Personal Blogs

And good news, it's not behind a paywall.

The peer reviewer had recommended it be a research note not a research article and I hadn't understood the difference (I still don't), but the most obvious to me is that it is open access. 

You can go read it at DOI: 10.1558/jsa.26907

The OU subscribes to the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology but the latest volume hasn't propagated to the library system yet, it was only published last night.

I've listed it on ResearchGate and tried out their spotlight feature. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but like Andy Dwyer I know I'm doing it really, really well. I figured I'd precis the abstract and use the 5 most important keywords. We'll see what happens - it runs for 30 days. Academia.edu can wait. And LinkedIn will be done when I bother to unhibernate my account.

The abstract, in case you're wondering, is this:

Medieval churches in England have a wide variety of orientations. Some have an equinoctial orientation, facing true east towards the sunrise on the equinox. However, most, although facing eastwards, diverge from true east, and over the centuries the reason for such variation has been the subject of much debate. A popular, but by no means proven, theory is that they are oriented towards the rising Sun on the feast day of their particular patron saint. This paper considers St Guthlac’s, Passenham, a Northamptonshire church close to the ancient Danelaw border with alleged connections to King Edward the Elder and the West Saxon army in the tenth century AD. The church orientation shows good agreement with the rising Sun on the feast day of St Guthlac, a popular Mercian warrior saint of the period, who was celebrated as a symbol of the Anglo-Saxons’ potential for victory over the pagan Vikings.

I love my job. I love interacting with students.

I'm not so keen on the way TMA questions are phrased.

It's something I've come up against time after time. I've mentioned this before here I'm sure, those of us with a more literal way of thinking interpret questions very differently from the more big-picture woolly thinking neurotypicals who are reading between gaps we didn't even know were there.

[Tangent going off on - yes it has a point]

There is a classic defence of cultural astronomy and the study of ancient sciences in a paper called (as ever link to the OU library) The Study of Wretched Subjects.by Otto Neugebauer. 

Neugebauer was a fascinating man: originally trained as a mathematician who got into the history of mathematics (and hence astronomy), learnt Babylonian so he could read clay tablets. It's because of him that we now know that the ancient Babylonians were incredibly skilled mathematicians and astronomers.

Now Professor Sarton was a chemist turned historian who was editor of Isis (the journal in which Neugebauer's paper appears).

I've seen fellow astrophysicists, with our more literal bent, badly misinterpret this paper, especially since Neugebauer constantly refers to astrology as a 'wretched subject'. Neugebauer wasn't in fact agreeing with Sarton - he was burning his face off with his own words - and pointing out that the study of the history of astrology was in fact the study of the history of astronomy. If the study of ancient astrology is wretched, then so too is the study of ancient astronomy - because you cannot divide them - they have the same rootstock. George Sarton, to give him his due, was humble enough to publish this reply in his own journal.

Learning how to think like a cultural astronomer has been hard for me - the humanities have a very different way of thinking, more nuance, more gaps to read between. And I clearly am not the only one.

Coming back to my students. I noticed something weird happening with the way they were answering one of their questions so I go back to the course materials. One of the parts that forms the answer to a question in this TMA literally tells students to do a reflection - except I'm in no way able to mark it as a reflection. I have students going off on tangents all over the place. The module team were supoosed to be clearing up some of the confusing TMA questions that misled neurodivergent students and it looks like they've created a new one.

Anyway I was thinking I'd at least attempt to cheer my students up with the story of the ongoing debacle of my FHEA application and how I didn't put the right words in the right box and hence didn't get it. Because I literally don't have a brain that's wired up in the same way as the people who decide these things. And failing to read between the lines that I didn't know were there is always going to be an issue for me too.

I've been asked to revise and resubmit.

Apparently I needed to include more about the mechanics of how I teach. OK fine.

I also showed no evidence of awareness of the wider context in which HE operates. For example, I should have talked about why progression and retention are key to learners, their experience and the university.

Like, that's a kicker. That's all I frickin' think about. Because I want my students to have a better undergrad experience than I did. I don't want them to end up like me. But I didn't want to talk about my self-harming and suicide attempt at Imperial College because I didn't want to trauma dump. To fail because my V4 isn't good enough hurts. It really hurts.

I spent most of yesterday down a mental rabbit hole. We've been going through the book of Matthew at church and my pastor's sermon yesterday was on the feeding of the five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes (Matthew 14: 13-21). My pastor pointed out that before that passage we'd been reading about miraculous healings and about the parables of the kingdom. But God is also concerned with our day to day needs too. Whether we're hungry and thirsty.

And my bible reading notes (I use Our Daily Bread) have been saying much the same thing for a few days now.

