Archive for Correcting

Marking Progress

Posted in Biographical, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , on January 16, 2026 by telescoper

The last day of a week dominated by examination marking found me briefly back on campus to return the batch of scripts I have finished corrrecting and collect the next set (which, happily, is much smaller):

There are 14 scripts in the pile for my second paper, for my 4th year Mathematical Physics module on Differential Equations and Complex Analysis, around one-third of those for my Engineering Mathematics module Differentiaol Equations and Transform Methods. Based on the total number of examinations I have to mark I am therefore now 50% complete, but based on the number of scripts I’m about 75% through. I should be able to finish the latest batch in a day, but there’s no desperate rush so I’ll do them on Monday. I’m not going to start them now as I am off a concert – my first of 2026 – this evening and I prefer not to work at weekends unless I absolutely have to.

I finished the first set of marking yesterday, and spent most of this morning uploading and checking the scores and the conflation of exam marks with coursework scores. Satisfied that all is OK, I returned the scripts to the office for storage until our Examination Board meeting in about 10 days. I wasn’t on campus long, but there was a fire alarm in the Science Building while I was there. As usual, it turned out to be a false alarm.

Anyway, I should be finished with examination matters by Monday evening, which gives me four days next week to get on with other things. I’m looking forward to the change.

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Marking Time Once More

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

Lecturers at Maynooth University are supposed to be available on the telephone to deal with queries from students concerning their examinations. And so it came to pass that yesterday I was “on call”. Since I live in Maynooth, I decided to come into campus in case of a query so I could go to the examination venue l to deal with it if required. In the event, however, the examination passed off without incident and nobody called.

I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs all morning though. It seemed a good opportunity to go through the accumulated coursework for this module, applying various exemptions for medical or other reasons, so that when I’ve marked the scripts I can immediately combine the results with the CA component.

The examination venue, incidentally, was not on campus but in the Glenroyal Hotel in Maynooth. The Sports Hall on campus is usually one of the places for examinations to be sat, but it is not available this year due to refurbishment. The other day I was in one of the shops in the shopping centre next to the hotel and there were some complaints about the lack of available car parking spaces owing to so many students parking there for their exams. Anyway, the exam scripts found their way to my office this morning and here I am again, back home with a stack of an examination scripts to mark. The picture shows about 40 papers from my module on Differential Equations and Transform Methods. I want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible as I have another paper coming up on Thursday and have a lot of other things to do before term starts at the beginning of February. All the usual displacement activities having been exahusted, I’ve already made a start. With a bit of luck I’ll complete this task by Thursday.

I’ve often discussed the process of marking examinations with my colleagues and they all have different techniques. What I do is mark one question at a time rather than one script at a time. What I mean by that is that I go through every script marking all the attempts at Question 1, then I start again and do Question 2, etc. I find that this is much quicker and more efficient than marking all the questions in each script then moving onto the next script. The reason for this is that I can upload into my mind the model answer for Question 1 so that it stays there while I mark dozens of attempts at it so I don’t have to keep referring to the marking scheme. Other advantages are that it’s easier to be consistent in giving partial credit when you’re doing the same question over and over again, and that also you spot what the common mistakes are more easily.

Anyway, I’ve decided to take a break for today. I’ll start again tomorrow.

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