"In shadowy, silent distance grew the iceberg too": universities, technology, work and life
There’s too much to do in too little time with too little money to be world-class in everything we do. What we can and should do is recognise the limits of what’s possible and encourage people to do their best – and I don’t just mean that managers need to do better. We all need a little more humanity. The Plashing Vole, Good enough Here’s a tale. When I first started thinking about how to write in public about the…
Continue ReadingHow do you gain consumers’ trust? By listening to them and knowing exactly what they want. And by turning this knowledge into innovative and compelling products. (Beiersdorf, brands overview) The thing about jetlag in America is that it leaves you stranded in the middle of the night with nothing to do but watch middle-of-the-night American TV. And so last night I learned about “stress sweat”, which is apparently a much worse kind of sweat than the regular kind. To protect…
Continue ReadingA few weeks ago, Professor Frank Larkin reported for the L H Martin institute that staff-student ratios in Australian higher education are a bit worse than are commonly claimed. What makes this sensitive is the government’s ambitious target of 40% of 25-34 year olds being degree qualified by 2020. There’s some debate about the viability of this target, and the details are vague on exactly how this will raise national productivity unless we’re really prescriptive on what those undergraduates study, and what…
Continue ReadingIn 1944, in response to a question about whether there could be a “purely American art”, Jackson Pollock said this: The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me just as the idea of creating a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd … the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any country. It’s a famous move in the history of exnomination that plays differently, I think,…
Continue ReadingI’m struck by the coincidence of Jonathan Rees and Ferdinand von Prondzynski both writing, in different ways, about the significance to academics of being able to set their own compass. Not only do we hope to be able to research and teach in areas that are the best fit with our skills and principles, but we also prefer to work for institutions that are able to determine the best mix of features that suits their operating context. Whether you call this…
Continue ReadingUnderline everything, I’m a professional in my beloved white shirt (The National, ‘Squalor Victoria’) One of the troublespots of shared governance in higher education institutions is the tone to strike in corporate communication with students. Is there a business unit that can stalk them on Facebook without seeming creepy? Who should follow their tweets? What happens to the brand if they’re dissing us to their friends? We don’t even know how to communicate with them officially, given that we’re institutionally…
Continue ReadingMusing on the news today that the Australian government has decided to scrap its distracting journal ranking scheme and look for other ways to tally up research quality outcomes across the sector, I found a colleague wandering the corridor and asked her what she thought. She works in a highly specialised research field, and has a strong commitment to research training right across the disciplines. This was her reaction: “Whatever.” And I think despite understandable levels of anger and frustration at…
Continue ReadingFerdinand von Prondzynski, VC at Robert Gordon University, is asking why universities have been relatively slow to mainstream the innovative teaching practices that will match the speedy uptake of mobile and tablet devices by their students. As he puts it, technology-enabled learning shouldn’t be “the preserve of nerds”. The need to break out of the nerd enclave is critical for any institution hovering on the brink of committing to an enterprise-wide LMS contract. This is going to cost so much that…
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