QMessenger Issue 72

Page 1

Q

MONDAY 28th JANUARY 2013 ISSUE 72

QMESSENGER.CO.UK

THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF QUEEN MARY STUDENTS’ UNION

Online; the next big step for education? E

VERY YEAR Queen Mary University hosts conferences for delegates, staff and student body of the university. This year’s conference “reflected on the challenges the university faces in current times of change in higher education, exploring the issues and priorities bearing in mind increasing competition, globalisation and technological transformation”. To clarify, the sessions intended to review the progress of the university and to outline future directions in which our education may transform. The lectures included discussing Queen Mary’s role for education on a global scale; a showcase of recent tools that are being updated to the systems and included in student programmes; evaluating the use of E-learning with mention of QM Review and QMPlus; and finally the lecture from Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor of the Open University. The highlight of the day, for many, was the last lecture from Martin Bean. As a public event this had a large audience comprising of many teaching related staff from different universities including representatives from UCL. Mr Bean introduced MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Courses), and “the Tyranny of Conventional Wisdom”. Bean outlined the first success-

NEWS Jules Evans Interview

ful space mission to the moon, seemingly for little reason but his choice of example became clear shortly after. The spaceship team’s main challenge was to have enough fuel on-board the shuttle to get to the moon and back, however, the more fuel in the spaceship, the heavier it was and so the more fuel was needed to complete the journey. To solve this, scientists removed unnecessary weight where ever possible and at one stage this included removing the heavy ladder from the door of the spaceship to the moon surface. In practise, though, it was difficult to climb down from the ship from inside a big and “clunky” spacesuit. Someone suggested removing the seats. By convention, seats were always used but by taking a step of innovation, the seats were removed and the spaceship was able to complete its mission. The ladder was put back on the ship. As Bean suggested “Neil Armstrong was saved the indignity of a small dangle for man, and a giant swing for mankind!” The courage to innovate was definitely worthwhile. This exact concept, Bean applied to education. “The internet is wonderful and destructive. Change comes with great opportunity as well as great challenge.” Bean asked why it is that because

Image by Lloyd Ramos

QMPlus is just a taste of open, online courses for universities to come. things have always been in the wish to merge the “camps” of past, we think they must, there- education that have fees and that fore, always be in the future. So don’t so that some resources can can’t education move to new lim- be accessed completely for free. its too? Using “The Open University’s Bean and The Open Univer- unparalleled expertise in deliversity are launching new course ing distance learning … Futureprogrammes under the title “Fu- learn will bring together a range turelearn” that are based around of free, open, online courses from resources that can be accessed by leading UK universities, in the millions of people globally. They same place and under the same

image by lloyd ramos

brand.” One such course from The Open University was related to the programme “Frozen Planet”. Here the university had materials about the science and the makings of the programme that were free and some that you paid for which turned out to be a success. The materials are said to be par-

Continued on Page 3

COMMENT

CULTURE

SATIRE

SOCIETIES

SPORTS

EU Membership Referendum

Our Oscar Tips

Shoebill Sues Attenborough

Raise and Give

Guardiola goes to Germany


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.