HE ideas: Medieval Time Travel

Tomorrowland, Dr. Who and Back to the Future are all examples of Science Fiction that borrow ideas from H.G.Wells' The Time Machine - one of the first novels of its kind.

Each story, in its own way, faces the dilemma of potentially changing the future by acting on information gained through time travel in the present or the past.

PICTURE BY TWOBEE AT FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET

Without a DeLorean, Tardis or handy Wormhole, however, few of us can know, with certainty, what the future will bring.  The further into the future we step, the more uncertain things become.

And yet educators prepare young people for future careers that neither they nor their students can possibly know will exist.  Employers have been heard to say that they have to get their new recruits to "unlearn" what they absorbed at University, technical subject knowledge becomes out of date, although basic concepts do remain longer until they are challenged.

So what learning pervades?

Our ancestors, the ancient Greeks, Romans and Medieval Universities across Europe had it - Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.  The combination of expressing thought, thinking and then using the product to persuade, teach, and motivate others.

In order to prepare our students for the future, our Time Machine should visit the past, understand how the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) can be moulded to today's educational demands and then prepare programmes of study that contextualise these virtues in Art, Engineering, Management etc.

Oh, you're already doing that?  Bravo!

Sabbatical blog: Sharing good practice in Sydney

A Business School Dean (who will remain nameless) once described UK Business Schools as a "cottage industry" - each University building its own solution to common problems in its institutional shed.

In Australia, a problem shared is a problem halved (or even decimated).  Let me explain:

A FAMOUS VIEW OF SYDNEY FROM THE NORTH SHORE

The annual ANZQAN meeting of accreditation directors and managers from the Universities in Australia and New Zealand, held in November at the University of Sydney, was a case in point.  Business Schools face the same hurdles and uncertainties as they prepare for accreditation or re-accreditation by AACSB or EFMD, in particular.  Each accreditation body has its own priorities and rules to follow and "rival" Business Schools can learn from the experiences of others - and they do.

What an excellent example of co-operation and sharing - benefitting not only each individual institution but also the accrediting bodies as administrative and senior appraiser time is spent on key issues rather than on peripheral details.

Cooperation with competitors -everyone wins.  Now, just where could that principle be used in the UK?

HE explained: Acronyms

Higher Education abounds with Organisations, Institutions, Faculties, Programmes of Study and even courses that are known to their audience via an acronym.

PICTURE BY SMARNAD AT FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET

• DfE - Department for Education
• UCL - University College London
• BBS - Birmingham Business School
• AFM - Accounting and Financial Management
• HRM - Human Resource Management

A good, memorable acronym, in any field of endeavour, needs to have the following qualities:

1. Brevity
2. At least ONE Vowel (some of the above do not qualify)
3. Pronounceability as a word  (not simply saying the letters)
4. Unable to shock your granny (Bradford University Maths Society was always a favourite)

Happily, my acronym for acronyms is BAPU.

Hang on....that's the acronym of the British Association of  Paediatric Urologists.

Or am I taking the Programme In Social Science?

Happy Christmas

To all readers of this blog:

May the Peace of the Christmas Season remain with you all year

THE POND FAMILY CRIB

Best wishes for a reflective 2018

Marvellous - a blueprint for student engagement?

Keele University, in the UK Midlands, plays host to a unique character - Neil Baldwin.  Neil wrote a book about his colourful life that was made into a BBC film - Marvellous.  Neil also lists his occupation as "Clown" but has also been Stoke City kit man, Keele University greeter and his own football club player-captain.

Neil knows a thing or two about student engagement.  Lessons that many academics could follow:

PICTURE BY MOUSE GRAPHICS AT FREEDIGITALIMAGES.COM

Student engagement needs:

• access to tutors at sensible times
• knowledge of both academic and pastoral support available
• time to spend with those who need it most
• a relationship built on mutual trust
• people who care
• lecturers wearing baggy trousers (or is that just Neil the Clown?)

Fake that, and you've got it made!

P.S. Neil @Keele does not fake it.

HE ideas: There's no "I" in Team

I'm re-visiting this hoary old topic as it simply will not go away (much to the horror of many academics who see all of the pain and none of the profit.)

I previously wrote about using team or group work for student assessment as it promises to develop transferable skills as well as work of academic merit.

PICTURE BY STUART MILES AT FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET

Today, however, I turn my attention to Team teaching.

Team teaching can be uniquely rewarding, efficient and effective.  Only a few institutions can muster the resources to allow more than one instructor in the class at any one time so I'd better define what I mean:

Team teaching is the phenomenon whereby students are taught by multiple lecturers over the period of a course - this can be a whole term or an intensive block.  Lecturers can focus on their favoured topics, teach only for a few weeks and then concentrate on their other duties. For students, this can give variety, fresh and enthusiastic lecturers every session...but it can also give confusion.

The same skills of teamwork we demand of students need to be used by lecturers.  Teaching staff must be fully briefed, kept in touch with other elements of the course, remain engaged even when it's not "their" session.

That really demands a team leader, keeping members informed, in-line and integrated.

Like herding cats, really...

HE ideas: Youth (and education) wasted on the young?

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was the original source of the quotation "Youth is wasted on the young".  The implication, however, that older, more experienced individuals would not squander the enthusiasm, energy, and openness of youth is sadly lacking in parts of the HE sector.
Let me explain:

In a naive and rather wonderful way, many academics hope that their students will grow to love the narrow branch of their discipline as much as they do.  Sadly, in the vast majority of cases, they will not.

Such enthusiasm and motivation coming from an intrinsic interest in the discipline is a noble aim but rarely sufficient to rely on for actual engagement of a whole cohort.  Instead, academics must deploy techniques to engender real engagement (i.e. engagement separate from the fear and desperation of failure in the assessment).

GBS circa 1915, via Wikimedia Commons

Back to Shaw:

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything"

So, what to change? what techniques to deploy?

If you were to ask a micro-economics teacher what they would hope that the average first-year undergraduate learned in Microeconomics 101 they might rehearse the typical published Learning Outcomes for their module.  One example would be:

By the end of this module students should:

 be able to use economic theory to explain consumer behaviour;

So how will we set about achieving that outcome?

• Start at Chapter 1 of the textbook
• Draw lots of demand and supply diagrams and, just before students have grasped the enormity of that concept, start fiddling with them, drawing different lines, moving curves, changing slopes......you get the drift?

OR

We teach that such economic models are built upon observation, testing, modelling and re-testing ideas.  So, why not get the students to do just that?  Let them explore a "simple" consumer scenario and ; 

• DRAW THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS,
• TEST THEM
• REFINE THEM
• DISCOVER THE KEY CONCEPTS FOR THEMSELVES.

It means a focus on learning rather than teaching.

Just a thought.