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subtext ***************************************************** 'Truth: lies open to all' ***************************************************** Issue 143 18 February 2016 ***************************************************** Fortnightly during term time. All letters, contributions and comments to: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk subtext does not publish material that is submitted anonymously, but will consider requests for publication with the name withheld. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. Back issues and subscription details can be found at www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext For tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder', see: www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/ CONTENTS: editorial, shrinkage, f’coffee?, failure will be tolerated, colleges, SCAN, news from abroad, continuing saga, fracking banks, successes, lost and found, more f’coffee?, shart attack, vagina monologues, concert review, letters. ***************************************************** EDITORIAL Lancaster University's response to the Higher Education Green Paper has now been circulated via LU Text and, in the main, is an excellently-worded rejoinder to the proposals for TEF and "opening up the sector to new providers". subtext is worried, however, by the response to Question 23 on "deregulatory measures". The government asked whether, due to universities' greatly reduced reliance on public funds, they should still be classed as public bodies and, in particular, subject to freedom of information legislation. Alternative providers of HE, such as BPP, are not classed as public bodies; the government is concerned that this might lead to an "uneven playing field." Given UMAG's continued enthusiasm for the "simplification" of our charter and statutes (see subtexts 138, 139 & 140), the university's response should come as no surprise: "We strongly welcome the proposal to remove the requirement to comply with Freedom of Information legislation. We have no problem with transparency, but in our view the Act has added a disproportionate burden on the sector. […] To provide a level playing field with private providers, we would expect a reduction in regulatory burden in other areas, including that relating to procurement, equalities legislation and the Trade Unions and Labour Relations Act." These sentiments are shared by Universities UK. subtext recommends watching the proceedings of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information from the morning of 25 January 2016, where Nicola Dandridge of UUK argued for the removal of universities' FOI obligations. As far as UUK is concerned, disclosure of salaries is a major concern (note that the quote is from a verbatim transcript): "The case related to primarily disclosure of non-academic salaries at a senior level and the reason that that was resisted by the university was that it felt that these were very competitive roles where it was difficult to recruit these members of staff operating in a very competitive global context […] It was felt that it was damaging to have to reveal the salaries because it would put people off coming to the UK to apply for these jobs…" [http://tinyurl.com/hfbr4kn] The Senate next meets on 2 March, and subtext hopes that senators will question the wisdom of these sentiments. Public universities should not be afraid to say that they are better, in so many ways, than private HE providers like BPP. Surely? **************************************************** THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE SHRINKING EMOLUMENT It’s that time of year when UCU likes to launch its national pay claim campaign by publicising the huge pay increases that vice-chancellors have been awarding themselves, in stark contrast to the pay of the workers and peasants in academia. In addition, this year UCU is also publishing the expenses and accommodation perks available to VCs. All this information has been gleaned from Freedom of Information requests, just the sort of thing that the government (and our own vice-chancellor, see above) would like to see abolished for HE. The top-paying institution last year was Salford University, which paid out £516K, closely followed by Durham with £511K. So where did Lancaster stand? Unbelievably, we weren’t even in the top 50, where the bottom place was held by Hull at £298K. Surely an institution of Lancaster’s repute must at least be above the average of £272K for hard working vice-chancellors? Not so. Our dedicated team of researchers had to dig deep into the UCU report’s appendices to discover the shameful secret: our VC was paid a mere £262K, well below those heading such centres of excellence as Liverpool Hope, Leeds Beckett and London South Bank. But that’s not the most startling finding. This figure actually represented a cut of 5% over what the VC earned last year. Surely a mistake? Our team flicked through the University’s Annual Accounts for 2015 to check the size of the Vice-Chancellor’s Emolument, only to discover that indeed it had shrunk from £281K in 2014 to £262K in the last financial year. And the reason? Well, according to the University’s official financial statement the VC had failed to achieve his