Great idea @aridapricot

Re. Impact - I'm mostly an historian as well (although not a conventional one & I don't work in a History department), and I've been interested in the way that history - of a very traditional kind - is of endless fascination to the general public. There is a heap of information about collaborations with various heritage bodies, at my place (we are an aggressively research-led RG place with a reputation built on the arts & humanities). Keep an eye on the British Academy & the AHRC newsletters for ideas about this.

I'm quite sceptical of impact/engagement stuff but you have to do it for AHRC grants, and there are ways to do it which are even interesting! My most recent large grant, I had one of the postdocs take the lead on impact stuff, so I didn't have to. But you only have to look at what a lot of universities do around Shakespeare, or Richard III (new film) to see some ideas - it's about a identifying a way to hook a general public audience in, and then expand into what you really want to talk about, once you've hooked them in.

Great idea. I always have things to vent about! I'm not in the UK, so at least I don't have to deal with the REF.

This has been a difficult semester, and I have been unlucky with two very ... resistant cohorts, which has made things much more difficult. I am glad that we are on a week's mid-term break, as I did nearly ask one group, who are bizarrely hostile to both the material and the method of a class on a particular kind of literature (a class they chose as an option!), why they didn't just start a book review blog if they were only interested in making value judgements about it and not literary analysis. Third years, doing a Humanities degree! Not even first years.

I’m also a historian, but work on a very recent topic that places me closely to politics/criminology. We’ve been through yet another reorganisation and its chaos! Students are mostly good and make an effort. I’m in Scotland--not sure how much of a difference that makes in terms of student behaviour.

Hello again, fellow frustrated A&H people. I write from inside the hell of marking. That cohort I mentioned above...did not produce good work. Like, it's actually painful reading a lot of it. There are maybe 2 or 3 essays so far in the higher end (by which I mean, above a B), out of 20 marked and a cohort of 30. It's very demoralising as it's the first time the module has run and the topic is entirely research-led, so it was kind of a dream to teach a class exclusively on it. Soured somewhat now. I know there are always issues in the first iteration, and certainly I would make changes for next time, but ultimately I just don't believe that the teaching is to blame here (and this is a big thing for me to say, as someone with severe imposter syndrome). These are systemic issues. I could go on, but where to start? And where will it end? And honestly, what's the point of it all anymore?

I'm marking as well @medb22. First year students. I'm honestly shocked. The level of written English is appalling. I've never seen anything like it, and I'd expect kids to leave primary school able to write better than some of the students whose work I've marked. The non-native speakers have submitted essays with better grammar, spelling and syntax than the home students. I know the pandemic has set them back, but it's not just a couple of years deficit we're seeing, it's more like they're five years plus behind. They all got As and Bs at A level. I don't know where to start in giving them feedback when they can't construct a single sentence correctly.

Sorry you are also dealing with this, GC. I think a lot of the poor writing is down to not reading anything well-written. Given that we aren't actually taught grammar formally (at least here anyway), most of the 'rules' of good writing are absorbed by osmosis, and if you are reading primarily online content that isn't copy-edited, then bad practice gets absorbed instead. And they definitely aren't reading, for the most part. Even literature students. But something is also going wrong at second level: where I am, textual analysis/interpretation seems to have largely been replaced by personal reflection in second level English, and so they are coming in with poor critical skills which aren't being addressed sufficiently tbh. There needs to be some formal intervention at first year, as it's too hard for us to do it comprehensively in individual modules as well as get through the content. Though I'm not sure what that would look like: mandatory Critical Thinking and Writing 101?

Something has gone very wrong somewhere when 90% of a class of third year lit students are unable to deal with very basic Humanities essay questions like "Discuss the representation of X in two texts on the course", when X is a theme we've examined in detail in at least half of the texts we've looked at.

Solidarity to you all from the midst of Markagedddon.

Sorry to hear about your difficulties @medb22, that’s so dispiriting.

My gripe today is about how 3rd year undergrads can be so bad at referencing, this far into their degrees?! We overhauled our first year a few years back and spend TWO FULL WEEKS just on referencing as part of the core module. This cohort will have had that teaching. So how??

@aridapricot with my 2nd years I’ve been harsh strict with referencing. In some cases the referencing has been so bad it has knocked them down a degree class: barely referencing at all, not putting stuff in quotation marks, really limited reading. Maybe it will shock them into improving when the feedback is released…

@aridapricot oh oh - third years who haven't started their dissertations <<groans with head in hands>>