#the botany department is sketchy

[puppadumz]

Over 40 podcasts on the Not Yet Started list in my notes app. 17 on my Mid Listen section.

Am I starting over SCP: Find Us Alive instead of listening to those other podcasts on the list?

Yes, yes I am.

Episode 05 Dash Two is just perfection. Raddagher's introduction is *chef's kiss*. Literally burst out laughing even though I've already heard it before. This is my comfort podcast.

The reveal.

Records has toilet wine.

The monster.

Spoilers in tags.

[noafterparties]

Hey it’s 1am who wants taz angst(?)

Taz Balance Spoilers!

It’s that feeling again. The bone aching tiredness mixed with treacherous loneliness. —————-

Barry Bluejeans has had a long night. The IPRE is buzzing with life, even as Barry trecks back to his apartment on the shitter side of town. Since the announcement of The Mission, every department has been working around the clock, trying to show it’s prowess and dedication, all in the name of being represented on this mission. 

Barry himself has been spearheading the scientific department’s efforts, revamping and revising every calculation, specification, and project under the suns. Gods he wants to be chosen. To see what’s out there, explore what has never been seen. To travel. 

So long days were the norm, falling and fading into a pattern of stress, work, and fitful sleep. Considering the sky above him, a deep amethyst, pinpricked with light, he’d wager it was about three in the morning. A smile drapes across his face as he considered the universe stretched around him, and then-

“Watch it!” A pair of elves brush past him, sparking him from his daze. He continues on his way home, alone.

———————

Taako and Lup have just left their apartment, barely taking notice of the human that stopped dead in their path. It’s been a busy few months for them too, and they finally, finally, have a corresponding night off from the IPRE. Naturally, they head downtown, dressed out in coordinating outfits.

Taako is sporting an off-the-shoulder tank that is a stark blue, with white pants, knee-high black boots, and wicked eyeliner, applied by Lup’s steady hand. He’s got a ludicrously tall hat on, one that Lup mocked right up until Taako actually put it on, then conceded to it actually completing the outfit, rather than just throwing the whole thing off. Lup is in tall stilettoes, fishnet leggings, a white overcoat, barely covering her favorite clubbing dress: a similarly-stark blue dress with a dipping neckline, and a collar to accentuate her cheekbones. Her hair is intricately done into a braided bun, courtesy of Taako’s deft hands.

They were going Out. They had already agreed that this night was about the two of them, and nothing would stop the two of them from seeing the first sunrise from their favorite rooftop bar. They’d figure out what to do after that. With the sheer amount of alcohol they were planning on drinking, it wouldn’t be too hard.

As they chatted about which of their favorite haunts to hit- they still had at least a few hours ‘til the first sunrise- they passed a dimly lit shop with only one patron inside. They aren’t lonely, but maybe they rejoice a little deeper that night because they know this life won’t always hold.

————————

Lucretia hadn’t meant to come out this late. She barely ever left the house after the suns set normally, but she simply couldn’t wait ‘til morning. 

She had woken up in a cold sweat, new thoughts and ideas running through her head like a song. Immediately awake, knowing she shouldn’t (and indeed wouldn’t) waste a creative jolt like this, Lucretia reached for her bedside journal. She’d planned to just jot something promising down, and then let her mind rest after such a busy day at the IRPE, but she knocked into her ink well before she reached her journal.

Grumpy, partially sleep-deprived, and definitely underdressed compared to the elves she’d seen on the street, Lucretia found herself in one of the only all-night writing stores within a sketchy ten-minute walk to her apartment. It was small, dimly lit, and smelt of parchment, and even as grumpy as Lucretia was, she appreciated the place. Without it, she’d be out of luck, ink, and the creative spark that had oh-so-wonderfully awoken her at three in the morning.

She bought three wells- they’d empty so fast- and then watched as the storekeeper carefully packaged them. Taking her parcel, she turned towards home...and then shook her head. No, clearly she wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight. She turned towards the IPRE instead, and began her walk.

When she reached her department of the IPRE, she wasn’t surprised to see several people still working. There were the usual: Ingran, the elf from accounting, Cyas, the library keeper, and Johnston, the compiler. She nodded hellos to them, walking past them in favor of the sanctum that was her office.