performance-related bonus, which the previous year had netted him £18K. So, despite an increase of 1.8% to his basic salary, the loss of the bonus had brought his earnings down by 5%. Even more puzzling is that this is the first indication we’ve ever had that the VC was on a performance-related bonus scheme. It certainly wasn’t shown in the 2014 accounts, the year of the £18K bonus, nor in any other previous year’s financial statement. So when did this come in? And how was it decided that the VC had/had not achieved his performance targets? And what were they? And who set them? And so on... It has long been the case that many new recruits to University senior management from the private sector have been enthusiasts for performance related pay structures because they had worked so well in Lloyds Bank, or BAE Systems or Carphone Warehouse or wherever. Over time they come to understand that, puzzling as it may sound, most of us who work in higher education are motivated by factors other than fatter wage packets (though they would be nice). Maybe the VC had volunteered as a guinea pig to see if the prospect of extra dosh would be an incentive to higher performance levels? We don’t know and the reason why is that the pay of the VC and other senior staff is shrouded in the mystery created by the Remuneration Committee, a Council sub-committee whose minutes are never made public, not even in doctored form. Surely the rest of the University is entitled to know how senior pay is decided, not least our debt-laden students whose fees support these people. **************************************************** SPOT THE COFFEE The recent opening of Costa Coffee has been of some interest to subtext as of late. The wisdom of Commercial Services opening a branch when it has spent the best part of three years stuffing every bar on campus with silver behemoths that splutter like traction engines is questionable. Then again, the establishment of such a venue is a drop in the ocean - one friend of subtext estimates that, if you include vendors, there are approximately fifty-two places on campus where you can get a coffee. Can you name them all? As a starter for ten, we’ll throw eight of the College bars onto the list (Grad, mercifully, remains immune from creeping Latteism). **************************************************** LET'S TALK ABOUT FAILURE The final report of the QAA's Higher Education Review of Lancaster University is now out (http://tinyurl.com/z46vdrz). The University has performed excellently, meeting the QAA's overall expectations in nineteen out of twenty review areas. subtext accepts that some of its readers will take a less-than-charitable view of the QAA and its "Ofsted-lite" inspection programme - even so, it's good to read we've done well, isn't it? But subtext knows what you're thinking. Which one did we fail on, then? It may seem churlish to dwell on the only downside, but the details are interesting, and worthy of wider debate. The review team was worried by Lancaster's rules on condoning failed courses. For example, to obtain a bachelors degree with honours, you need to have taken Part II courses worth 240 credits, have an average mark across all Part II courses of at least 9.0 out of 24, and have attained a pass (i.e. a mark of at least 9.0 out of 24) in all your courses, possibly after resits. A mark of 9.0 is aligned to the lowest passing grade of D-, so candidates with 9.0 have only just met the learning outcomes of that course. Except... you can still attain honours even if you don't meet this standard, via the process of condonation. Provided your average is at least 9.0, your failed courses are worth no more than 30 credits, and you have attained at least 4.0 out of 24 in all your failed courses, the university will normally allow you to proceed to an honours degree. A mark of 4.0 is aligned to the F2 grade - better than a "poor fail" or a "very poor fail", but still a fail. The academic regulations (aka the MARP) state that "condonation, where allowable, must be granted unless the examiners believe that there is good reason not to do so." The QAA is not happy with this. It expects that "degree-awarding bodies ensure that credit and qualifications are awarded only where the achievement of relevant learning outcomes […] has been demonstrated through assessment." In Lancaster's case, the review team finds that "no area of the academic material of the programme is reserved in the regulations as core to the award and necessary to be passed. For this reason […] the regulations as set out in the MARP do not ensure that the relevant learning outcomes will be met in every case of awarding credit or awards. Therefore […] the Expectation is not met and the associated level of risk is moderate" (report paragraphs 1.55 and 1.62). The university now has until September 2016 to respond. subtext wonders how UMAG will get out of this one because, on the face of it, the QAA raises a very good point. If the learning outcomes for an honours degree are achieved when a student has passed several component courses, each with their own learning outcomes, collectively worth 360 credits, then how can someone who has not achieved this threshold, even by a narrow margin, be deemed to have passed? Are we really happy to accept, in lieu of a pass, an F2 performance in a