Here's the thing. I've always had what are known as prayer burdens. I could tell you stories that would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. So, for me at least, prayer is something I do for other people. I never think to pray for myself. Which is remiss of me. I mean not only do I neglect myself, I don't think to thank God for all the good things I do have.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this and praying for my needs and asking for wisdom and peace and the ability to accept my situation as it currently is.

And I feel a lot better today than I have in weeks.

And I've been able to finally knuckle down and actually get on with some work - which brings me to the title.

Lynn Thorndike was a professor of history at Columbia University and wrote his magnum opus, an eight volume set on A History of Magic and Experimental Science. I picked up a secondhand volume 7 (which is concerned with the seventeenth century) quite cheaply, years ago and am reading through the relevant passages. I think I really need to find volume 6 as well - but the (non-) accessibility of the Internet Archive might be an issue here as old copies of volumes from A History of Magic and Experimental Science tend to sell for over £100 each.

Every year it's a new problem.

My first year, I used exactly the same forum posts as my mentor (whose students appeared to self-select perfectly without effort on his part) and I had students randomly signing up to groups as a fifth member of a four-person group.

Last year I had at least one student spending the whole of group-work week waiting for a group because they were leftover - they were ready to start in week 2 but I had no one else who said they were ready. Poor student couldn't even do the individual parts alone. It got to the point where I actually suggested they do the individual activity instead. They wanted to wait. But my goodness was it stressful for me and probably for them too.

This year. I don't know. I decided to do the other way of putting students into groups and assign them myself right from the start. Students asked how to handle the fact that two of their team weren't working as fast as them and well, my reply was overly verbose. I over-explained. They of course clearly skimread what I said and misunderstood and ended up doing the complete opposite of what I advised - which was to STOP they'd done enough it was great. 

I know students often hate groupwork, but as far as I can tell every single tutor hates it too. It's not so bad in a face-to-face university where students are showing up every day and you can say - right this is group work time. Here at the OU where we have a much, much lower retention rate so you can't assume that every student you start out with is going to stay. You also can't assume that just because a student has not logged on for a week that they have given up. Trying to balance all that while doing a group project in week 3, one week before a TMA deadline, is a nightmare.

I don't know what on earth to do next year.

Is it me?

Maybe it is. Evidence shows that autistic-autistic groups work well and neurotypical-neurotypical groups work well. Maybe I'm too autistic for this job. Maybe I'm too autistic to communicate clearly to the majority of the class.

Stumbled across an older (from this spring) article about the need for belonging to be better woven into curriculum at WonkHE: Time to go back to basics on belonging | Wonkhe

I've been mulling over some of the things that the author touches upon in this article. She writes as if it was a given that students my age (Gen X) would naturally have been able to belong at our institutions and that it is only the onset of new external factors that have caused students to not feel they belong.

I think this is part of the problem with HE. That the current professors and deans and vice-chancellors are those who thrived at university. You don't get to those positions by being like me. And going back to something I learnt about network theory during my studies on H880, students like me are not connected. We do not belong. We do not fit in. The hyper-connected students are the ones that thrive. They get statistically significantly better grades than us isolated 'loners'. They are the students who thrive at university and are statistically much less likely to wrestle with a constant urge to drop out as I did, and I would hazard a guess they are significantly more likely not only to do well but to stay in academia all the way to the top. So the students who thrived because of their strong network are the ones who control and run the universities as we have them today. The other problem with these hyper-connected thrivers is that they are not connected to us loners. In H880 an image is shared from this paper ("Seeing" networks: Visualising and evaluating student learning networks | Request PDF (researchgate.net)). What happens is at the centre of networks are the highly central information brokers. These are your top students. Surrounding them are 'potentially high-performing students'. If they can 'leverage' their connections they can do well. However, they also have connections who have no other connections - these connections who have only one or two connections into the network themselves are 'potentially low-performing students'. If their one connection cannot help them with a problem or does not want to help them - there is no law that all connections are strong connections or friendships - they are in danger of underperforming. The very, very worst place to be is the disconnected student. It's game over for these unfortunate students. And nobody cares about them because they aren't even on their peers' radars.

In fact network theory tells you everything you need to know about why the students who are least likely to graduate out of all the disabled students are the autistic ones. I can look at a network diagram and tell you exactly who the autistic students are.

So here at the OU it's my job to be the connection. I was really, really bugged by how much one of my tutor-groups (as a whole) underperformed compared to the average (or indeed my other tutor-group). It was a real-time, real-life demonstration of what is described in Dawson et al.'s paper. They weren't interacting and their grades were substantially lower.

