Academic practice

...being about some aspects of what has come to be known as "academic practice", meaning the practical aspects of how to prepare, present and assess work in accordance with current standards and expectations in (UK) universities.

Writing at Master's Level  I frequently encounter mature students signing up for a Master's degree (in this case in education) who need guidance on what is expected, above and beyond the formal material in the handbook. These notes are based on what I tell them and the kind of feedback I put on their initial submissions. (Note that once they have settled in I raise the game a bit, and that other disciplines will have different expectations.)

Assignment Presentation Guidelines  These were prepared for an appendix to a course handbook for similar reasons to those above, but a number of people wanted to access them, so here they are. Note that once again they may not suit every discipline.

New (August 2010) The Structure of a Dissertation What goes into a Master's Dissertation, where, and why? This paper covers all the things you seem to be expected to know, but no-one ever quite tells you!

Marking Shell  This is a customisable combination of a MS Word^TM mailmerge report and an Excel^TM datasource to balance providing useful feedback to students with ease of marking for colleagues working with large student groups. A bit clunky and out of date, but still marginally useful.

Baking an essay  Slightly more frivolous, but this is a recipe I offer to students who are out of the habit of writing essays, which some of them have found useful.

Mayonnaise model of teaching  I confess: I do not follow my Schemes of Work and Session Plans most of the time. When asked, this is how I describe what I do. The major problem is that not all my students like mayonnaise.