departments had no female professors at all; that would have included Sussex, of course.

The first ever female Professor of Physics in the United Kingdom was Daphne Jackson, a nuclear physicist, who took up her Chair at the University of Surrey way back in 1971. It’s interesting to note that when Daphne Jackson studied physics as an undergraduate at Imperial College she was one of only two women among the 88 undergraduates in her year.

Congratulations to Claudia on her promotion, but the news doesn’t end there. Claudia will actually be taking over as Head of the Department of Physics & Astronomy in January 2015. She is currently Director of Teaching and Learning for the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and will take up her new role when the current Head of Physics & Astronomy, Philip Harris, stands down, having served his term in admirable fashion. Anyway, when Claudia takes up her post as Head of Department she will join an elite band of female physicists to have been appointed to such a role. Does anyone out there know how many other women have headed a Physics department?

 

 

 

 

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Why Graduate Teaching Assistantships Should Be Scrapped

Posted in Education with tags , , , , , , on April 24, 2014 by telescoper

There’s an interesting piece in today’s Times Higher about the variability in pay and working conditions for Graduate Teaching Assistants across the UK Higher Education sector. For those of you not up with the lingo, Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are (usually) PhD students who fund their doctoral studies by doing some teaching for the department in which they are studying. As the piece makes clear, the use of GTAs varies widely between one university and another across the country and indeed between one department and another within the same university. The use of such positions is higher in arts and humanities departments than in science and engineering, because the latter general have more opportunity to fund scholarships for PhD students, either from one of the Research Councils or elsewhere. Such scholarships pay a stipend (tax-free) as well as the fee for studying as a PhD student.

When I arrived at the University of Sussex last year I found that the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences operated a GTA scheme in parallel with Research Council bursaries. Students funded by a research council scholarship received a stipend paid at a national rate of about £13,600 per annum, but were able to top this up by undertaking a limited amount of teaching in the School (e.g. marking coursework, helping with workshops, or demonstrating in the teaching laboratories). Externally funded students did teaching on a voluntary basis. The GTAs on the other hand were required to undertake a fixed amount of teaching without remuneration in order to cover their fees.

I found this two-tier system unfair and divisive, with students funded as GTAs clearly treated as second-class citizens. One of the first major decisions I made as Head of School was to phase out the GTA scheme and replace it with bursaries on exactly the same terms as externally-funded ones with the same opportunity to top up the stipend with some teaching income. I announced this at a School meeting recently and it was met with broad approval, the only reservation being that it would be difficult if too few students opted to do extra teaching to cover the demand. I think that’s unlikely, actually, because although the stipend is not taxable so is equivalent to a somewhat higher amount in salary terms, Brighton is quite an expensive part of the country and most students would opt for a bit of extra dosh. Also, it is actually very good for a PhD student to have teaching experience on their CV when it comes to looking for a job.

Existing GTA schemes make it too easy for departments engage in exploitative behaviour, by dumping a huge amount of their teaching duties on underpaid and unqualified PhD students. It’s also unfair for the undergraduate students, nowadays paying enormously high fees, to be fobbed off onto PhD students instead of being taught by full-time, experienced and properly trained staff. Of course the system I’m advocating will be difficult to implement in departments that lack external funding for PhD students. Having to pay a full-stipend for each student will be more expensive and will consequently lead to a reduction in the number of PhD students that can be funded, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, the whole structure of undergraduate teaching will have to change in many departments. From what I’ve seen in the National Student Survey, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing either…

As I’ve argued a number of times on this blog, the current system drastically overproduces PhD students. The argument, a matter of simple arithmetic, is that on average in a steady state each potential PhD supervisor in the university system will, over their entire career, produce just one PhD student who will get a job in academia. In many fields the vast majority of PhDs have absolutely no chance of getting a permanent job in academia. Some know this, of course, and take their skills elsewhere when they’ve completed, which is absolutely fine. But I get the strong feeling that many bright students are lured into GTAs by the prospect that an illustrious career as an academic awaits them when really they’re just being hired as cheap labour. The result is a growing pool of disillusioned and disaffected people with PhDs who feel they’ve been duped by the system.

