Higher education – Page 5 – Music for Deckchairs

Access to care

Kate Bowles August 13, 2015 21 Comments

The Site is owned, operated and/or provided by RateMyProfessors.com LLC (“RMP”), a subsidiary of Viacom International Inc., which offers television channel or programming services (such as Internet websites, applications or other interactive services) and offers other products and services under various brands, such as those Viacom Media Networks brands listed here. RateMyProfessors.Com LLC Terms and Conditions He always has a piece of paper in front of his mouth when he talks which makes it hard to hear. He also hisses like…

Being an academic, Casualisation of work, Health and healthcare, University marketing

Service as a Service

Kate Bowles August 2, 2015 17 Comments

There is a lot of activity that an academic undertakes that acts as ‘glue’ holding together the whole scholarly practice. Martin Weller, Scholarship Can’t Afford Itself, July 2015 But after what happened at the Tour, I need to prove myself on a bigger scale. Tejay van Garderen, 2015 Two stories about the glue that holds together the whole scholarly practice. 1. It’s 2007. I’m in my office. I’m always in my office. Looking back, I don’t remember much else about that…

Being an academic, Cancer, Work and working

Weighted time

Kate Bowles July 24, 2015 0 Comments

We are in the shark’s domain … I am just lucky it wasn’t my time. Mick Fanning, Australian surfer So there’s an administrative thing that must be done, and if I do it, it’s worth a certain amount of workload time. But if the money is available to pay someone else to do it at an hourly rate, it’s given a bit more time. This is not because it takes less time for me to do it, but because it costs less per…

Being an academic

On personality

Kate Bowles July 12, 2015 15 Comments

A reply to Martin Weller But then along come MOOCs, and they’re all about the personality. Martin Weller, ‘The role of personality in education‘ Martin Weller, Professor of Education Technology at the Open University, is asking important questions about about the pros and cons of stripping authorial personality from higher education course and content design. In a sector shaped by the persistent anticipation of audit, personality is a bit of a handful. The hallmarks of personable teaching—improvisation, creativity, anecdote, all the idiosyncratic connections that an individual…

Being an academic, Higher education

What would Stampy do?

Kate Bowles July 9, 2015 21 Comments

But we desperately want live lectures to work. We’ve done them for so long now that they seem a part of who we are. And we are tantalised by the mirage of thinking that if only everyone turned up, they would be a far more efficient way of teaching than the seminar or the tutorial. Desperately. So desperately that we are prepared to ignore the prodigious financial and environmental cost of heating or cooling large empty spaces. So desperately that…

Being an academic, Edtech and online learning

Gratis

Kate Bowles June 10, 2015 8 Comments

Oh, the gratis. There is always some contest or another available to the cast members to earn gratis, and even working part time I was able to earn soooooooo much. For those who don’t know, gratis means “free, or complimentary” and is provided by the company or a brand. … Also, if you are a holiday hire, gaining gratis also means you are showing your worth, so not only did I get lots of makeup goodies, they also kept me…

Being an academic, Casualisation of work

Stones only

Kate Bowles May 16, 2015 5 Comments

The purpose of Stonehenge is lost to us. There will always be debate about its meaning. Stonehenge Visitor Centre, Wiltshire I grew up in England, although I wasn’t born here. Here. I’m not in Australia, I’m visiting the country that isn’t quite home, with my Australian teenage daughter who isn’t quite at home here either, while we both try to make sense of the weave of family (her) and familiar landscapes (me) that make England part of who we are. Or…

Being an academic, Change management, Edtech and online learning

Words for the way we talk

Kate Bowles April 29, 2015 0 Comments

1. January 28th, 1986 the Challenger Space Shuttle finally took off after many delays and concerns about safety. The parents of female astronaut Christa McAuliffe were watching from the stands, news cameras trained on their upturned faces as the shuttle exploded. “Etched forever” is a meticulously pieced together account of the reactions of all those who prepared for the launch and then witnessed the explosion, from the NASA ground support to the families to the President to all the bystanders. So many stories…

Being an academic, Cancer, Health and healthcare

“Wider lessons”

Kate Bowles December 2, 2014 43 Comments

There’s weeping. And then there’s anger.* For a year, Richard Hall and I have been tracking the ways in which higher education has become an anxiety machine, fumbling our way through this together using the metaphors of cycling, hamster wheels, technologies of pressure, instruments of shame. We’re not alone in thinking any of this. (See especially Melonie Fullick’s sustained critique of productivity from the perspective of mental health, the worm at the heart of academia’s vanity culture.) The rankings instruments that…

Being an academic

With our own meaning

Kate Bowles November 26, 2014 14 Comments

I met for the first time the essential questions of my own mortality … None of us have 300 years. The terror that I conquered in those three weeks left me with a determination and freedom to speak as I needed, and to enjoy and live my life as I needed to for my own meaning. Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals Short version: it’s about this. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2gGdDz6FPA&w=560&h=315] Please donate. Long version Last week was national Go Home on Time Day,…

Cancer, Casualisation of work, Higher education