As an exercise 4 years ago year I set myself the task of writing a one hour essay similar to an exam (actually the students put me up to this, but that’s a long story). The topic I (they) chose was ‘the importance of argument in achieving a high mark’. I presented this back to… [Read more…]
November 20, 2008
Leave an animal in a small cage and after a while you might observe that it starts making the same movement over and over again. It will go back and forth across the cage, pausing at each end to shake its head for example. It’s quite depressing to watch. The animal does not seem to… [Read more…]
June 23, 2008
This is one of those posts that might not have much to do with interactive media, but hopefully is relevant to higher education and vocational degrees. It is a summary of student choice research presented to staff as part of discussions about the revalidation of the undergraduate programmes in marketing, advertising and PR. The project… [Read more…]
May 5, 2008
There is a persistent discourse in HE that promotes a utopian vision of online learning. In line with the core values of neo-liberalism, online learning provides market efficiency and consumer choice and as a result provides the best possible educational experience at the lowest cost. Powerful industry interests that see opportunities to sell software and… [Read more…]
January 10, 2008
Here is a version of a paper written by Janice, Lizzie and I that Lizzie and I will be presenting at the Meccsa conference this week. Introduction In this paper we aim to contrast the apparent success of online social media, participatory spaces, communities, and forums, with the failure of university produced online spaces to… [Read more…]
October 10, 2007
There are a few posts that I want to make about the recent DiGRA conference and this is the first because it fits with several other conferences I attended this summer, especially the Students as Producers conference at Warwick University. The neo-liberal university (or marketised) university is now well established, so well established that for… [Read more…]
August 11, 2007
This is a summary version of a paper given at the Academy of Marketing Conference in July 2007 and written with Richard Scullion and Lizzie Nixon. It really started our thinking about the marketisation of higher education in the UK. Having, Being and Higher Education: the marketisation of the university and the transformation of the student into… [Read more…]
August 10, 2007
This is a summary verison of a paper Lizzie Nixon and I are presenting later this month You arrive three minutes after the hour and find your usual seat towards the back of the room. You open your notes and wait for the start, idly chatting to the people next to you. Twenty minutes in… [Read more…]
April 10, 2006
Originally posted to the CEMP site April 06 I often talk to students about the potential changes in marketing and the media industries as a result of developments in interactive media and I also recently gave a presentation to staff where I used a similar argument to question potential changes in education. A theme that constantly comes… [Read more…]
January 11, 2009
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