by Derek Morrison, 17 August 2009
Any views expressed in this Auricle posting are the author’s and should not be construed as necessarily representing the views of any other individual or organisation.
The catalyst for this post was the article PhD students claim they are ‘cheap labour’ in yesterday’s Sunday Times (16 August 2009). As is so often the case, the online version of this same article has a different headline, i.e. Universities face revolt over ‘cheap labour’. The reader comments in the online version add further value to the original piece. So why is Auricle interested in this press article?
Readers unfamiliar with the Pew Foundation funded Program in Course Redesign led by Carol Twigg from 1999-2003 may wish to reflect on the part that Graduate Teaching Assistants played in the implementation of the redesign of instructional approaches that also used technology in order to achieve cost savings as well as asserting quality enhancements for large introductory student cohorts, e.g.
“By moving presentation of material and assessing student mastery of it to the technology, faculty and teaching assistants are freed to spend more time providing individualized assistance where and when it is needed. A goal of redesign is to allow faculty to spend more time with student questions and necessary student intervention and less time delivering content … If the course is supported by TAs or adjuncts, supervising faculty must spend time orienting and training them. TAs frequently must attend lectures as part of their preparation to lead recitation sections.” (Source: Twigg C, Improving Learning & Reducing Costs: Redesigning Large-Enrollment Courses).
As indicated by Lessons Learned from Round I of the Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign, Lessons Learned from Round II of the Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign, and Lessons Learned from Round III of the Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign delegating dialogue with students to lower-paid staff or to peers was one of the seven cost-reduction techniques used by the institutions in the different phases of the Pew-funded programme.
The view advocated by Twigg et al appears to be that the perceived academic status of those in dialogue with students is less important than the quality of the dialogue and the part it is playing in the providing an overall quality learning experience. Such a perspective may be entirely logical but it is very divergent from the expectations of increasingly vocal UK students who sometimes appear to view graduate ‘teachers’ as the mediocre ‘supporting acts’ for the ‘stars’ they had somehow expected to interact with. One approach of course would be invest in making the GTAs as well as academics ‘teaching’ stars so that students see they are being provided with competent people that the organisation has invested in rather than a ‘teaching’ problem which students perceive has been delegated to the lower ranks. That of course requires a genuinely different perspective (not just rhetoric) on the relative value of teaching to the HE institution.
Finally, it was interesting to note that the penultimate paragraph in the Sunday Times article highlights the University of Manchester’s vice-chancellor’s concern about the “impersonal” nature of undergraduate education. It’s a real pity that Professor Gilbert’s ALT-C 2005 keynote never appears to have been posted online (although Carol Twigg’s keynote is available). My notes of his keynote suggest that Professor Gilbert made some interesting and, as time has proved, controversial points. In my online essay E-learning industrialization – will the ‘customers’ like it? (Auricle, 13 November 2005) I reflected on the viewpoint of those advocating the need to develop a more industrial model of Higher Education. Maybe we are seeing the beginning of the customers not liking it? But there again we don’t like call centres, voice answering services etc etc but we still have them. So here is a real tension. How can we square an apparent circle, i.e. industrialisation/massification while not being “impersonal”? Now there’s a challenge which I’m sure the UK OU would argue it has already risen to.
Further Reading
- Improving Learning and Reducing Costs – the Pew Review (Auricle, 25 June 2004)
- ‘e’ for efficiency? (Auricle, 19 May 2004)
- Scots want re-engineering and transformation not more content OK! (Auricle, 19 April 2004)
