Welcome to the testmaster site for
Student Assessment Research

and discussion

I started life in a town called Sunderland, in the North East of England, in February1949. At the age of 18 months I contracted Polio which very of nearly ended my life little there and then. However, I survived with little permanent damage.

School was a huge disappointment. I left at 16 with very little of real consequence to show for the experience. For reasons which I cannot remember clearly, I went to college for 3 years and studied hairdressing - passing with a high level of success. I worked in the hairdressing industry for 3 years, moved to self-employment selling wholesale hairdressing products, then biscuits for a major company. Tired of this, I went back to hairdressing in 1972, and opened my own salon, followed a year later by a second. I ran these two businesses for 13 years and made a good living.

By 1985 terminal boredom had set in, and I started to teach at a local further education college - I loved it. I began to teach full-time in January 1986; completed a part-time teachers teaching qualification the same year, and spent the next 2 years doing a Cert.Ed professional teaching certificate at Durham New College - an amazing experience which changed my life.

Having completed the Cert.Ed very successfully, I was advised to do a B.Ed degree. Intimidated by the prospect, eventually I signed up and passed with an upper second (2.1). During the second year of my degree, in February 1990, my daughter was born - very distracting, but the most wonderful thing that has happened in my life. My final year project focused upon the use of an androgogical approach to teaching adults.

In 1992, following a "year out" from study, I signed up for an M.Sc in Computer Based Information Systems at the University of Sunderland (another 3 years of hard slog). My final year disertation documented the use of Expert Systems in the construction of formative/summative student assessment systems. The tutors appeared happy to award me the Masters degree, and that is where I sit today.

But....

I had an offer to study for a Ph.D, however, at 50, the attraction of the work (and my wife's patience) is wearing thin.

Meantime, I am growing bored with an education system determined to continue as it has always done (badly). Computers and the net are about to blow existing education and training provision out of the water, and those with power to change things STILL can't see it. Oh well - I haven't time to wait - I have things I want to see happen before I die.