The British system of postgraduate research study is that it basically takes three years to do a degree. In the United States it usually takes much longer, so the employment of students as GTAs has less of an impact on their ability to complete their thesis on schedule. Although there are faults with the UK’s fast-track system, there is also much to recommend it. Not, however, if the student is encumbered with a heavy teaching load for the duration. The GTA scheme (which incidentally didn’t exist when I did my PhD nearly thirty years ago) is a damaging American import. In much of continental Europe there are far fewer PhD students and in many countries, especially in Scandinavia, PhD students are actually paid a decent wage. I think that’s the way we should go.

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A Note to the Physics REF Panel

Posted in Education, Finance, Science Politics with tags , , , on April 23, 2014 by telescoper

I’ve just been skimming through an interesting report about the strength of UK physics research. One of the conclusions of said document is that UK physics research is the best in the world in terms of quality.

I couldn’t resist a brief post to point this out to any members of the Physics panel involved in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. My motivation for doing this is that the Physics panel of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise evidently came to the conclusion that UK physics research wasn’t very good at all, awarding a very much lower fraction of 4* (world-leading) grades than many other disciplines, including chemistry. I’ve never understood why the Panel arrived at such a low opinion of its own discipline, but there you go..

Physics departments across the country have fought very hard to recover from the financial and reputational damage inflicted by the 2008 RAE panel’s judgement. Let’s just hope there isn’t another unwarranted slap in the face in store when the 2014 results are announced later this year…

 

UPDATE: I’m grateful to Paul Crowther for pointing out a surprising fact based on a talk given by the Chairman of the Physics RAE Panel in 2008, Sir John Pendry. Here are the slides in full, but the pertinent fact is the distribution of 4*, 3* and 2* grades across disciplines shown in this table:

Bl8OKv0CYAE6EMq

You can see that they are in fact broadly, similar across disciplines. However, what is clear is that the highest scoring departments in Chemistry did much better than the highest-scoring in Physics; for example top of the table for Physics was Lancaster with 25% of its outputs graded 4* while top in Chemistry was Cambridge with 40%. Is it really justifiable that the top physics departments were so much worse than the top chemistry departments? Suspicion remains that the Physics scores were downgraded systematically to produce the uncannily similar profiles shown in the table. Since all the RAE documents have been shredded, we’ll never know whether that happened or not…

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The Stifling Effect of REF Impact

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , on April 22, 2014 by telescoper

Well, I’m back to civilization (more or less) and with my plan to watch a day of cricket at Sophia Gardens thwarted by the rain I decided to pop into an internet café and do a quick post about one of the rants that has been simmering on the back burner while I’ve been taking a break.

Just before the Easter vacation I had lunch with some colleagues from the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex. One of the things that came up was the changing fortunes of the department. After years of under-investment from the University administration,  it was at one time at such a low ebb  that it was in real danger of being closed down (despite its undoubted strengths in research and teaching).  Fortunately help came in the form of SEPnet, which provided funds to support new initiatives in Physics not only in Sussex but across the South East. Moreover, the University administration had belatedly realized that a huge part of the institutional standing in tables of international research rankings was being generated by the Department of Physics & Astronomy. In the nick of time, the necessary resources were invested and the tide was turned and there has been steady growth in staff and student numbers since.

As Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences I have had to deal with the budget for the Department of Physics & Astronomy. Just a decade ago very few physics departments in the UK were  financially solvent and most had to rely on generous subsidies from University funds to stay open. Those that did not receive such support were closed down, a fate which Sussex narrowly avoided but which befell, for example, the physics departments at Reading and Newcastle.

As I blogged about previously, the renaissance of Sussex physics seems not to be unique. Admissions to physics departments across the country are growing at a healthy rate, to the extent that new departments are being formed at, e.g. Lincoln and Portsmouth. None of this could have been imagined just ten years ago.

