I’d like to take this opportunity to give feedback on the feedback that the students gave on their feedback.<\/p>\n
\nWith me? No?<\/p>\n
\nThe Honours students gave their proposal talks last week. A random panel<\/a> of academics assessed and made written comments that were passed on to the students on Monday. The students in turn had their own comments about the talks and the feedback process.<\/p>\n \nThey brought up three things:<\/p>\n \nThis point is completely fair. If a supervisor feels the need to answer a question on behalf of a student, then (assuming the student hasn’t completely frozen) this betrays a lack of confidence in the student, or even the project itself (and I’m not going to expand on that here, he said, darkly).<\/p>\n \nIt’s part of the training: the student must be able to fend for themself, and, ultimately, make mistakes and live with them.<\/p>\n \nThis one is less clear-cut. Rightly or wrongly, academics in seminars will disagree with each other, vocally and at length, while the speaker stands there like a lemon. Often you will find that certain antagonists have hated each other for years, and their feud spills over into public fora.<\/p>\n \nMy advice? Either stand there looking amused or say something like “Maybe you two can talk about this later?” Coming from a student, that would be surprisingly effective.<\/p>\n \nFair cop, guv. In our defence I will say that when you have 7 or 8 talks per session, it’s dark, and there isn’t much room on the form, copperplate can go right out the window.<\/p>\n \nBesides, would you trust a doctor with legible handwriting?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d like to take this opportunity to give feedback on the feedback that the students gave on their feedback. With me? No? The Honours students gave their proposal talks last week. A random panel of academics assessed and made written … Continue reading \n
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