#maynoothuniversity — Public Fediverse posts

Week (and Academic Year) Ending

I know many people think that University staff are on holiday all the way through the summer, particularly August, but this week has been very busy indeed, not only because of the Eclipse Event. It is somewhat cooler today, but the heat this week has also contributed to my general sense of exhaustion.

For a start I had repeat examinations to correct. I collected my first scripts Monday 10th and managed to correct them all the same day as I wanted to get everything done before the Eclipse on Wednesday afternoon. The other modules I had to grade involved fewer students so I achieved that goal satisfactorily.

Monday 10th also saw the for the dissertations for our MSc course in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics. I’m glad to say all the students handed in their project reports by the deadline and all our now being graded. The presentations were held this morning (Friday 14th) and all went well.

With the repeat examinations and the MSc dissertations now in hand, next week we have two separate sets of Examination Boards, one for the undergraduate repeats and one for the (postgraduate) Masters. I have to attend the Engineering Board as well as Physics, as there were students repeating my Engineering Mathematics module. The MSc students will subsequently be given their final grades and will have completed, as will the final-year undergraduates who needed to pass a repeat in order to graduate. Other undergraduates will find out whether they can pass into the next year of their course. Only after all this will the academic year 2025/26 really come to close.

Conferrring (graduation) ceremonies will be held from 7th to 10th September for those who have already completed – the Masters students and students who need to repeat paper(s) in order to graduate will have to wait until November for their ceremony.

On Friday next (21st August), school students in Ireland will get their Leaving Certificate results, which signals the onset of student enrolment for the 2026/27 academic year. I noticed that in the UK A-level students got their results this week. In Ireland we will find out over the following weeks, we will find out exactly how many new students we have coming in, and how many continuing. Then it will be orientation week, followed by the start of lecturing for the new term, by which point we will know how many people we will have in our classes.

And so it continues. But, for me, not for much longer…

#LeavingCertificateResults #MaynoothUniversity #RepeatExaminations

Maynooth Eclipse Weather Watch

As I mentioned last week, the Department of Physics at Maynooth University will be hosting an Eclipse Event, this week on Wednesday August 12th. This sold out very quickly so we expect a good turnout. In the last few days we have been featured prominently in articles in the Irish Times and The Journal and on the RTÉ website. Although it is officially full, there may be a few returns, so it is worth checking on the day to see if we can fit you in.

The viewing of the eclipse will of course depend on the weather, but we have talks lined up indoors and a pop-up planetarium so I hope people will turn up even if the weather isn’t great. I’ve been checking the forecast on the Met Éireann app quite regularly. As of last week it wasn’t very good, with cloud and rain likely but since then it has improved. In the light of my recent post that one can’t really trust Irish weather forecasts more than three days in advance, I thought it would be fun to track the forecast until the big event to see how stable it is.

Here are the summaries for yesterday (Saturday, when it only gave a prediction every three hours for Wednesday), and today (Sunday, where there is an hourly forecast). The peak of the (partial) eclipse is around 7pm (19.00 hours) in Maynooth.

Saturday ForecastSunday ForecastMonday ForecastTuesday Morning Forecast (7am)Tuesday Evening Forecast (5pm)Wednesday Morning Forecast (7am)Wednesday Afternoon Forecast (3pm)

As you can see, the Sunday forecast predicts the temperature on Wednesday to be rather high, with little chance of rain, though with more cloud than the Saturday forecast. I’ll update on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to see how it progresses…

Update: Wednesday 12th, 7.30am. As you can see from the above the forecast for the eclipse is quite good. There is quite a lot of rain out to the west, but it is tracking noreth-eastwards and most of it is forecast to miss Maynooth.

The rainfall situation at 7.30am, Wednesday 12th August

P.S. In the Irish language, “eclipse” can be either urú or éiclips. The former is interesting as it is also the name for a form of initial mutation that occurs certain grammatical situations in Irish, the change at the beginning of a word, where a new letter is placed in front of the original consonant, so that the new letter’s sound replaces (or “eclipses”) the old one.

#DepartmentOfPhysics #Eclipse #MaynoothUniversity #MetÉireann #PartialSolarEclipse #Wednesday12thAugust

Autumn Repeats Again

The repeat examination period at Maynooth University has begun. In fact the first papers were sat yesterday (5th August); the period goes on for ten days or so, I will have four different papers to grade, though I’m expecting only one candidate each for three of them. My first is tomorrow (Friday 7th August).

A couple of years ago, Maynooth University produced this nice good luck message for those resitting so I’ll repeat it here:

Every year at this time I mention the difference between the system of repeats in Maynooth compared to other institutions with which I am familiar, especially in the UK. Elsewhere, students generally take resits when, because they have failed one or more examinations the previous May, they have not accumulated sufficient credits to proceed to the next year of their course. Passing the resit allows them to retrieve lost credit, but their mark is generally capped at a bare pass (usually 40%). That means the student gets the credit they need for their degree but their average (which determines whether they get 1st, 2nd or 3rd class Honours) is affected. This is the case unless a student has extenuating circumstances affecting the earlier examination, such as bad health or family emergency, in which case they take the resit as a `sit’, i.e. for the first time with an uncapped mark.