So will this new-found optimism be reflected in the founding of even more new physics departments? One would hope so, as I think it’s a scandal that there are only around 40 UK universities with physics departments. Call me old-fashioned but I think a university without a physics department is not a university at all. Thinking about this over the weekend however I realized that any new physics department is going to have grave problems under the system of allocating research funding known as the Research Excellence Framework.

A large slice (20%) of the funding allocated by the 2014 REF will be based on “Impact” which, roughly speaking, means the effect the research can be demonstrated to have had outside the world of academic research. This isn’t the largest component – 65% is allocated on the basic of the quality of “Outputs” (research papers etc) – but is a big chunk and will probably be very important in determining league table positions. It is probably going to be even larger in future versions of the REF.

Now here’s the rub. When an academic changes institution (as I have recently done, for example) he/she can take his/her outputs to the new institution. Thus, papers I wrote while at Cardiff could be submitted to the REF from Sussex. This is not the case with “impact”. The official guidance on submissions states:

Impact: The sub-panels will assess the ‘reach and significance’ of impacts on the economy, society and/or culture that were underpinned by excellent research conducted in the submitted unit, as well as the submitted unit’s approach to enabling impact from its research. This element will carry a weighting of 20 per cent.

The emphasis is mine.

The period during which the underpinning research must have been published is quite generous in length: 1 January 1993 to 31 December 2013. This is clearly intended to recognize the fact that some research take a long time to generate measurable impact. The problem is that the underpinning research must have been done within the submitting unit; it can’t be brought in from elsewhere. If the unit is new and did not exist for most of this period,then it is much harder to generate impact no matter how brilliant the staff it recruits. Any new departments in physics, or any other subject for that matter, will have to focus on research that can generate impact very rapidly indeed if it is to compete in the next REF, expected in 2018 or thereabouts. That is a powerful disincentive for universities to invest in research that may take many years to come to fruition. Five years is a particularly short time in experimental physics.

 

 

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Magnetic River

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on April 15, 2014 by telescoper

I stumbled across this yesterday as a result of an email from a friend who shall remain nameless (i.e. Anton). I remember seeing Prof. Eric Laithwaite on the television quite a few times when I was a kid. What I found so interesting about watching this so many years later is that it’s still so watchable and compelling. No frills, no gimmicks, just very clear explanation and demonstrations, reinforced by an aura of authoritativeness that makes you want to listen to him. If only more modern science communication were as direct as this.  I suppose part of the appeal is that he speaks with an immediately identifiable no-nonsense accent, from the part of the Midlands known as Lancashire….

 

 

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Awards and Rewards

Posted in Beards, Biographical, Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on April 14, 2014 by telescoper

A surge in the polls for footballer John Brayford of Sheffield United (in the Midlands) has left my dreams of the coveted title of Beard of Spring in ruins. I’m still in second place, but with the leader on 83.7% I think I’ll shortly be writing my concession speech…

Fortunately, however my disappointment at fading into oblivion in one competition has been more than adequately offset by joy at being awarded a Prize by students from the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex. You could have knocked me down with a feather (had I not been seated) when they announced my name as winner of the award for Best Expressed Research. Here’s the trophy:

award

I’m assuming that it’s solid gold, although it’s surprisingly light to carry. I’m not sure where I should store it until next year when presumably it will be handed onto someone else. It did occur to me to send it up to Newcastle United. At least that way they will have something to put in their trophy cabinet…

DSCN1446

Anyway, I’d like to thank everyone who voted for me, although I’m still not at all sure what “Best Expressed Research” actually means nor do I know what I did in particular to deserve the award. Not that any of that really matters. It’s honour enough to be working in a Department that’s part of a School where there’s such a wonderful friendly and cooperative atmosphere between staff and students. I’ve worked in some good physics departments in my time, but the Department of Sussex is completely unique both for the level of support it offers students and the fact that so many of the undergraduates are so highly motivated. Maybe that’s at least partly because there is such a close link between our teaching and research across the Department. Some people think – and some universities would have them think – that research-led teaching only happens in Russell Group institutions. In reality there’s plenty of evidence that, at least in Physics, Sussex does research-led teaching better than any of the Russell group.