course? According to the MARP, F2 means that the "attainment of intended learning outcomes [is] appreciably deficient in critical respects, lacking secure basis in relevant factual and analytical dimensions." In percentage terms, F2 corresponds to just 17.8%. On the other hand, if someone attains Class I in fifteen of her Part II courses, but fails her sixteenth course, should we really say "sorry!" and offer a Diploma of HE as a consolation? Hopefully the QAA's criticisms will provide an opportunity for debate, across campus, on our condonation rules. subtext suggests that the matter should be raised at the next meeting of the Senate; if it is, subtext will of course be there to report on it. **************************************************** MATTERS OF PRINCIPAL Members of the University may have seen the County and Pendle College Principalships advertised today. Rachel Fligelstone and Roger ‘Three Colleges’ Gould (who can forget the year-long period where he had Bowland and Lonsdale Colleges unconstitutionally added to his portfolio?) are stepping down after a lengthy period of service. As ever, subtext will use this as an excuse to take a look at how assiduously the recommendations of the waste-of-time College Review have been followed. The review called for more academics to be enticed into applying for the role of Principal - Cartmel and Fylde Colleges appointed two administrators last year, even though each had at least one academic willing to do it. Funny, that. We look forward to seeing who gets the new gigs, and hope that the selection process is now suitably robust and immune from failing to appoint a candidate for a whole year for political reasons. And, of course, we thank Mr. Gould and Ms. Fligelstone for their service. In particular, the latter has been instrumental in securing an off-campus room for County students after years of caterwauling from successive regimes, and both have been an excellent advocate for their membership. **************************************************** THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE EDITORIALISED The most recent SCAN editorial advocated the abolition of elections for Sabbatical Officers, citing low voter turnout as a reason why the process is no longer representative of students. Their solution? For four people on an interview panel to select the post-holders. This notion found support in a student survey (which enjoyed a completion rate roughly the same as a Union election turnout) entitled LUSU ‘Democratic Review’. It certainly is a curious take on ‘reviewing democracy’, although thankfully such an enabling act would be illegal under the Education Act 1994 (II s22(2)(d)). It might seem sad that we have to rely on an act passed by John Major’s government to safeguard democracy, but apparently that’s where we’ve come to. **************************************************** GLOBAL NEWS Our desire to excel as a global university has paid dividends again. This time, Lancaster has been ranked number one in a league table of the most expensive universities in Ghana (http://tinyurl.com/hmadhdp - spot the swoosh!). This is to be expected: when the Senate first discussed the establishment of LU Ghana (in an email consultation!), the fact that the proposed fees would amount to around ten times the average annual Ghanaian wage was raised, and met with the usual non-answers. Furthermore, when the partnership was initially announced, questions of how Lancaster intended to ‘give back’ to the Ghanaian community were ignored by then Deputy VC Bob McKinlay, who insisted that the venture was purely an ‘academic and financial matter.’ There is constant intense caterwauling from the University about how amazing our international campuses are - the SU runs exchange programs and uploads endless photographs of students posing next to landmarks, our global outreach features on all of our most concise promotional materials, and we like to boast of our ambassadorial work in introducing the world to the values of a Western education. So, how is it all going? Our partnership with COMSATS is teetering on the edge. Students have paid millions of rupees for dual degrees, only to discover that the Higher Education Council and the Pakistan Engineering Council deemed the qualifications to be worthless. Furthermore, the chair of the HEC found that none of the teaching was actually being delivered by our staff. In the case of COMSATS, Lancaster was doing nothing more than charging extortionate amounts for a dodgy autograph, providing a level of teaching reported as being worryingly poor (http://tinyurl.com/zwxoq2f), and leaving thousands of students with an unusable piece of paper. This largely was the fault of COMSATS itself, who repeatedly failed to gain permission from the Higher Education Council to proceed with their various dual-degree programs, and HEC itself, who should have intervened sooner. While the issues were eventually ironed out (but not without tense negotiations and students threatening to sue), Lancaster has blatantly been taken for a ride, and therefore was complicit in potentially wasting the time and money of thousands of students in the process. The question is - has the University now decided that these are the sorts of people we should be doing business with, for the good of our reputation? We’ll