Little Progress

The "F" still stands. The lecturer who marked my assignment replied to my email in which I asked why I got such a low mark and described my reasons for disagreeing with the mark. The reply was pretty much exactly the same as his original email. I felt as though he didn't even bother to read or consider what I had written. I've spoken to my tutor about the matter and he said that, although he is no expert on the subject matter, he could find nothing in my material that he disagreed with and thought that the awarded mark was "at best very harsh".

So what next? Well, we could just wait and see if it gets moderated. But that's not a good idea as only 10 or so items from each module are checked and if they appear to have been marked harshly then all items from that module will be moderated. A better solution, and the one my tutor proposed, is to hand the assignment directly to the moderator and say "the student that wrote this disputes the awarded grade". Note that the grade isn't mentioned, nor is my name. All the moderator sees is what I wrote. The moderator marks it, gives it a grade, and then we simply compare that grade to the original. If they wildly differ then I have a case. If I get another "F" then I'm boned. However, I'm reasonably confident that I will get a much better grade second time around.

As for my dissertation things are going slowly, but I hope to pick up the pace this weekend. I've borrowed 2 dissertations from the department. One from last year which was about a content management system for the web, and also Surfr's. I've got a copy of Burt's dissertation which has been sitting on my hard drive waiting to be read since last year, and I also got a dissertation off someone on #llamasoft. Two of those 4 got a 1st, so they should provide some good reading.

So now I just have to write the damn thing ...