Lucretia was clinging desperately to the creativity that had woken her up, determined to get it down on paper. She knows her muse is fleeting and will leave her bare the minute ink touches paper. She barely noticed the small form of a gnome, chatting with Cyas.

————————

Davenport knew he was an outlier at the IRPE. His clan had mostly been nocturnal, and growing up, so had he. Even moving to Brillow, the city where the IRPE was based, didn’t really change this. He got up a little earlier, usually an hour or so before the first sunset, to overlap with regular day staff, and then stayed a little later in order to coordinate with the day staff again in their ‘morning’.

He had been a little surprised when the day staff started to stretch that system, staying longer and longer, showing up at less reasonable times of their ‘night’, but he supposed that he should have expected it. When The Mission was announced, he wasn’t particularly concerned with showing off for the bosses. As lead astrologer at the IRPE, a trained head captain of interplanar ships, and already possessing an advanced knowledge of physics and mechanics, the IPRE Board would have to be deaf or blind not to pick him for the mission.

This was simply a state of fact: Davenport was qualified for the position. But that didn’t stop him from working a little harder when everyone else did too. A human woman passed by him, reinforcing how important The Mission was, if she was up at this hour. He was currently working with Cyas, the bookkeeper for the IPRE library, to expand the literary material regarding manipulations of electron fields. They’d been petitioning for weeks to coordinate with their co-facility the Materials Research Society and it looked like they were getting somewhere. The head of the IPRE had okayed them to link frequencies and discuss sharing equipment between the organizations.

Making their way back towards the library communications hub, they pass through the windowed hall facing the IPRE courtyard. The windowed hall distorts his short reflection, and even as he walks he is towered and overshadowed by his coworker. Outside of the window, which is much easier to focus on, the courtyard only has one silhouette on it: a tall figure with broad shoulders and bushy sideburns.

————————-

Magnus doesn’t even know what he’s doing here. Insomnia had struck him earlier that night (morning?) and he had just...wandered.

He’d always been skilled at pushing off feelings he didn’t want to contemplate during the day. During the day there were things to do, people to talk to, boxes to fill and move, data to check, activities to get to, obligations, life. At night everything felt...still. Magnus knew that was an illusion, sure there were parties and clubs and people, but it wasn’t his. He felt disconnected from it all.

When he got that way, the only workable solution was to walk. Feet to pavement, night air moving, living, around him. His feet would take him across town, up random alleys, across bridges, through crowds just to feel that life, that purpose. And then they would bring him back. Whether the walk had been an hour or all night, Magnus always felt ready to go to bed or disconnect in the way of his own choice.

So he was at a loss as to why his feet brought him to the IRPE and then left him there. He felt rooted to the courtyard, deeply connected to what was happening around him. Except. Nothing was happening. Shadows were passing through the windows of the IRPE, but they did that at all hours. Magnus was intimately familiar with the life here because this is where he lived his.

Securing the discoveries and safeguarding the employees at the IRPE, Magnus spent hours watching the patterns and life at the IRPE. After The Mission was announced, maybe those patterns had sped up, gotten a little more frantic and dizzying, but that only made his work all the more crucial.

Magnus turned to head home, uncertain of whether he would be able to sleep or not. Insomnia really was a bitch.

———————

Merle hadn’t seen anyone in hours. He was currently sitting in a dark greenhouse, waiting. Yawning more like. He wanted to be in bed. He hadn’t been home in a day or two, too excited over the potential to see Portulaca grandiflora bloom for the first time this century.

The plant’s blossom structure had been perplexing him for days, refusing to open early, despite his many efforts. The only thing that remained was to wait. Merle wasn’t great with that, and offered up a silent prayer to Pan to hurry up. P. grandiflora belonged to genius that had developed the unique trait of neoteny, making it extremely difficult to tell juveniles from adults. As head botanist at the IPRE, Merle was hoping to be the first to witness a true first bloom of the plant. Generally speaking, it would be very cool and very pretty. Scientifically speaking, this plant could reveal how to prolong a life cycle by proxy of prolonging true sexual development, as well as a host of other uses in medicinal practices thanks to the pollen.