keep you posted. There are similar question marks hanging over Lancaster’s relationship with GD Goenka in India, which has been awarding degrees which are not professionally recognised in India, despite charging fees that are up to five times higher than other, private institutions in the area. Furthermore, external examiners have taken issue with the lack of rigour in its academic standards. The assertion that Lancaster is demonstrating some sort of ‘social conscience’ by operating in the international community is a nonsense. While some of our partnerships have been fairly priced and extremely well received, the quality of our larger projects has not held up to external scrutiny, students have paid far more for far less than what is on offer, and it seems that the only ‘USP’ for studying at one of Lancaster’s international campuses is the university logo stamped onto your degree certificate. It is incredibly difficult to find any exaltation of the quality of our international campuses outside of our own marketing channels. **************************************************** CONTINUING MEMBERSHIP Given that the policy was announced a year ago, that it was not discussed in Court, and that more retiring staff members continue to be spat out and deprived of the ability to maintain a connection, subtext would just like to take this opportunity to remind readers that the university has ended the conferral of continuing membership to retiring staff members (subtexts passim ad nauseam). We would invite retired staff members to write in with their thoughts and feelings on this policy, but if they were subscribed to subtext via their University email accounts then we cannot live in much hope. **************************************************** A VERY BRITISH COUP While not nearly as dramatic and historic as the great C-Floor occupation of 2014, it is worth noting that the campus branch of Barclays was occupied for a couple of hours on Friday 12th February over its financing of the fossil fuel industry as part of a broader campaign of occupations (endorsed by People & Planet and Friends of the Earth) which also took place in Leeds, Sheffield, London and Oxford. According to our correspondent, who was present at the occupation, the whole affair was most genial. At 11AM, around six campaigners entered the branch, politely informed a cashier that they were occupying their space, but that they should feel free to continue working as they did not intend to disrupt their working day. The cashier politely responded that they understood, but that it was their policy to inform the police and security of any such in-house disruptions, and duly stopped letting customers in, shutting down the branch for the day. The occupation only lasted an hour and a half, after which the occupiers felt they had made their point, and adjourned to Alexandra Square. It was only at this stage that the police arrived, and wished the protestors a nice day after a small admonishment of their bad behaviour. The University of Lancaster has recently committed to divesting from a number of fossil fuel industries, but the student protest movement is ephemeral - it is nice to see that students are continuing to hammer the message home. Those wishing to learn more about the aims and values of the protest can read up on it here: http://tinyurl.com/htadqg6. **************************************************** (VERY) APPLIED PHYSICS Careful readers of LU Text will have noted a few weeks ago that Michael Rafferty, Lancaster graduate in Physics and Music of 1973, received an MBE in the New Year honours. The presence of the names of Lynton Crosby and Jacqueline Gold on the same list may not add to the value of such an award; yet Rafferty’s honour is clearly well deserved. His very non-standard BSc in Physics, with a Part I in Music and two units in violin playing in Part II, had to be negotiated through Senate by Tony Guénault and Denis McCaldin. Although Physics was Rafferty’s major subject, he was an exceptionally good violinist, leading the University orchestra throughout his time here. After graduation, he undertook postgraduate study in physics at Cardiff. Since then he has concentrated on music, as both violinist and conductor: he co-founded Cardiff New Opera Group with Michael McCarthy. Latterly he has been Joint Artistic Director of Music Theatre Wales, a company which is very active in contemporary opera. **************************************************** LU TEXT LOST AND FOUND The subtext collective was a little surprised that the latest LU Text did not mention the contribution of a member of University Council to a recent TV reality show. The programme - “World War Three: Inside the War Room” - was broadcast by BBC 2 earlier this month and featured none other than Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, currently a lay member of Council and a former Minister of State for Security and Counter-Terrorism. She was one of a group of 12 participants drawn from politics, the military and the civil service who acted the parts of key decision-makers during a fictitious military crisis in the Baltic. The scenario they were given was one where the Russian minority in Latvia (a NATO member) sought to break away and join up with Russia. The escalating crisis was closely modelled