I'm really pleased with how things seem to be going so far. I had to chase far fewer students to remind them to interact with me this year. And I have referred far fewer to student support due to no response. It's only week 2 but trying to keep in mind the suggestions of the trauma-informed teaching paper I mentioned before and my own knowledge of interacting with autistic students (like me) seems to be paying off currently.

My daughter is almost exactly 30 years younger than me so I have two events colliding currently. It's 30 years since I embarked on my first (very ill-advised) degree and my daughter is leaving home to go to university.

Truthfully, I have been in bits all summer and (I recently learned) my condition has been the subject of much prayer within my church.

Because I might work in higher education, but if I'm being brutally (autistically) honest, I don't want my daughter to go to university.

Many well-meaning people have been offering me advice on how best to advise my daughter (she inherited her autism from me) to ensure she makes friends.

I am politlely smiling and nodding and trying desperately not to cry as these sage gems of well-intentioned wisdom are imparted to me. Because I did exactly those things myself. And they didn't work. My time at my alma mater were the loneliest three years of my life. So lonely I began regularly self-harming and, on one particularly bleak night, attempted to end my own life. I made no friends at university, merely aquaintances in various social groups who (mostly politely) tolerated me until we graduated and they were able to finally rid me from their lives and pretend I didn't exist. I had no one to talk to at all and I knew it.

My advice to my daughter is different to what a neurotypical person may advise a neurotypical child. You need to be utterly, utterly transparent about who you are. The sooner that ableists discover who you are the sooner they will remove themselves from your life and the sooner you can find the neurodivergents and non-ableists that are happy to accept you as you are. Do not bother trying to do everything, to 'get the most' out of fresher's week. Focus on you - what do you enjoy. There is no point forcing yourself to try things you don't like, you won't find your people there. Go to church. The Bible literally tells Christians to be a 'friend to the friendless'. Any Christian worth their Biblical salt will be accepting of others that don't present neurotypically. Annoy the hell out of the chaplains. Their job is to care for the spiritual and emotional wellbeing of the students and staff in a university in a way that a personal tutor or line manager (however well-meaning) cannot ever hope to be because of competing demands on their time. At the open day, I pointed out the dedicated chaplaincy office at my daughter's institution with its open invitation to drop in for tea and biscuits and a chat. And most importantly of all to remember that a university degree is little different from your first job. If you are truly, truly miserable don't ever be afraid to drop out! University credits can often be transferred to a better, more welcoming institution.

This is kind of a note to self. Freshers week begins the week after next. I normally introduce OUSA to my students in my first tutorial, but I'm thinking of flipping everything on its head this year. Instead I'm planning on pointing my students to the OUSA (Home (oustudents.com)) and Student Hub Live (The Student Hub Live | The Student Hub Live (open.ac.uk)) in my introductory emails before term starts - I'm expecting to be given my student list next week or the week after.

OUSA gives students opportunities to meet others either through the OU clubs and societies or through volunteering, while Student Hub Live runs online events and podcasts about university life and succeeding as a student. These presentations cover a lot of the generic OU student ground that my first tutorial usually covers, I figure if I send students to Student Hub Live that will free up time to cover SM123 specific content including preparing and submitting TMA01 and how the group project works. I'm hoping that covering this content will make my introductory tutorials more useful.

I thought I'd give a brief overview of my findings from the research project I ran in late spring this year. I said I might put my findings on Academia.edu. I've now decided against that, so am going to summarize them here. I had very small numbers of respondents, certainly not enough to generalise about the wider population but I did, interestingly enough, manage to encounter believers who identified with every single one of the 5 theories of creation I proposed (no one in my small sample propsed a different cosmology, so no one mentioned flat-Earth for example). Meaning I had both youth-Earth creationist and 'Genesis is literary and cannot be "read into" in any literal way at all' believers. I also had a significant proportion of believers who said variations on the theme of 'this is a secondary issue and not important to one's salvation and causes division' and refused to be drawn on any of the creation theories or suggestions for the nature of the Star of Bethlehem.

One of the other interesting (to me at least) findings, was that the Christians sampled believed the Star of Bethlehem to be a scientific/astrological phenomenon. I offered the opportunity to say it was supernatural (giving the example of an angel) but few respondents said they believed that.

I have to say, personally myself, since it's all done and over now that, I myself believe that it was astrological. The Magi were Babylonian astrologers and when they come to Jerusalem to worship the new-born king, Herod's palace have no idea what they're talking about - which to me at least means that it couldn't have been a comet - every ancient culture around the world feared comets as portents of doom - interestingly every culture around the world fears 'the sky falling'. I will concede that after the visit to the palace the account sounds more supernatural, with the 'star' leading the way.

