In the Dark

Taking a break from marking examinations and other assignments I was thinking about the next academic year. Although we’re planning to give as much teaching as possible in face-to-face form from September,  it is likely that we will have some material online. In fact I found the short video summaries I did last term were quite popular with students so I may well carry on doing them even if we were to return completely to normal as a supplement to the live experience.

Thinking about this a bit further I reckon I should put all such material on Youtube so that anyone who wants to access it can do so. I don’t think there will be a huge demand for them in the general public, but for me it’s more a point of principle. As my teaching is funded by the public purse, it seems reasonable to me that what I produce should all be in the public domain wherever possible. That obviously excludes some teaching activities (e.g. labs and tutorials) but I don’t see why I shouldn’t do it with lectures or other video content.

If you object on the grounds that students pay a €3000 `student contribution‘ to attend university in Ireland and would be annoyed if I gave away what they’re having to pay for, then I’d reply that that money is not supposed to cover tuition – just student services and examinations.

I know many of my colleagues disagree with this, so I thought I’d do another totally unscientific poll to see what others think. Not that it will change my mind….

This entry was posted on June 5, 2020 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Education, Maynooth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.