Monday 21st May 2012 - PowerPoint here, PowerPoint there, PowerPoint everywhere

I started using Powerpoint about 10 years ago.  I wasn't an early adopter, but as I found out quite soon I was by no means late.  Many others in my department thought I was innovative.  My first major use was in a series of presentations I made in connection with a major Anglo-Portuguese research project on social deprivation in Portugal, funded by an international charity.  Looking back at those first presentations now, I find that they weren't actually too bad: in some ways Powerpoint has the advantage of being very easy indeed to use - which is also a problem with it since it is often used without real thought.

During my period as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor - which now extends to just over 8 years - I have made countless presentations with Powerpoint.  I've still not been on any formal training course, but I've observed many presentations by others and tried to learn what works and what doesn't.  Too many people use a lot of words to try to convey information, when the technique is best used for conveying ideas.  An unrelieved series of sldies completely of words becoimes very boring - yet pictures can be too gimicky.  In the early days of Powerpoint people often used too many fly-ins and builds, which became distracting.  Most people today use these things sparingly.  Yet we have probably all been exposed to 'death by Powerpoint' sessions at various conferences and awaydays.

I have recently started to give substantial presentations without the use of Powerpoint, starting with two talks to leadership programmes.  I actually found this rather liberating.  I don't normally prepare much in the way of texts for talks, and without the need to keep to the script already determined by my Powerpoint materials I think I have been able to respomnd more to the body language of my audience.  

Later this evening I will be setting off for the International Faculty in Thessaloniki where I will be talking to the staff.  Within the next month I will also be talking to University Council about our new Learning and Teaching Strategy, and a couple of days later I will be talking at a schools conference in the North-East of England about the interface between schools and universities.  But .... I will be doing each of these talks with Powerpoint! Why?

One of these will be to an audience where not everyone is a native English speaker, and I believe that in these situations it is useful for listeners to have some visual prompts as well as a voice to listen to.  Certainly, when I attend conferences and listen to presentations in languages other than English I like to have something to help visually.  I also always use a lot of visuals when I lecture or give presentations in languages other than English. 

For one of these future presentations there is also the possibility of printing out a 'takeaway' for the audience. So Powerpoint still has an important place - but perhaps we shouldn't overuse it.

Thursday 17th May 2012 - Professionalising university teaching

Every ten years I have a reminder about the value of a PhD.  When my wife and I fill in the decennial census form her qualifications count higher than mine.  We both have bachelors degrees, and I also have a doctorate - but she trumps me by having a Certificate in Education (now renamed the Postgraduate Cerificate in Education or PGCE) which gives her a registered teacher number and professional status.  In the list of qualifications on the census form her professional qualification lifts her to a higher box than my doctorate.

As David Willetts has pointed out, university lecturing is possibly the only 'profession' for which there is no formal requirement to undertake professional training.  An individual can go straight from being a doctoral student to a lecturer overnight (indeed, that's what I did at the start of my career).  But doing research and teaching are different things.  Certainly today we do have training programmes of various kinds for those embarking on an academic career, and in Sheffield we have made the completion of a 'Certificate in Learning and Teaching' (CiLT) compulsory before a new lecturer can complete their period on probation. But the programme for the certificate is not onerous, and there are many new teaching staff who do not have to take it at present.

Then there is the element of continuous professional development (CPD).  In most other professions individuals are required to keep updated through attendance at various training sessions throughout their careers.  That is not the case for university lecturers. Attendance at research conferences could legitimately be argued to constitute a form of CPD for the research side of career development; but how many academics attend sessions to update their teaching skills, to consider alternative ways of developing learning, or to consider the potential of new learning technologies?  A few years ago when teaching evaluations still involved sitting in on classes given by colleagues in other departments I was astonished at how antediluvian the teaching methods employed sometimes were, with my suggestions on alternative approaches being greeted by "I've always done it like that".  Developments in learning technologies in particular should encourage everyone to try to keep reasonably up to date if only to understand the mindset of 'digital native' students (who have grown up with modern IT) in comparison to digital immigrant staff who started out in a different world.