on the recent events in Ukraine and used real film footage to add a chilling verisimilitude to the situation. However, the participants were not given a script and had to react to the unfolding scenario based on their own views and using their own words as if it was a real situation. The views that were expressed ranged from the softline dovish to the hardline hawkish, with the Baroness invariably on the side of the hawks. Before long the crisis had reached the nuclear level and, following an American nuclear attack on targets inside Russia (which the group had opposed), the participants were told that in retaliation the Russians were about to launch a missile attack on Britain. The group had just minutes to decide whether or not to order a retaliatory strike from British Trident submarines. The reactions of the group were surprising. The ‘doves’ said no and they were joined by others who had previously been the most belligerent in the group. One of them, General Sir Richard Shirreff, said afterwards: “My feeling was that it would become a moral issue… if the UK was to be obliterated, what is going to be achieved if we obliterate half of Russia as well?” When it came to the decision, only three voted “yes”. So where did the Baroness stand? She stated that Britain only targeted military sites and not population centres (this despite the fact that earlier former admiral Lord West had confirmed that the “Moscow Criterion” still operated as part of British nuclear doctrine). As others agonised over their decision, she was fully in favour of nuclear retaliation. But, of course, this was all make-believe. Just a bit of fun. Still, it’s comforting to know that Lancaster University is guided by someone possessed of such firmness of purpose who would not be diverted by moral scruples from making good a threat. At least Facilities will know whom to call next time we have a rabbit problem on campus. **************************************************** OVERHEARD... ... At a popular campus watering hole. “A black coffee, please.” “We’ve not been trained to make black coffee. We can offer you a Latte?” Seinfeld voce: “What’s the deal?!” **************************************************** SHART ATTACK FROM: Mike M. Shart, V-C, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U). TO: Lord Rod E. L. Girdle, Pro-Chancellor. SUBJECT: ??!?!?!?! Rod, I’ve just got the letter from the Remuneration Committee - do you mind explaining to me why I am receiving NO performance bonus this year?! I took a small pay-cut to placate the Unions, and I think that humouring their tedious bleating about departmental bog roll being the wrong colour for their human rights or whatever entitles me to a decade off with pay, let alone some small performance related financial bonus! It’s embarrassing enough that the VCs of the rubbish Universities down south make twice as much as I do - what exactly am I supposed to say to the lads at UUK when they start joking about my ‘shrivelled emolument’, Rod? Why is the Vice-Chancellor of London Cosmopolitan paid more than I am? Has HE created an international campus out of a broom cupboard in Burundi and turned a profit? Has HE set a strategic aim to recruit an entire workforce of catering staff from top ten universities and ACHIEVED it? Does HIS staff survey show that 100% of his academic staff are very satisfied to have a job? No, he hasn’t. So why am I sitting here being told by the UCUnison that being driven around in a Toyota Chernobyl is bad for staff morale? We all know that I am the one who runs the show, but if you want to make your powers anything more than ceremonial then you can piss off back to Lambeth hawking your ‘influence’ over Peter Mandelson in exchange for miniature bottles of Glenlivet. Best wishes, Mike. *** FROM: Lord Rod E. L. Girdle, Pro-Chancellor. TO: Mike M. Shart, V-C, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U). Mike, I don’t know what to tell you. You said that you wanted to create the impression that you aren’t superior to the lowest paid members of staff. Also, the last thing we want is for the students to think that there is an inequality between you and them. You have failed to reach all of your targets this year, and my hands are tied. Rod. *** FROM: Mike M. Shart, V-C, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U). TO: Lord Rod E. L. Girdle, Pro-Chancellor. If it’s equality with students that we’re after, then just deem my failure to meet my targets to be a ‘condoned failure’ and give me half of the money. There could be half a bottle of The Famous Grouse in it for you. *** FROM: Lord Rod E. L. Girdle, Pro-Chancellor. TO: Mike M. Shart, V-C, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U). Done. **************************************************** BACK ON THE VAGENDA - review Valentine’s Weekend: Enough flowers to exhaust the water supplies of an average-sized African country, heart-shaped chocolate-induced diabetes, overpriced, cloyingly rich meals and greeting card company executives everywhere with pound signs in their eyes... Unless, that is, one indulges in a rather different sort of experience, as offered by the Vagina Monolancs in the Great Hall on Saturday and Sunday evening. This annual student-run performance of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues is now