It always enjoyable to be at a lecture, no matter if it’s held online or onsite. The first lecture was held by Prof. Wisdom, who critically situated HE in a wider, mainly economical context. A lot of data and statistics were presented, from how HE graduates tend to earn more money in their lifetime, to the gender pay gap between HE graduates. Although I don’t want to downplay the role of economy in our lives, I don’t really like to think or talk of education as an ‘investment’ as I believe that using this language promotes neoliberal thinking. As Prof. Wisdom pointed out in his lecture, students are aware of their low chances of finding a highly paid position after graduating in a creative or soft science courses, yet they still choose to study those. If prospective students refuse to engage in seeing themselves investors that ‘invest’ into education, why shouldn’t we as educators follow their paths? I don’t think the educations’ main purpose should be to create future financial gain for its recipients, but encouraging curiosity and independent thinking. This statement almost sounds naive, but I’m not sure why.
Following this path of thought, I think that the question ‘Should the three-year, straight-from-school, living away from home, bachelors degree remain the dominant model of HE?’ should be answered with a ‘No!’ and ‘Would modular degree courses with part-time study and credit accumulation increase opportunity for more people?’ with ‘Yes!’. I think that the current BA model as described above, seems more like an ‘experience’ than a sustainable way of being. Besides studying, students experience being away from home and are only able to work in extremely non committing jobs, so the gap between ‘living as a student’ and ‘living as a non-student’ is very wide. Similarly after graduating, or ‘spat out a system’ many students feel like there is no continuation to their previous lifestyle. This realisation can feel so confusing to the point of being violent. Wouldn’t it be a more sensitive approach to give students the opportunity to start creating a more independent life, where studying takes a more tailored and modular form?
The second lecture was held by linguist Victoria Odeniyi on English in the online class room. Victoria mentioned their observation on how tutors switch their language very quickly between formal/informal or technical/general. Informal language is used as a tool to quickly create a shared ground and a bond in the classroom. But this can have an adverse effect: students who are non native in English, might not be able to interpret local expressions correctly. As a non native English speaker, I don’t think that I use very local English terms anyway. Drawing from my previous experience that as UAL student, I was surprised and appreciative of how informal teachers and students could express themselves. This definitely gave me confidence to speak up. I also liked when teachers used phrases that I didn’t know, because I curious to learn them. I had the confidence to ask teachers what they mean. This makes me think how important it is to reiterate throughout each session that students let us know if anything we said is unclear.