Amid all the administrative jobs I have to do these days the opportunity to do a bit of teaching every now and then is the only chance I have of staying even approximately sane. I’m not sure how many other Heads of School at Sussex University do teaching – I’m told my predecessor in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences didn’t do any – but the day I have to stop teaching is the day I’ll retire. Teaching students who want to learn is much more than mere waged labour – it’s one of the most rewarding ways there is of spending your time.

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Odds, Ends and Admissions

Posted in Biographical, Education on April 12, 2014 by telescoper

Term has ended at last. These 12-week teaching terms we have at Sussex are quite exhausting, but we got there in the end. In fact, I much prefer doing all the teaching in one block like that instead of having to split it in order to accommodate the Easter holiday which happens when Easter is earlier in the year. It’s tiring, but worth it.

Teaching actually finished yesterday, but today we had yet another UCAS Applicant Visit Day on the Sussex University campus, with both Departments in my School (i.e. Mathematics and Physics & Astronomy) in action.  It’s been quite a nice day actually, which is no doubt part of the reason why today has been very busy. There’s only one more such visit day left – at the very end of April – and then we can sit back and wait until August, when the A-level results come out, to find out how many students we will be welcoming into the first year next year.

I’ve had other reasons for being especially tired over the last couple of days. On Thursday night we had the Sussex University Mathematics Society Annual staff-student ball, a very pleasant affair held in the splendid Hilton Metropole Hotel on Brighton’s seafront. I had planned to leave at a respectable hour as I had to work on Friday (yesterday), but ended up getting home well after 2am.

On Friday afternoon I went up to London for the regular Monthly Open Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society followed by dinner with the RAS Club, which was very pleasant but I didn’t get back to Brighton until after eleven. I was quite pleased that a bus arrived at the Station almost as soon as I reached the stop. About half-way home a lady got on the bus who was clearly in a tired and emotional state. As often seems to happen this person sat next to me. She proceeded to ask me if I’d like her to sing. I politely declined but she started anyway so I had an unwanted “musical” accompaniment for the rest of my journey. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but she had a terrible voice.

Then this morning I had to get up pretty early to get up to campus for our Applicant Visit Day – not that it was much of a chore to do so because I always enjoy these occasions and it was a lovely morning anyway.

It’s not quite over, though, because tonight is the Annual Physics & Astronomy Ball. It is quite disconcerting to have two Balls squeezed together in such close proximity, but when I took over as Head of School last year I decided that I should either go to both Balls, or neither. Naturally I chose the first option. It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it. I think I’ll need to give my liver a rest for a few days afterwards, though.

Now the plan is to have an afternoon nap before tonight’s event. There’s a football match kicking off at the Amex stadium at 3pm, though, so traffic is likely to be heavy until then so I’m killing time writing this meandering blog post until getting the bus back to my flat.

I’ve just got a few more days at work until I take a break for ~10 days. I haven’t decided yet, but I think I might take a break from blogging then too. But I’ll be back tomorrow on campus to try to make sure I finish all the things I’m supposed to do before I take my holiday.

 

 

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Equations in Physics

Posted in Education with tags , , on April 10, 2014 by telescoper

Just so you know that our education system is safe in the hands of Michael Gove I thought I would pass on a couple of examples from the latest official guidance on subject content for GCSE Combined Science. These are both from Appendix 1, entitled Equations in Physics.

Example one:

kinetic energy = 0.5 x mass x (acceleration)2

Example two:

(final velocity)2 – (initial velocity)2 = 2 x acceleration x time

Neither of these is even dimensionally correct!

Such sloppiness from the Department of Education is really unforgivable. Has anyone else spotted any similar howlers elsewhere in the document?  If so please let me know via the comments box…

UPDATE: Monday 14th April. Apparently these errors in the document have now been corrected, but still…

 

 

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