by MERLIN CROSSLEY

Recently a newspaper contacted me and said that students across the country were complaining that lecturers were just replaying last year’s presentations and universities had adopted this strategy to save money.

The idea that digital teaching is cheaper or will be cheaper because assets can be re-used, and that if scale can be achieved large revenues can be generated, is a persistent one in the sector.

My own view is that the opposite situation is the case. Digital assets will typically be generated each year, or at least every two or three years, and that will cost money. On top of that re-use will be rare because of the golden rule of giving presentations – fit your talk to your audience. Re-use won’t be common because it will be faster to make something that works than to find something that fits the task at hand!

To me the rise of technology in teaching isn’t something that is going to save universities money. It is something that will keep costing us money. Large digital repositories and platforms with millions of users may make money out of the assets via advertising or low subscription fees, and if any university manages education at scale they may operate as a platform as a side business, but I don’t think you’ll see this in conventional universities that focus on undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. If one sees it at all it will be in a few big providers.

How can I be so sure?

To me it is pretty clear that the amount of information out there, well and truly outstrips the demand for that information. Supply outstrips demand so information is cheap. Digital assets are not valuable assets.

Secondly, I know from experience how quickly material ages. I remember seeing videos when I was a student and we would laugh if the video was more than three years old – the haircuts, fashions, even style of recording gave the game away. I also remember my first textbook, Lewin Genes. The next year Genes II was published. Then Genes III, then IV, V, VI – it almost became funny. The textbook was becoming obsolete faster than it could be produced. The same thing will happen with a lot of digital teaching material.

The other reason I don’t see digital assets being re-used relates to something else I’ve come to learn – one of the most powerful forces in universities is academic pride. I never used other people’s teaching material because I wanted to produce my own. Sure, I would use snippets here and there, I would recommend readings, I would talk about video clips, but I would never work from someone else’s script. Because I was not an actor, I was a writer. I was an author and a storyteller. I would no more use someone else’s material than a great singer would lip sync or play the air guitar in a key performance. I would have felt like a fraud.

Where does this leave us?

It leaves us with a cost problem. In the old days chalk was cheap and black boards could be wiped clean and re-used. Now students expect digital recordings of key learning materials. In the past that often meant recording live lectures but we all know that presentations designed to be digitised work better. So now teachers will have to invest in some face to face teaching and also in carefully preparing digital assets that will have to be redone – if not each year – every few years. I already know some great lecturers who are managing this, but I don’t kid myself it is easy – these people work hard to deliver and the students love them for it!

These people, rather than their digital assets, are the university’s greatest resource in teaching. They know what to do and how to do it efficiently. They stay up to date, give great live lectures, and produce superb recordings because they know how to, they can, and also because they just love doing it. Their combination of discipline specific knowledge, technical digital know-how, and a love of teaching, make them role models for the next generation of academics. Some of them will be good at research too, some will also be good at management , some will remain focussed on superb teaching throughout their careers, as Education Focused staff.

I’d like to say that when they are gone their digital assets will be like the works of Homer or Shakespeare and will be watched by generations round camp fires or will be played in the lectorials of the future. But only a few exemplars teaching foundational material will survive the test of time. Most of our great teachers will be people of the moment like star footballers, singers, dancers, or indeed story-tellers of the past. Some will write books that will stay with us but for others their legacy will be the generation of students who have grown as a result of their fine and inspirational work.

Professor Merlin Crossley is DVC  Academic and Student Life at UNSW Sydney

 


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