Here in Maynooth, however, the mark obtained in a repeat examination is usually not capped. Indeed, some students – though not many – elect to take the repeat examination even if they passed earlier in the summer, in order to increase their average mark.

Some people don’t like the idea of uncapped repeats because they feel that it would lead to many students playing games, i.e. deliberately not taking exams in May with the intention of spreading some of their examination  load into August. For this reason the Institute of Physics has decided to impose capped resits as part of its accreditation requirements. Some people here seem to think IOP accreditation is worth having so we’re being pushed into that requirement. I find it heavy-handed and unhelpful. I also think it imposes a dreary uniformity on physics courses in the UK. In any case, IOP accreditation is unimportant unless you want to do postgraduate study in physics in the UK (and often not even then). It doesn’t matter at all anywhere else.

If you think students have an unfair advantage if they don’t take a full diet of examinations in May, then the logical conclusion is that part-time students have an unfair advantage as do students taking micro-credentials consisting of just one or two modules. It’s the essence of the modular system that each module result should be considered on its own merit, not in relation to other modules a student may or may not have taken at the same time. One can of course argue whether the modular system is good or not, but if you have it then you should act consistently in accordance with it. You wouldn’t penalize students who have to work to support their study relative to those who don’t, would you?

And there’s no real evidence of students in Maynooth actually playing the system in the way the IOP thinks they do anyway. For one thing, the results from the repeat examination period are not confirmed until early September so that students that deploy this strategy do not know whether they are going to be able to resume their course until just a couple of weeks before term. That could cause lots of problems securing accommodation, etc, so it doesn’t seem to me to be a good ploy. Finalists adopting this strategy will not be able to graduate with the rest of their cohort and may miss several months of potential employment. I think most of our students are smart enough to realize that it’s a risky strategy.

Anyway, I’d welcome comments for or against whether resits/repeats should be capped/uncapped and on what practice is adopted in your institution.

#Autumn #InstituteOfPhysics #MaynoothUniversity #RepeatExaminations

Lá Saoire i mí Lúnasa

Today, Monday 3rd August 2026, being the first Monday in August, is a Bank Holiday in Ireland. This holiday was created by the Bank Holiday Act of 1871 when Ireland was under British rule. While the August Bank Holiday was subsequently moved to the end of August in England and Wales, it has remained at the start of August in Ireland. It has been a nice morning weather-wise, but in true Bank Holiday fashion we’re promised heavy rain later on, with a chance of thunderstorms.

As I mentioned on Saturday, the first day of August marks the old pagan festival of Lughnasadh, named after the God Lugh, on which is celebrated the beginning of the harvest season. This coincides with the English Lammas Day, one of many Christian festivals with pagan origins. Traditionally this is the start of the harvest season and is celebrated accordingly, with rites involving the first fruit and bread baked from flour obtained from the first corn. It is also one of the cross-quarter days, lying roughly half-way between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere).

Two years ago at this time I was still on sabbatical. That seems like ages ago! When I resumed teaching, in September 2024, I had to teach two modules I’d never taught before: a fourth-year Mathematical physics course on Differential Equations and Complex Analysis and a second-year Engineering Mathematics course. I am doing both of these again so resumption of teaching in September won’t be as challenging, although I will be changing a few things in the light of last year’s experience. Lectures start on Monday 22nd September.

After I return to work tomorrow the next big item on the agenda is the repeat examination period, which starts on Wednesday August 5th. The first paper for which I have responsibility is on Friday 7th, but I won’t be able to get the scripts until Monday 10th so I have a bit of time to do other stuff before I start marking. I am not expecting many scripts, actually, so it shouldn’t be too onerous a task to get them done promptly.

Next week also sees the deadline for the dissertations for our MSc course. I have been supervising a student this year and will probably be asked to give comments on the final draft of his report. Then the MSc students have their presentations on Friday 14th August. They have all completed the taught component of the course so the only thing left to assess are these projects. Students will get their final results later this month, along with the resitting undergraduate students.

In between all this we have our Eclipse Event on August 12th. This sold out very quickly so we expect a good turnout. The event was advertised quite a bit in the local media, e.g. here. The viewing of the eclipse will of course depend on the weather, but we have talks lined up indoors and a pop-up planetarium so I hope people will turn up even if the weather isn’t great. Although it is officially full, there may be a few returns, so it is worth checking on the day to see if we can fit you in.

Anyway, after the repeat examinations and project assessments are done, the marks uploaded, and the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Examination Boards have done their work, the next job will be to prepare for the new intake of students. This year’s Leaving Certificate results will be announced on Friday 21st August, at which point we’ll see how many students (if any) we have studying Physics next academic year (which, if all goes to plan, will be my penultimate…)

#DepartmentOfPhysics #Eclipse #LáSaoireIMíLúnasa #Lughnasadh #MaynoothUniversity