Merle isn’t a loner by nature, no dwarves are really. Merle comes from a huge clan of Highchurch hill dwarves, and born into a family so large leads to a support system unmatched by most. Striking out on his own to join the sciences, learning botany and scientific cataloging distanced him from his family in a way he isn’t particularly proud of.

He’s used to the crutch of a support system that is his greenhouse.

———————

We’ve met our crew. But they’ve yet to meet each other.

Authors Note: Hey! Its taz (I know, everyone’s shocked) but I had this idea spinning in my head for an hour or two about how weird it would be if none of the birds knew each other pre-mission announcement. Then that spiraled into, well, this? So idk if it’s angst in the traditional sense, but I did kinda like writing it since I’m in a similar mood. Hope you enjoyed

[thermoplasticroadmarking]

TEF: so what is a ‘subject’?

Opinion piece by Professor G. R. Evans

The subject-based Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) promises to give prospective university students clear, easy-to-understand information so that they can see at a glance where ‘excellent teaching and student outcomes can be found’, at a level of detail which will enable them to choose not only a university but a course. A consultation has just opened on the ‘technical aspects’ of the implementation of this ‘subject level’ TEF. The consultation runs alongside a Year Three Subject Pilot, which is being conducted by the  soon-to-disappear Higher Education Funding Council for England, on behalf of the Department for Education.  The Consultation’s closing date is 20 May.

What counts as a ‘subject’? 

If provision of ratings for courses at ‘subject’ level is to be robust, an accurate definition of a ‘subject’ is going to be important. The prospective student still at school has already faced ‘ subject-choices’ on the way to gaining the qualifications needed to get a university place.  But those options may not fit tidily with the ‘informed choices’ TEF hopes to offer. The conventional dozen subjects appropriate for degree-level study in England identified from the nineteenth century still dominate the list of A level subjects likely to be taken seriously by the Russell Group universities.  Students whose schools put them in for some of the wide range of BTEC qualifications at level 3 may then find they are in subjects not acceptable for entry to some universities or for some courses. On this problem UCAS offers some guidance and a warning.  TEF planning so far does not appear to have considered its relevance.

The subjects of courses on offer by higher education providers have multiplied and diversified hugely in recent decades. Interdisciplinary work too is having its day with Government endorsement in both teaching and research. It is recognised in the Consultation document that ‘provision at many providers will cross the boundaries of any subject or discipline definitions we use’.

Comparing the incommensurable is bound to be unsatisfactory and  yet it seems clear that the definition of a ‘subject’  for TEF purposes is a long way from having any agreed parameters  of subject classification to enable like to be compared with like.   The Pilot identified a ‘strong consensus’ that:

 it would be greatly preferable for the TEF to use an existing subject classification system rather than to create a new one.

However, there have been several attempts to group subjects leading to several rival lists, so a choice has to be made:

The CAH has recently been developed by HESA as an aggregation system to sit alongside the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS), the new subject coding system. CAH and HECoS will together replace JACS, which is currently used by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) for students applying to university.

Among the Consultation questions is one touching on the Quality Assurance Agency’s Subject benchmark statements, which offer a further approach to the identification and grouping of subjects in higher education.  The QAA sees these as, among other things, ‘of interest to prospective students and employers, seeking information about the nature and standards of awards in a subject area’, in other words, as meeting a key need identified by the architects of subject-level TEF. The Statements are compiled by committees of specialist academics and regularly reviewed. They ‘set out expectations about standards of degrees in a range of subject areas’:

They describe what gives a discipline its coherence and identity, and define what can be expected of a graduate in terms of the abilities and skills needed to develop understanding or competence in the subject.

Nevertheless this system of subject identification was not favoured by the architects of the Pilot:

 The two classifications that received most support were the Units of Assessment used in the Research Excellence Framework (REF UoAs) and the CAH developed by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

The consultation document indicates that the CAH2 (see Table 1) will be used.

Table 1: CAH2 classification to be used in TEF

Against using the UoAs on which the REF was based, it was pointed out that linking REF to TEF for these purposes would:

 send a negative message contrary to our commitment to increase the parity of esteem between research and teaching, because it would mean research considerations would be driving the TEF as well as the REF.

