RESPONSES by UCL to: QAA CL08/14 CONSULTATION ON REVISED SUBJECT
BENCHMARK STATEMENTS: Archaeology, Chemistry, Classics and ancient history,
Geography and History
UCL welcomes the opportunity to comment on the above. The consultation was circulated to
Heads of relevant Departments with a request that it be discussed at their teaching
committees. Colleagues in the Department of Archaeology note that overall they found their
document to be an excellent one which highlighted the breadth of the discipline and they
would be pleased to be involved in any further work of the QAA in developing standards.
Colleagues in the Department of History have responded directly to the QAA’s online
questionnaire.
Colleagues in the UCL Departments of Greek and Latin and Chemistry have made the
following comments with the request that these be passed to the QAA:
Classics and ancient history
(1) We are generally happy with the draft and only have a couple of comments.
We noticed that in discussion of languages the statement tends to use "Greek and /
or Latin", where Greek is sometimes specified as "(ancient, medieval or modern) and
sometimes just "(ancient or modern)". For Latin no such specification is given, but
one might also consider something like "(ancient, medieval or Renaissance)".
(2) The document does not emphasise the acquisition of critical thought. At 3.5 under
“general abilities” to be acquired by students, it mentions critical reflection on the
extent and limits of knowledge gained, critical judgements in the light of evidence
and critical “appreciation” of art and literature. These appear a little limited and do not
seem to get to the heart of what a “critical” approach would aim to achieve. One
would hope that the study of another culture and its products would allow students
the possibility of radically interrogating their own society, the presuppositions on
which it is based, and the means by which ideologies are constructed
and perpetuated in literary and wider cultural representation.
Chemistry
(1) Section 2.1: the statement that "it follows that the scope of chemistry as a subject is
essentially limitless" seems both unhelpful and questionable. It is unhelpful because
it does not serve to define any scope and questionable because one could conceive
of areas of study that would not, in any reasonable discussion, be considered as
falling under the heading of "chemistry".
(2) The structure of section 3 seems a little odd. At the moment the general aims of the
degree programme in 3.1 do not include any reference to students actually learning
any chemistry. In other words, actually learning chemistry is not, according the
document, one of the general aims of a degree in chemistry. This may be just an
issue of structure and the apparent anomaly might be avoided by making 3.2 and 3.3
3.1.1 and 3.2.2 respectively.
(3) Section 4.2: the last bullet point seems quite vague and would benefit from wording
that ties these issues more directly to chemistry.
(4) Section 7.5: we would question whether demonstrating "some originality" in
experimental work should be considered a threshold level of competence for masters
(specifically MSci) students. We would use originality as a means of distinguishing
between students at the upper end of a cohort but would not normally expect it
across the board.