On conferences

I’ve just spent a fantastic two days at the 2019 AUA Conference. Here’s some of my highlights, and my thoughts about why it’s important to make time to tend your professional development.

The AUA is the Association of University Administrators – a body of which I’m a Fellow, having been a member and been involved since the late 1990’s. (I’m currently programme lead for its rather excellent Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Administration, Management and Leadership.)  It runs – amongst many other things – an annual conference, focused on professional development, and a very excellent conference it is too. There’s a mixture of plenary session and workshops; I’ll focus on the workshops I attended.

Sketch-noting: If you’re on Twitter you may have seen @Katrina_Swanton tweet her fantastic sketch-notes of workshops and conferences she has attended. Sketch-noting is a method of taking notes using pictures as well as words. As well as being interesting to see afterwards, they work well as a learning tool. Dual-coding is the thing here: by drawing pictures as well as writing words, we will better remember the material. And Katrina ran a great session, giving us the confidence to develop our skills and then to practice on a couple of TED talks. You don’t need to be an artist to sketch-note, you just need to be open to a new way to take in information. You can see below my first go, at a later session.

Defining the future profession: A session I co-presented with Susannah Marsden, of City, University of London. I’ll blog about this another time. Sufficient for now to say that the session seemed to go well, and people confronted the eternal question. With respect to trivial pursuits, is it pie or cheese?

Digital transformations: Fola Ikpehai of SUMS Consulting led a lively session focusing on digital transformation. Fola is a really engaging presenter, and her approach – rightly – focused on the organisational., process and cultural issues necessary to succeed in any digital transformation project. Its always interesting to hear another’s approach on a familiar topic: Fola’s experience in digital transformations in the museums sector meant that she had a great perspective on how to think like a customer, and how to embed digital thinking within an organisation.

The Changing University: A tour de force from @mike_rat which took us on a historical journey to see how universities have changed over time, adapting to the different demands that society places on them. From first foundations at Oxford, through to the abolition of the binary divide, Mike shared some fascinating images and created a narrative of quirky adaptability. Plus some great facts, which you’ll have to hear Mike talk to find out more about. For instance, why Oxford MAs had to swear an oath not to teach in Stamford; why elevenses were banned at an English University; and why freedom of speech is so strong a thread in the US university sector. A really fantastic session, plus, the chance to try out sketch-noting in the wild. What do you think?

A sketch-note, by me, of the great session by @mike_rat 

All of the sessions, in different ways, gave me cause to reflect on my own practice, and to rethink the contexts within which I work. I learnt about approaches and techniques which will help me to solve real problems in my work; I found out about good practice in many university activities. And, as always, I met up with old friends and made plenty of new ones. UK universities are fortunate in the calibre of people working within their professional services. The sector is fortunate to have the AUA.

Two days well spent, I’d say. Why not join me next year at the AUA conference in Nottingham?

Student Power

Bologna. Berlin. Manchester. No, not the words on the bag from a fashionable boutique, but important places in relation to student power and the development of the University.

First, Bologna. The University of Bologna is the oldest university with a continued existence from its foundations, in 1088. Its foundation was not the result of top-down recognition – no papal bull, such as at Paris, Oxford or Cambridge – but the result of student federation. Students were attracted to Bologna by the presence of notable scholars, who taught for a fee. But for students from other countries, Bologna was a tricky place - at the time it had laws which provided for collective responsibility for acts committed by foreigners. Thus an English student in Bologna was legally liable for the act of any English person in Bologna.

Not a good situation to be in. So students grouped together in associations – for mutual protection – based around their country of origin. And these associations – or nations – then came together to form a single corporation (or universitas, in Latin) which employed the teachers. The universitas was student governed, with two from each nation on its general council. The universitas employed the professors, and the scary-sounding Denouncers of Professors – a group of students – reported to the student rector on any bad professorial behaviour. (The source for this is Law and Revolution: the formation of the Western Legal Tradition by Harold J Berman, Harvard, 1983.)

Second, Berlin. Prussian minister Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of education and society influenced the foundation of the University of Berlin, and in particular its model integrating both teaching and research into the scholar’s role. The notions of lehrfreiheit (freedom to teach) and lernfreiheit (freedom to learn) set out the roles of staff and students. For staff, the right to teach what they in their own judgement determined, without interference from any other person or body.  For students, the right to study whatever they chose from the courses of lectures or labs offered by the staff of the University. This model infused the development of university systems in other countries – notably the USA – and led to the course catalog (sic) and credit hours.

Thirdly, Manchester. Right now. Students in the Economics Department of the University of Manchester, dissatisfied by the failure, as they perceive it, of the undergraduate economics curriculum to include alternative approaches to economics, are taking action. The Post-Crash Economics Society has been established with the following aims

Society Constitution
1) The Post-Crash Economics Society has been set up to try and broaden the range of perspectives and the teaching methods used by the Manchester Economics Department.
2) We will run a campaign to build student support and engage in dialogue with the economics department.
3) We will run events, workshops and other activities.
4) We aim to be a society that is accessible to all students and staff with an interest in economics whatever their economic and political beliefs.

The debate picked up publicity last week when the Times Higher reported that students were being encouraged by the society not to complete the NSS until the University had committed to including a particular module in the curriculum next session. According to the Times Higher:

Joe Earle, campaign coordinator at the society, told Times Higher Education that urging students to make their voice heard through the NSS was a legitimate way to influence the university. 

He said that the society had collected 245 signatures from economics students at Manchester who want the new module to be accredited, but he believed that the university would take the threat to NSS scores more seriously.

And from the same Times Higher story

A spokesman for the University of Manchester said that the society was “leading a national debate on the way economics is taught in higher education” and that the ensuing discussions had been “positive, useful and informative”.

It’s not quite the Denouncers of Professors, but nor is it lehrfreiheit.

Where will be next?