-----Original Message-----
From: Online forum for SEDA, the Staff & Educational Development Association [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Professor Phil Race
Sent: 01 November 2005 15:12
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Inspiring students

I guess many Universities, including Leeds, have 'inspirational teaching
and learning' among their targets. But how best can we set out
purposefully to INSPIRE students?

Looking back, I was inspired by only a few of the lecturers I had as a
student. The common factors I remember were their enthusiasm, and their
seeming to LIKE students.

I wonder if we can gather a bit more about what inspires students. As a
start to this, would you be so kind as to reply with short answers to the
questions which follow?
[I'm also asking present-day students about what inspires them, but I'm
keen to link this to what inspired us in the first place].

Best wishes,
Phil
www.phil-race.com

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What percentage (roughly) of your lecturers inspired you, when you were a
student?
Possibly half - but I was ready for being inspired since I had just escaped the army, National Service of course! Your attitude to being at university affects what you expect from it and it does make a difference.

What did they actually DO which inspired you?

It was a combination of what inspired you, their enthusiasm and caring about you - unlike the army - and the focus of this on really interesting issues and problems that mattered. We had weekly meetings - and being weekly mattered - of the Philosophical Society which many of the staff attended but we had to leave the room at ten. But it never ended then. We would go to a café and later to my flat which was nearby, and would talk for another two hours or so with coffee to keep us going. It was being part of a really friendly learning community who cared not only about each other but about the subject and its wider implications. We really wanted to learn and were willing to spend time on it.
This was Edinburgh in the fifties and I didn't meet this combination again, not in Cambridge, Essex nor London.


What sort of people were they - was it more about what they WERE than
about what they DID which inspired you?

It wasn't more about one or the other it was the combination that mattered. The students and the staff invited each other to their parties and we had a wonderful and quite luxurious country house in the Highlands which we went to once a year for about five days and this again was very intense both socially and intellectually interspersed with long walks in the hills. These other contexts were very important in making us people together rather than just staff and students. Many of us had not come straight from school and this helped too.


What else (besides your lecturers) inspired you as a student?

All the things I've mentioned but it was good that we were not pushed too hard, we had time to think and to enjoy life We had to write essays of course but not too many. And we had termly and yearly exams but we didn't take them too seriously so we could spend time on what interested us and could even fail parts of the course without it being too serious, we could recover. The four year Scottish honors degree gave us more time to change and to study outside our honors group and this helped us to feel we were being educated in a way we wanted to be. So we were inspiring ourselves too not just waiting for, or expecting others to do it for us.
Of course being at university was seen by most then as a privilege and not a routine necessity as it so often is now. We wanted to make to most of it.

Oh for the good old days!!!

Roy Cox

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Many thanks for your reply. I'll try to draw trends from all replies
together, and circulate it back to SEDA colleagues. Phil