Besides, it was suggested that it might be unfair to students even to try:

one grouping includes both ‘veterinary’ and ‘food science’, two subjects which are completely different from a student perspective.

‘Mixed module’ subjects

 This last point is of an importance which does not seem to have been considered at the current stage of modelling a subject-based TEF.  It is instructive to look at the content of some Complementary Medicine courses,  which have been only rather recently added to the catalogue of accepted UK degree subjects, for example ‘Herbal medicine’ and ‘Chiropractic’.

A BSc in Herbal Medicine is offered by the post-1992 University of Westminster, in its Faculty of Science and Technology.  This course includes conventional accepted scientific modules such as ‘botany’ and ‘physiology’ and others with less established traditional acceptance as serious science such as ‘Herbal medicine therapeutics’.  A graduate might or might not find the embedded qualification for  ‘botany’ or ‘physiology’ obtained on this course helpful in getting a job.

What is an’ accreditation’ worth in the job market?

The accreditation of courses is another area the planning for subject-level TEF has not yet addressed. In some cases getting a job in the field of a degree depends on licensing by a professional body.

An Integrated Undergraduate Masters in Chiropractic (MChiro) course is offered by the alternative provider BPP University.  Its ‘course details’ available to students looking for information online are sketchy from the point of view of subject-matter detail, but it notes accreditation of the course by the General Chiropractic Council (GCC):

‘This means that you are qualified to apply to register with the GCC, the statutory body regulating Chiropractic in the UK.’ 

This accrediting body is moving to self-assessment by its recognised providers, including arrangements for programme submission.  A graduate would be able to proceed to practise as a Chiropractor but again it is less clear how acceptable this degree might be for other purposes.

Apart from the Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies on which the QAA keeps an eye, self-defined ‘accreditors’ are legion. For example, Counselling and Psychotherapy have numerous ‘accrediting’ bodies.   These vary considerably in their membership requirements and some have categories of membership, such as ‘associate member’ and ‘accredited member’.

So in many subjects on offer for degrees it is less clear what accreditation may be available for ‘professional’ purposes and what weight it may carry in the search for employment or practice.

What is the relationship between the study of a subject and a well-paid job?

There is a considerable area of uncertainty about the relationship between the study of a subject and a well-paid job going even wider than these considerations.  Higher education graduate employment and earnings released on 15 March. is an update to the Longitudinal educational outcomes data (LEO). But the LEO data ‘shows a plethora of different factors influences earning potential, particularly student background and environmental attributes, which are all outside the control of HE institutions’. It does not and cannot demonstrate a clear link between degree outcomes alone and graduate earnings.

The problem of assessing subject provision has defeated previous attempts

The last time an attempt was made to rate teaching in universities at subject level through the Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA), it had to be ended in  2001 in the face of vigorous protest both from academics themselves and from universities, whose managements complained of the excessive burden it imposed.

However, it also came to grief as a result of ‘gaming’ by universities which made its results no longer pausible as a measure of achievement:

The teaching quality assessment exercise has been rendered all but meaningless by grade inflation, gamesmanship and the rise of inspectors’ “cartels”, experts have claimed.

In 2005, the remaining selective ‘drill down’ QAA ‘’discipline audit trails’ came to an end.Providers will certainly ‘game’ whatever the TEF introduces and because ‘teaching intensity’ information ‘is not routinely collected by providers’ introducing that ‘supplementary’ requirement  ‘would require new data to be collected’:

’The Government considers it important that data collection in this area should not itself drive teaching practices’. 

It seems inevitable that it will do so.

If rating ‘subject-teaching’ proves not to be reliable, it could become a hostage to fortune. A graduate from Anglia Ruskin University who claims she did not get the career advancement the prospectus had seemed to promise and had unsuccessfully taken her complaint through various channels, recently decided to sue. Reliance on the planned subject-based ratings could tempt many more disappointed students to do the same if they claim they had been misled. At the very least providers could find themselves facing a rising tide of complaints. In their turn some may be seeking redress against the designers of the new TEF for ratings they may claim to have been distorted by failure to identify the ‘subjects’ accurately.

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