The dreadful story of what went wrong

This article is a humorous attempt to chronicle the progress of a fictitious course — in this case an assessment course, but many of the gaffes which we record are common to all kinds of courses and conferences. We have tried to include as many as possible of the avoidable errors which can be committed; we have footnoted some of the more obvious and common errors. The reader may find some that have slipped our net. As a rough distinction, there are four kinds of error illustrated here: administrative errors, errors in planning and design, errors arising from lack of interpersonal skills, and misalignments in the organisational climate. Some conference or course designs may be more robust than others in the degree to which they are affected aby these different kinds of error; an assessment course is probably more susceptible than most to most of them — which is why we chose it. The account is of course purely fictitious. We rather hope that this article will help to ensure that it stays that way. Any resemblance to persons living or dead should probably be a matter for regret.