Interesting Links for 14-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• Lecturer gets class to vote on grade for pregnant student.
  (tags: education pregnancy feminism EpicFail)
• Should I work for Free? (A handy flowchart)
  (tags: work business free flowchart)
• Manmohan Singh - The First Sikh Prime Minister Of...Okay, Here's What A Sikh Is
  (tags: 2010 funny journalism sikh india)
• Foxes use the Earth’s magnetic field as a targeting system
  (tags: earth compass fox animals)
• Being sexually unappealing and eating crap food will ensure Pandas fit right in, say Scots
  (tags: panda scotland funny)
• The US used to have as many people in mental institutions that they now have imprisoned.
  (tags: mental_health prison visualization)
• Women less likely than men to apply for jobs where individual competition determines wages
  (tags: competition jobs gender)
• Chatroulette now making money by selling naked men. Smart move!
  (tags: internet funny socialmedia chatroulette)
• A fantastic look at the current monetary problems in Europe, and what our options are for solving them.
  Personally, I think that it's either going to be more fiscal union or several countries leaving the Euro.
  (tags: europe money euro politics)
• Ian Mckellen talks about what was keeping him from signing up for The Hobbit, and how it was sorted.
  (tags: lotr movies thehobbit IanMcKellen)
• What Went Wrong at Borders - comments from employees at the bottom.
  (tags: borders books)
• Even very short breaks from sitting are good for waistlines and hearts. I try to stand up for a minute or two every hour.
  (tags: heart health)
• Room light before bedtime impacts sleep, blood pressure and diabetes risk. Sadly, in Scotland I'd be in the dark a _lot_.
  (tags: light sleep health technology biology)
• People neglect who they really are when predicting their own future happiness
  (tags: people psychology happiness)
• Scientists demonstrate mammalian regeneration through a single gene deletion
  (tags: science genetics biology bioengineering medicine regeneration)

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

As you know I work in an academic institution, and so we get a lot of people from teaching academia come to work with us.

A former lecturer (from a prestigious university) joined a few days ago, and he said the big effect of tuition fees was that students expect you to actually teach them and they expect the teaching to be good now.

I got the impression he (or perhaps his colleagues) weren't very interested in teaching and just wanted to do research, so they saw this as a bit of a bad thing.

He was saying that the issue would become more acute as tuition fees go up to 6-9K.

Interestingly he also said that if the grades fall at all from one year to the next it is viewed as a failure of the lecturer, and that if anyone fails a module it is considered to be a failing of the lecturer (he implied it'd be investigated).

[draconid.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was at university (the year before fees) we had a lecturer who was absolutely rubbish and practically all of us failed his module the one year (so of course they upped the grades of everyone to give us a better average). We'd complained bitterly all through the term to no affect, although I believe they took him off the module the following year. If we'd paid fees we'd have protested more, I'm sure.

The lecturer is still there at the university some 12 years later, because he's got some renown (and useful links) in the worldwide science community. I shudder to think about the education, or lack of it, he's giving to the students.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Perhaps part of the problem is that many academics are good at research but not good at teaching, and they're expected to do both.