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When marking on Canvas is it possible to have a box which allows us to input comments which are not visible to students? This would be for the purposes of moderators/external comments and would allow us to discuss any issues on a script without the student seeing this.

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Have we ever explored the idea (which other Schools have adopted) of properly splitting our cohort in two? We already 2x teach lectures and allocate WAM for each lecture. This might save us all from the fatigue that comes from double teaching these huge modules, and allow more innovation than is currently possible (the risks inherent in trying new things for the full cohort are currently huge, and exhausting to put in place), and most inportantly would rescue a sense of community for our students (they would know their ‘classmates’ were in the room rather than an anonymous, unending bulk of students in other lecture theatres). Proposal: pilot with a big core module or two, having two somewhat autonomous modules (one for mixed etc and one for LLB) with two module leaders and somewhat distinct teaching teams (so, for example, class A would have lecturers 1&2 for the year and class B would have lecturers 3&4 for the year). The content covered would have to be the same.

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Thoughts/ premises:
- (many) students are used to organising their lives digitally and must experience frustration when we require paper forms (for eg) from them
- it might save us time as academics and administrators
- if we don't actively engage with online admin methods, do we effectively push things into our email inboxes?
- are some of our existing "e-solutions" being fully used and accessed? (e.g. Canvas Hub - how well has it worked? Do others frequently find themselves reminding students about its existence?)
Concrete places that might benefit from a more digital solution:
- Student files accessible online (not just Banner, but attendance, old progress review forms etc) for writing references and supporting students
- Student welfare (cf. barrage of RAP emails)
- Progress reviews
- A place to easily record (significant) meetings that we have with students.

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Our student cohort is very diverse, which is commendable. But what could / should we do to support those who are not fully integrated into the BLS community e.g. those living at home (who, research shows, tend to be from lower socio-economic backgrounds), those with mental health issues (growing in significance and type), those who - for various reasons - simply cannot attend all their seminars, and who are subsequently liable to be called in to Reasonable Diligence meetings and asked to promise to attend 100% of seminars for the remainder of their course. We tend to say they 'fail to engage' but do we do enough to make the School 'engage' with them?

Proposal - we should have a specialist mental health professional on the premises and/or on the staff  to help students at the moment they need help. Personal tutors lack the appropriate skills to support such students; equally, the Welfare tutors (whilst excellent)  are not equipped or resourced sufficiently to handle the demand for such services. We advise students to seek professional help, but some are just so poorly to do this without active support.

I realise that we cannot solve problems which stem from structural inequalities, but  we can do something. Birmingham University has posters on the London Underground and local transport advertising itself as a 'champion' of mental health  I don't see it. If we wish to avoid the kind of problems experienced by the law schools in Bristol (where recently there have been a number of suicides amongst law students) we need to seriously consider doing something radical (and perhaps becoming a leader in the field?)

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Senior Colleagues who do not care about teaching (or admin).

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Senior Colleagues who do not care about teaching (or admin).

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Is there anything that we can do about the small, but significant, number of senior colleagues who, frankly, do not seem to care about the teaching side of the job? Just this year, there have been multiple complaints from students about final year options in which lectures were cancelled at the last minute with no explantion, material was delivered more than once, a general lack of availability/guidance, a presumption that students had taken modules which were not pre-requisite, and assessment questions that bore little relation to the module materials. Whatever issues have led to these failures to deliver teaching miraculously seem to disappear when it comes to research - it has not impacted the same colleagues' efforts to apply for large grants or get books published. For the most part these are senior colleagues; it is very difficult for more junior colleagues to broach these sorts of subjects with members of the professoriate.

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Tighten up/develop procedure to ensure empirical research is always conducted appropriately

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Tighten up/develop procedure to ensure empirical research is always conducted appropriately

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This year two final year modules suffered from over-enthusiastic students. This was problematic because they undertook empirical research with no support and no understanding of ethical procedures etc. The student handbook lists planning and undertaking empirical research as a learning goal, but no more but it would seem we need to develop better guidance on this.
Whilst initiative and enthusiasm should not be discouraged, undertaking empirical research for summative, final year essays exposed students to significant risk if anything goes wrong.

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Whilst there are real advantages to electronic marking on Canvas, the present lack of anonymity is problematic.  Relatedly, the fact that Canvas records a time-stamp for the submission of comments is also far from ideal.

Students have always complained that some markers are tougher than others, so I am used to this being raised as an issue by tutees etc.  Nonetheless, I do not see how it helps anyone to have the name of the marker visible to the students.  This year, for the first time, I have also spoken to several personal tutees who were unhappy about the time at which their papers were marked.  Again, I cannot see how this is helpful for anyone.

So, with this in mind I was wondering if:

It would be possible to set up speed grader so that this information is not recorded on Canvas?

If this is the case, can we adopt a standard policy for all summative assessments that neither the name of the marker, nor the time at which comments are submitted will be recorded on speed grader?

If this would create administrative issues, could markers be anonymised after moderation etc. but prior to feedback being published?

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There can be quite a variation in referencing standards (I am just talking about following PSCOLA). Markers feedback sometimes refers to this as an issue, but it is not clear whether this is sufficient to ensure that student who graduate from a degree from this law school can provide appropriately referenced work. Should we take more formal, structured action e.g. penalise students by one step if their referencing falls below a minimum level?

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Where modules have two marks (ie. project and exam), there were issues re: timing of marks received and sent to externals and which scripts sent to externals.

Situation 1 - mark sheets were initially received by markers without project marks included, therefore, when marks were put in, it was uncertain whether final grade would end on 9. Scripts had to go to internal mod still without knowledge of whether final mark ended in 9. Final marks with project included came back evidencing some students with 9, but some of these scripts had already been sent to external, so could not be looked at a second time. Proposal: core modules should have project marks  included prior to exam marking and moderation process.

Situation 2 - was informed that exam scripts had to match those projects which had been internally moderated in Jan/Feb - all go off to internal and later external, along with failing marks. First, this seems like a lot of scripts and essays being sent to moderators without either being able to necessarily see a full spread of marks. Secondly, for those looking at internal consistency among markers or questions, this seems quite difficult Proposal...??

** Maybe some more information about what is important for each step in the moderation process would be helpful. If the role of the internal is more looking at fails and 9's, as opposed to spreads for individual markers and individual questions, then ok. If it's about all of these things then also ok, but it's likely the number of scripts moderated by internals will go up quite a bit.

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Can we get some support-RAs or something--to generate diverse readings lists for core subjects?

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Students seem to be experiencing vastly different expectations of reading across different courses--200-300 pages per seminar in some, 50 in others. This means they either spend all their time on one module or give up completely. Can we discuss maybe having an agreed standard of reading e.g. 50 pages per week per subject in first year, 100 pages in 3rd year etc? Other law schools do this and it makes the reading lists more targeted, more can still be suggested as additional reading, but it means students might not be drowned and subjects could get equality of attention

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University needs to update Canvas to make it more user friendly. Lots of time is spent showing students where to find stuff.

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University needs to update Canvas to make it more user friendly. Lots of time is spent showing students where to find stuff.

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There also needs to be a section on canvas where staff can see all a personal tutees academic records, commendations, reasonable diligence meeting outcomes and the like. In short an integrated system for personal tutoring.

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Any questions or issues please email B.T.Atkins@bham.ac.uk

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