A new HE institution in the UK

Various articles on the BBC website and the Sunday newspapers report  the foundation of something called the ‘New College of the Humanities‘ under the mastership of A.C. Grayling whose brainchild it is. The college intends to charge fees of £18,000 per year for courses in humanities subjects, along side ‘professional skills’, mainly relating to business and government. Aside from Grayling, there are thirteen other professors, including Richard Dawkins, Nial Ferguson, David Cannadine and Linda Colley (the only woman), plus some ‘convenors’ (two out of the three listed are women) who will be in charge of the subject areas and teaching staff (not listed). Degrees will be validated by the University of London

It goes without saying that I have some major problems with this set up. I don’t believe in for profit education.* Universities are not nurseries for training graduates for prospective employers in job-specific skills. Distinguished does not mean inspiring, or even effective, on the teaching front. More contact hours does not mean better teaching. How will these degrees prepare students who wish to go on to do research? How much teaching will these distinguished professors actually do?

I shall watch developments here with interest and probable unease. At the moment, and I should be honest about this, I’m struggling to say or think anything sensible due the power of instinctive gut reaction based on strong political sensibilities.

*I may be wrong about this point, but it seems that only part of the college is governed by a charitable trust as suggested by a post by someone listed as A.C. Grayling on the Student Room:

We have set up a charitable trust alongside the College to raise money in order to make as many places free or affordable as possible.

Feedback: what it is and what it isn’t.

It’s that time of year again when thoughts turn to feedback, especially if, like me, you work in an institution that pushes all or most of its assessment to the end of the course. The students want feedback on essays; we want (or have to ask for) feedback on our modules through student surveys. Guy Halsall has been talking about this problem, mainly from an institutional and policy level; I want to talk about practicalities as I have come to realise (along with just about every other academic in the country) that students don’t seem to understand what the process involves, so here is an open letter to any passing undergraduates.

Podcasting as a teaching aid

I promised Dr Jarrett I would write this post in February: it is now May, but better late than never I suppose. What follows is a reflection on innovations in my pedagogical practice (in the parlance of our times), or, to put it another way, how I’ve been trying to get round the problem of meaningful discussion with first years who have little or no experience of medieval history.

The Vikings are coming!

Many things have been happening in the lives of Reivers and myself lately – some good and some bad and which I am not going to talk about here. On the wider stage, parliament has decided that higher education is no longer a public good; more locally an extremely tiring and unusually busy term finally grinds to a halt today. This at least means I have a small amount of time in which to update those of you who are interested in teaching on some very exciting developments that I’ve been involved in and, in a small way, leading.

Wailing, gnashing of teeth and general anger, but what are we going to do about it?

I have been undeniably absent from this blog for a while now, despite half-hearted promises to write up the Clerical Cosmos symposium in Oxford, the Battle Conference outing to Castle Acre and many other exciting episodes in the life of a medievalist. I may yet do some, all or none of these things in due course, but in recent weeks I have been overwhelmed by a combination of work and personal circumstances while I watch aghast and horror-struck as the coalition government systematically dismantles the welfare state and UK university system.

Taking-stock: thinking space and random thoughts

I read about space, I think about space and I write about space, but lately it feels like I have no space to read, write or think! It’s been very quiet on the blog front lately. May/early June is perhaps the busiest time of year for anyone working in British HE. Reivers and I are beginning to emerge from under piles of scripts, spreadsheets and administrivia, in the process discovering we are human again. It’s a time to reflect on what has happened over the past year, see what we’ve achieved and decide where to go next. This process of assessing and questioning is essential to the way we develop as academics and, crucially, teachers. What follows is an end of year stock-take.

In praise of teaching

There has recently been a series of articles in the Times Higher and in other places reflecting, bemoaning and sometimes downright scaring on the state of higher education and universities in the UK. At the core of these debates is the question of what are our universities for? Are the people who comprise the faculty an elite squad of researchers who happen to pass on the benefits of their expertise to students in their spare time? Are they teaching, or, rather, instructing machines? And that’s before we even get to the admin.

Teaching Domesday Book

While Dr Jarrett has been busy listening to seminars on Domesday Book, I’ve been trying to teach the damn thing, again. Hopefully, this was the last time I shall ever have to do so, but Domesday Book is rather like a nasty, slimey something lurking under a stone. Pick up the stone and there it is, flapping its folios at you in a extremely menacing manner, with the remains of students and junior faculty who have tried to make sense of it and failed, scattered round about.

Chris Wickham and the dialogue of the deaf

Last Wednesday, I escaped to London to hear Chris Wickham give the first Sir David Wilson lecture in medieval archaeology on ‘The problem of the dialogues between medieval history and medieval archaeology’. Given I have been wrestling with this very question in my own research and teaching of late, I was looking forward to hear Prof. Wickham’s thoughts on the matter; also it gave me the chance to catch up with some fellow bloggers, Jonathan Jarrett and Magistra et Mater. If what follows is slightly disjointed, then I apologise as I’ve written this post over several days.

Stuff I am thinking about

Neither Reivers nor I have blogged for a while. The start of term has been more than usually chaotic, leaving little brain space for blogging, but thankfully just enough for shooting. In lieu of a proper post (which will be remedied after Chris Wickham’s lecture on Wednesday I hope), here is a list of things I am currently thinking about that will generate posts sometime in the future.