This is what has led me to become interested in ancient astrology - I wanted to know what the Babylonian Magi saw that set them on their journey and I don't think it's possible to identify that without seriously understanding their astrological beliefs. Well it turns out it used to be known to Christians, a Roman writer Julius Firmicus Maternus in circa 330 was writing not only a Christian apologetics book on the error of pagan religions but a textbook on astrology in which he gives the birth chart of a divine man - Christians believe that Jesus' nature is fully God and fully man. It also turns out that while divinatory astrology has long been rejected, for example by Thomas Aquinas, it wasn't wholesale rejected until much more recently. Martin Luther's right-hand man Philip Melancthon was a practicing astrologer and Luther wrote that while he didn't agree with Philip about its usefulness, didn't see anything wrong with the way he was doing it.

Astrology was far, far more acceptable in medieval times and earlier. Which is why I'm keen to read and translate Tycho Brahe's letters regarding astrology, as he too, like every astronomer of the day was both an astronomer and an astrologer.

I'm finally making headway on my FHEA application, yay!

So I thought I'd take this lunchtime to investigate potential freelancing gigs I could use to supplement my income since I work very, very part-time for the OU and there do not appear to be many modules I can pick up (not being a computer scientist).

My husband wants to me restart my tutoring. I'm less keen as before I used to do it from my kitchen table and now my husband works from home. I'd have to do virtual only, which works OK for OU students, but is less easy with schoolchildren.

I keep thinking I could probably start editing again.

The only problem is editing generally makes me ill. Panic attack a day ill. It's been so nice to have spent the whole of 2023 and half of 2024 not having a panic attack because I gave it up in December of 2022. 

Editing is also problematic as it's so concentrated. The 'average' rate is 10 pages an hour to proofread, 5 to copy-edit. That means the typical academic book is a good month's work - as despite even autistic hyperfocusing I struggle to concentrate entirely on one book at that level for 8 hours every day. There's also the issue that as it's so time consuming I can't do editing and marking TMAs at the same time, it simply won't work. Still I can earn more from one proofreading project than I can earn from a year working with one student.

I hopped onto LinkedIn and looked at the skills that are listed under the Services Offered option of the More button and saw grant writing. I have no experience of grant writing, although I have eyed up two grants/scholarships that I want to apply for this coming academic year. So I did a little googling to find out how to learn to be a successful grant writer so that I might be able to successfully win the grants for myself, with, you know, perhaps the future potential to use those skills to offer my services for payment. I found some professional looking YouTube videos about learning grant writing - they're teasers for a woman's online course and community - at a cost of a mere US$500 a month.

Nice work if you can get it.

So is the woman a successful grant writer or is she actually more successful at selling courses about learning to be a grant writer?

Anyway, I'm going back to that FHEA essay and I'm going to see if the OU library has a book about applying for grants. 

I was searching for a book in the online library when I stumbled upon the fact that the OU library has (what appears to be) full access to the O'Reilly learning website including vast numbers of Python on-demand courses, books and videos (link only works for logged-in OU staff and students):

https://learning-oreilly-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/search/?q=*&type=course&topics=Python

I need to add this resource to the list of Python resources I share in my tutor group forums. If you do visit this, note that in my case the cookies associated with O'Reilly seem to 'break' the automatic logging into the OU website/Moodle/intranet. Nothing a quick cache clear out can't solve, but somewhat annoying.

I discovered that there was a student survey run in May of this year into student perception of online tutorials, the results of which have just been released as an internal report. There's lots to think about and I will be coming back to it a lot as I contemplate how to improve my own tutorials. Several things stood out, there was mention of going deeper than the materials and preparing for the TMAs, the need to avoid it becoming too lecture-like (which is actually easily done if the students aren't chatty) and that they're often tired at the end of a long work-day. This is something I talked about with my Staff Tutor. After some discussion with my husband (a fellow Christian) I'm going to attempt to run all my tutorials next year on Sunday evenings. I know this is going to lose some potential students who would prefer a day of rest on the Sunday. I'm thinking that probably though this day/time will be more beneficial for more students than my normal Tuesday and Wednesday evening tutorials. And personally, Sunday hasn't been a day of rest for many, many years. My husband is a deacon in our church so we always are among the first to arrive at church to set it up (we meet in a school building and have to set up the seating, PA system, Sunday school, creche, refreshments, Bibles and other literature, etc. equipment every week) and always among the last to leave after everything has been put away. Saturday has long been my rest day.

Oh yes, and I have to write that FHEA statement. My mentor and my husband assure me I am 'on it', I feel less convinced and if honest I am struggling to motivate myself to knuckle down and get on with it. I think I need a holiday.