in its 14th year at Lancaster, and with good reason: the issues it highlights (including sexism, violence against women and taboos around sexuality) remain relevant today, even in relatively affluent, supposedly liberal societies. It does so by drawing on the voices, histories and personal experiences of hundreds of women interviewed by Ensler, interspersed with factual information about the current plight of specific groups, such as transgendered women or refugees. This was the largest cast your subtext correspondent had ever seen perform the piece (35 women), and at times this somewhat hampered the flow from one monologue to the next. On the other hand, it allowed the production to represent the diversity of the monologues with a similarly diverse cast, and for the actors to build in jokes and poignant allusions to their own identities interleaved with the voices of the women in the monologues. And perfection in staging and delivery is just not the point with this kind of production: the Vagina Monologues exist as a form of political activism linking global and local issues, and to raise money for charity (in this case over £2000 so far for local domestic violence charity LetGo). And despite the occasional stumble there were some outstanding performances: poignant, moving, beautifully executed, culminating in Bethany Jones’s haunting closing song ‘Kaleidoscope’. **************************************************** TRULY ESCHERLENT - review The performance in the Great Hall on Thursday 4 February was given by the Escher Quartet, a young group of four string-players who came together as a regular quartet in 2005. Based in New York, where they serve as Artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, they nonetheless travel widely, and were Radio 3 New Generation Artists in 2010-12. The seating in the Great Hall was arranged in the round, with the quartet in the centre of the audience on a dais. They opened their recital with the first of the Prussian Quartets by Mozart, K 575. These are late quartets, written when Mozart was at the height of his powers and shortly before his early death: sitting close to the stage, it was simply wonderful to watch the themes being passed to and fro among the players. They had a complete understanding of each other, and although they were clearly very familiar with the piece, the performance was as fresh as it could be. This was a quite brilliant performance of what is undoubtedly a work of genius. The second item was the first quartet of Béla Bartók, composed in 1909. At that stage Bartók, with his friend and collaborator Kodály, had discovered that the native Magyar peasant melodies were completely distinct from the gipsy music that Liszt and others used as the basis of their Hungarian rhapsodies. Indeed, it appeared to have its origins much further east in Asia. The chief characteristics of this rustic, colourful music influenced Bartók’s compositions for the rest of his life - including his first string quartet. The Escher Quartet’s performance was vigorous, to the point that the cellist’s bow had lost a number of hairs by the end of the last movement. The final work in the concert was the Death and the Maiden quartet by Schubert, so called because the composer’s own song of this name provides the theme of the second movement. This work, one of the pillars of the string quartet repertoire, is full of contrasts, one moment calm and peaceful, but pierced dramatically by jagged chords the next. It brought this excellent recital by the Escher Quartet to a suitably virtuosic close. Let us hope this first-class group will return to perform at Lancaster again in the near future. **************************************************** LETTERS Dear Subtext, I have followed your discussions of Panopto with some interest. This innovation of course post-dates my time, but as they say, plus ça change. Between my first and second years, I experienced two innovations, ostensibly designed to improve the learning experience. The first was the move away from marks out of 100 and traditional classifications towards the American letter system, which of course had a huge impact on student life. It made us all sweat trying to work out what our letter actually meant in terms of the degree classification we would eventually emerge with. Hundreds of lecturers were forced to convert what they new to be a 68 into a B+, only for students to convert it back, and loose any real sense of the quality of their work. Was an essay only just shy of first class, or did it have some way to go? The change also added to the confusion when I came to apply for Masters courses beyond Lancaster (perhaps the aim was simply to stop valuable post graduates leaving for pastures new). The second innovation was Moodle, which seemed to be a slightly more confusing and unfamiliar version of the previous VLE... I never found any explanation of what exactly Moodle added in terms of usability, or functionality. And just as with Panopto, nobody asked the students if we wanted either of these changes. Of course, there is benefit to recorded talks to support learning - they can be useful for revision, or for those occasions when either students or lecturers are ill or otherwise engaged. There is also value to encouraging Staff-Student interaction. In fact, unless