RSC MASHe

A research note written by a 15-year-old Morgan Stanley intern on the media habits of his generation made it to the front page of the Financial Times this week sparking various headlines including ‘Twitter is not for teens, Morgan Stanley told by 15-year-old expert’ and ‘Teenage media habits: was the whiz-kid correct?’.

Apart from various other teenagers being poked and prodded by journalists to give their analysis of teen-media Jenna McWilliams at the Guardian asked “Why is one 15-year-old’s middling analysis of teen media use being interpreted as the new bible of social media?”.

Her answer:

The answer is simple. We’re lost in a forest, and we’re looking for a guide to lead us out. We live in a world where knowledge is abundant and access is near-ubiquitous. What’s scarce is the ability to sift through the information, to extract, synthesise and circulate key ideas to a public that’s starving for someone to serve as an intelligent filter. Lost in the new media universe – guardian.co.uk

Hopefully MASHe is serving as ‘an intelligent filter’ (although by highlighting the ‘middling analysis’ of a teenager I’m probably setting myself up for a fall – the full copy of the research note is here).

The UHI Millennium Institute has recently been granted degree awarding powers by the Privy Council. This is a key step towards gaining a full university title.  Previously degrees from the UHI were validated by the Open University and the change gives the Institute more flexibility in developing new courses. UHI Millennium Institute have a full press release on their site. Congratulations UHI!!!

[I must admit I missed this story when it first came out (I blame my parents, they live in the UHI heartland, I'm surprised they never mentioned it :-)].

SAC have announced that after two years hard work they will become Scotland’s newest higher education institution in August 2008. Previously education at SAC was funded via the Rural Affair Department of the Scottish Government. From 1st August SAC will become a full member of Universities Scotland and receive funding from the Scottish Funding Council.  SAC have made a full press release on their site. Congratulations SAC!!!

Yesterday saw the the publication of the first interim report from the Joint Future Thinking Taskforce on Universities on ‘New Horizons: responding to the challenges of the 21st century’. Various papers comment on the potential implications of this report for Scotland’s universities funding (see ‘Related Google News Feed’ for examples). As well as outlining a roadmap for a framework for the future of funding the report highlights what the Taskforce sees as the current strengths of Scotland’s universities. These include:

• three Scottish universities in the world’s top 100 research universities
• three universities in ranked in the top 10 new universities in the UK
• 4.3% of Scottish students fail to leave university with a successful outcome (degree, other award or transfer to another educational programme)

So are we probably the best higher education in the world?

Related Google News Feed

“Studying for class”
Originally uploaded by jakebouma

Last week the BBC reported that the University College London, the Open University and Trinity College Dublin are putting lectures onto ‘iTunes U’. Course material on iTunes isn’t new and in March Brain Kelly (UK Web Focus) highlighted that one of the UKs ‘Top of the Pods, Podpickers’ was the University of Bath whose podcasts were “popular enough to get us featured in the top 50 podcast originator on i-Tunes in the “Science and Medicine” section, ahead of any other university in the world.”

There is a very good article in the Times Higher Education which touches on the pros and cons of podcasts asking the question are ‘Podcasts set to know lectures off the podium’.

21st centrury lecturer – more admin than teaching
Originally uploaded by m.hawksey

“Dealing with 100-250 emails a week, spending over half your time on administration, coping with rising seminar and lecture sizes, but spending less time with students.” UCU 2008

These are the findings of a recent UCU survey of 321 higher education lecturers. The headline figures are:

• more than half of lecturers (53.9%) say they spend most of their working week dealing with administration
• over half of lecturers (53.6%) spend at least 15 hours a week on administration with a quarter (27.4%) devoting more than 25 hours of their working week to the task
• more than a quarter (28.7%) said they deal with over 250 emails a week and those with 250 or more emails a week said they did just 0-5 hours of research a week, 5-15 hours of teaching, but 25 hours or more of administration
• over two thirds (71%) reported increases in class sizes at their institution in the last 10 years, but only a quarter (23.4%) said they now spend more time with students than they did a decade ago
• of the 71% who reported growing class sizes, nearly half (44%) said they were spending less time with students.

More information on these figures is available in this UCU news briefing.

Exam Results Day 2001 – Stephen’s Results
Originally uploaded by Krypto

The Sunday Times reported recently that they had evidence that some Scottish universities had changed their admission procedures to ‘positively discriminate’ in favour of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In particular the article highlights admission policies for the University of Edinburgh and St. Andrews University which would seem to favour students applying from poorly performing schools. For example at the University of Edinburgh some students from poorly performing schools can receive extra points to their UCAS Tarrif. Should we be concerned by this social engineering? Is the Funding Council aware that these practices are being carried?

I’ll start with the last question. Not only is the Scottish Funding Council aware that pupils form disadvantaged backgrounds are receiving additional attention by colleges and universities, they are proactively encouraging it through ‘optimal participation’. For a review of the Funding Councils actions to tackle this area the SFC Widening Participation Review Group published ‘Learning for All‘ in 2005.

Should we be concerned with this social engineering? First we should look how ‘fair’ the original system is. Entry into higher education is largely dictated one single factor, UCAS Tariff points. Is a student’s performance at school a reliable indicator of what they will achieve in higher education? The ‘Schooling effects on higher education achievement‘ report published by HEFCE concluded that grades achieved by a student was “the single most important factor in determining the expected HE achievement” however “the effect of school performance was inconsistent”. In particular, “students from independent schools appear to consistently do less well than students from other schools”. So if the system isn’t fair in the first place shouldn’t we try and fix it?

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mash and gravy
Originally uploaded by chotda

Welcome to the latest blog from the RSC Scotland North & East, “MASHe”! This blog aims to highlight news, events, resources and all manner of other delights related to Higher Education.

You maybe asking what does the ‘MASHe’ acronym stand for? The simple answer is ‘I don’t know’. It started off as an in-joke with my counterpart at the RSC Scotland South & West. Retrospectively I’ve loosely linked it to the idea that this blog will draw on and mash-up posts from other RSC blogs which are focused on topics relevant to HE (accessibility, assessment, online resources and learning technologies).

Well I hope you find this blog useful and as always if you’ve got something you’d like to feature get in touch.