Today at Learning and Teaching Committee we took some steps towards the professionalisation of teaching at Sheffield University, with the proposal that everyone who appears in front of a class of students should undertake some form of training, and with consideration of a CPD framework for established staff. But I know these things will prove controversial amongst those who think that 'learning on the job' is the best way forward.  It is ironic to note that while David Willetts would like to see more formal training for university teachers, his colleague Michael Gove seems to be putting more emphasis on learning on the job for school-teachers (as I noted in a recent blog) .  But consistency is an attribute of butter and not of governments.  

Saturday 5th May 2012 - The International Cultural Evening

As a rule I try not to think about the university on a Saturday.  But this week was different.  I drove in at 7 p.m. and drove home again shortly before midnight, after one of the best evenings of the year.  During the evening I spoke to people from Brunei, Bulgaria, China, Germany, Jordan, Pakistan, Somalia, South Africa and many other places.  I watched performers from Mexico, the Caribbean, East Africa, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Malaysia, Romania, Greece, Cyprus, Sriu Lanka and India, among others.  At one point during the evening an academic colleague enthused to me that this was the first time he had ever been to the event, and that it ought to be a 'must attend' for everyone.

In fact the International Students' Cultural Evening is one of the hidden gems of the university calendar.  This was perhaps my sixth attendance but in that time I have not seen more than a handful of colleagues from academic departments present, a slightly larger number from professional services (principally Student Services) and only a couple of other colleageus from UEB (the Vice-Chancellor goes when he can, but he is currently in China).  I strongly recommend the evening for those who have never been.

What it consist of is a series of performances by various national societies from around the university - performances mostly of dance but with some short plays, a little singing, and a great deal of exuberance.  There is a competitive element in that there are judges (I did not stay for the announcement, which usually doesn't happen until well after midnight).  Most of the societies are principally composed of students from the relevant countries, but there are a good number of others involved - indeed the Japanese Society, in perfoming a Japanese fishermen's dance, appeared to be almost entirely composed of Europeans.

I believe very strongly in the power of shared education to bring people from diverse backgrounds together, and one of the great privileges of working in a university is watching this happen - and in some ways facilitating it.  I can think of no other job where I could get to shake the hands of people from every continent in the course of an hour - as I do when presiding at some of our degree ceremonies.  Tonight I watched 16 teams of student performers from all round the world demonstrating something of their traditional culture - generally with adaptations to bring it up to date (hip hop music now seems to permeate everywhere to some extent).  The poise, the self-confidence, the attitude and the skill of many of the hundreds of performers must surely be valuable attributes for them for their futures.  But tonight was fun, enlivening, and uplifting. How some of the students bring their costumes from home beats me - the dresses of the Kazakh and Mexican dancers must each fill a suitcase for example.

As a social scientist I have touched on issues of identity in my research.  One reflection on the evening is to wonder what a group of English students, called on to contribute a similar cultural experience in a foreign university, would choose to do.  Morris dancing?  We in England (I'm using that term very deliberately) have a very confused idea of our identity. I remember attending a conference in Vienna in the 1980s shortly before the end of communism in Eastern Europe (and because Austria's neutrality was guaranteed by the four powers colleagues from behind the Iron Curtain were allowed to join the meeting). We were taken one evening for a meal and social in a Gasthaus in Heiligenstadt and our Austrian hosts called on those from each country present to sing a song.  It all went smoothly (and at high quality) until it came to the English.  There was no song that we all knew the words for more than one verse - we considered the Blaydon Races, On Ilkely Moor Bar't Hat, John Peel and a host of others and ended up singin the Beatles' 'Yesterday' (which is a bit of a dirge sung in unison and unaccompanied. 

There was no shortage of national identity on display at the International Cultural Evening, but within a very inclusive internationalist ambience.  And I think we should rejoice in one difference between this year's event and that of 40 years ago is that the world has become geopolitically so much smaller.  Forty years ago there would have been no Chinese, Kazakhs, Bulgarians, Romanians or many others present.  And one role of higher education must be to foster international friendships, such as those on display tonight, but enabling individuals to retain and celebrate their own local identities as well.