I am much mistaken that is the point of seminars (at least in FASS - I am given to understand that things may be rather different in other Faculties). What seems to have been forgotten in all this is that the direct teaching of a lecture is hugely valuable. There is a reason people attend talks at Literary festivals, or go to hear politicians speak, or even attend academic conferences. Lecturing is efficient, and when it is done well, it is highly engaging. The courses I have most enjoyed have been those where the lecturer delivered content in an enthusiastic way - their passion rubs off on their students. This cannot be captured through a recording - just as good live music is superior to any CD. So yes, there is scope for recorded talks as a useful supplementary tool, but they should never replace lectures. And if the aim is more student engagement, the solution is obvious - more lecturers teaching a wider range of topics to smaller classes, allowing them to engage with students properly in seminars. For the proof of this, you need look no further than 8 places up the league tables - an OxBridge education is well regarded first and foremost because engaged students spend an hour a week discussing ideas in groups of no more than four students with leading academics. Lancaster has leading academics and engaged students. We just need to put them together more. Jack Fleming History, 2010 ******** Dear Subtext, I was horrified to read Derek Gatherer's defence of the idea of recording all lectures. Some lecturers' efforts may well be sufficiently dreary that it doesn't matter if they are delivered from a stationary position, reading out verbatim notes, with no pauses, hesitations, nor any remarks that might, after a few hours careful examination, be found to be possibly offensive, on a contorted interpretation, to some obscure corner of the population, in which case I feel sorry for the students who have to endure their lectures. But if I had to record my lectures, which have, by the way, usually excellent attendance levels in spite of typically being in "graveyard" slots, they would be totally ruined. On one point, Dr Gatherer is quite right: things have changed since the 11th century at the Sorbonne. For one thing, new-fangled "moveable type" has been available in Europe since some geezer called Johannes Gutenberg came up with a scheme in about 1450. This meant that books could be made readily available in multiple copies; one didn't have to engrave a book onto plates or bits of wood to print it, or else have monks copy them all by hand in draughty scriptoria. This rendered the lecture, as a means of conveying information, essentially redundant. If you just want to pass a lot of information to students, then recommend some textbook reading: I like to call this "the wonders of Early-Modern technology". A lecture should be about inspiring interest, even fascination. It should be about getting students to understand why the topic is interesting and how it fits into the wider context of the subject being studied in the module. It should highlight where the debates and difficulties might be. It should involve the lecturer putting forward his or her particular views - especially if these are challenging. Ideally it should have some degree of interactivity. It should not, I repeat, be about conveying mere information from the lecturer's brain to the students' brains. That was what lecturing was about in C11th Sorbonne and C12th Oxford and C13th Cambridge, because books were few and precious and chained to the shelves. So professors sat in a big chair and read out their notes. Students wrote these down for themselves. No need to bother with the almost non-existent books. Job done. Job no longer needed shortly after 1450. If you take away the off-the-cuff, in-the-moment, perhaps edgy and risky aspect of lectures, you destroy the very point of them. And if students don't want to come, I do respect their wishes: lectures are optional. I tell my students at the start that lectures aren't going to be great for everyone; that learning styles vary and some students will draw little from lectures. They are, after all, here to READ for a degree. The reading, and the discussion in seminars, is what it is all about - and lab work in the sciences, no doubt. But if they want lectures, then it should be up to them to turn up for them. And if they miss the odd one - big deal: moveable type, remember? And as for the business of lecturers dragging themselves out of sick beds and daring icy roads, we'd still have to do that: LUSU doesn't want recordings instead of live lectures; they want both. We will have to give every lecture twice. They are possibly not so keen on students paying twice, mind you... LUSU's second-best choice is no doubt to record the actual lecture in progress so it is available afterwards, ruining the event itself for those who can be bothered to rock up. Finally, "Panopto". Sounds a bit like "Panopticon", doesn't it? So what was that all about? Look it up: moveable type (or, perhaps, Wikipedia). Yours aye, Dr Richard Austen-Baker (Law) ***************************************************** The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: George Green, James Groves, Ian Paylor, Ronnie Rowlands, Joe Thornberry, Johnny Unger, and Martin Widden. |