Amanda and I are here in Brighton at the first International Teaching & Learning Conference, co-organised by APSA, ECPR, BISA and PSA: I’m hoping we’ll be bringing you a podcast shortly, once we can find a bit of spare time.
Cheapskate that I am, I’m not in the conference hotel, but in a, um, particular little place along the seafront. It’s a bit bizarre, but it’s got the best view from the front door.
For those that don’t know, the thing is the BA i360 and the donut bit goes up and down, so people can check out the views of the coast.
It’s one of those civic projects that you either love or hate: I’m in the former camp.
But what’s it got to do with L&T?
Well, it took an age to build, with both technical and planning issues a-plenty. And quite a few people wondered whether it was worth it, because the view’s alright, but it’s not that special (remember half of it is sea).
But that’s to miss the intention behind it. It’s also a symbol of how this city is progressing, re-inventing itself, creating new focuses and opportunities. It is art and it is confidence. It’s also very phallic, in case you thought the gendered aspect had passed me by.
And all that – OK, maybe not the phallic bit – echoes with the discussions we have about moving L&T on.
One of the big concerns at the conference is about how to cope with populism, fake news and the changing nature of society.
As our keynote, Alison McCartney, pointed out, it’s not enough to be transmitters of knowledge: we also need to be supporting our students to become active and engaged citizens, by giving them skills, and opportunities to use those skills.
I’m totally on-board with that: it’s been a cornerstone of my advocacy of simulations for a long time now, as it has been for everyone I know in the field.
But it’s easy to forget that.
Last week, I was running a workshop on sims at an institution that has never really put L&T high on its list of priorities. I talked quite a bit then about how to make sims work and I found myself posing the question of whether it’s worth it.
Simulations take time and effort and they come with a lot of hassles. Over the years, I’ve met various people who have jumped into using one and then given up, because that hassle was too much.
And I totally sympathise with that. With all the other pressures colleagues face, it might well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
But the potential mistake we make is to confuse problems. Simulations are not a silver bullet: they don’t solve all the problems in teaching. They should be a tool in your tool-box, but not the only one. I don’t use them all the time, and I’d be surprised if anyone else did.
But that’s a different problem for sims being a hassle.
We need to come back to the big phallus outside my hotel front door: there are a multiplicity of meanings and intents, and if we are to make a rounded and informed judgement on it all, then we need to keep that breadth in mind.
In the case of simulations, I use them despite being a pain, precisely because it lets me achieve learning objectives that extend well beyond those that get listed in the module description.
I may not frame it in my institution as helping to prepare our students to go out into the world and be an active part of it, but maybe I should. As Alison said in her talk, if we don’t fill the political spaces, then others will.