I would be interested in hearing of successful plicy and practice in the
provision of lecture notes and handouts. We have a long-running debate on
this issue, and have been unable to find a solution that satisfies everyone
(or even anyone!)
We were concerned that students were being spoonfed - i.e. issued with
detailed lecture notes which comprehensively covered everything they needed
to know for a particular subject. This put great pressure on staff who
preferred to give briefer notes and direct students to journal or textbook
references. Our solution has been a College-wide policy that states
(i) That students should be provided, free of charge, with the learning
objectives for each course; lists of recommended reading; and details of
any in-course assessments;
(ii) That it should be made clear to students that the purchase of lecture
notes is not compulsory;
(iii) That, if detailed lecture notes, normally defined as any more than
two sides of A4 per lecture, are produced, they should be sold to students
by the College, and included on reading lists as an additional source of
information.
It is proving hard to hold this line - many staff feel the need to
produce lecture notes considerably longer than 2 pages, some departments
have commercial sponsorship so they can issue detailed lecture notes free,
students demand detailed notes from staff who choose on educational grounds
not to produce them, and consequently they suffer in student evaluations,
and the development of the Intranet threatens to make the whole debate
academic anyway!
We would like to give staff a degree of freedom, but at the same time
discourage spoonfeeding, whilst recognising that our curriculum is
overcrowded and students have little time to spend in the Library.
We are about to enter another round of discussions about this. I have not
found any serious discussion of this - when I run a search on "lecture
notes" I turn up thousands of web-based pages of the sort of detailed
lecture notes we are trying to discourage. If anyone has been through a
similar debate and would be prepared to share their experiences I'd be very
happy to hear from you.
**************************************************************
Paul Probyn
Academic Registrar
The Royal Veterinary College
Royal College Street
London NW1 0TU
UK
Tel: +44 (0)171 468 5113
Fax: +44 (0)171 388 2342
Mobile: 07970 181364
email: [log in to unmask]
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