YouthNet blog
An insight into youth issues, volunteering trends, charity life and more from the UK charity YouthNet
All | Events | Youth | Technology | Volunteering | YouthNet | Charity World
Tuesday Jan 31, 2006
Attend your lecture... or else
According to The Times, Oxford University is introducing a contract system for students, which apparently will force students to attend lectures or face a 'breach of cotnract'. The reasoning is that with increased tuition fees, there is a greater chance of students sueing for poor results. This way, the university is covering its behind.Michael Beloff, QC, President of Trinity College, who drew up the contract, said: "We took the view that we were out of kilter with the modern age. Fifty years ago no one would have thought of such a thing but we live in a much more litigious society."¿
Maybe so, but forcing students to go to class? Doesn't this seem a little backward? Switched-on publishers of content - and you could view university lecturers as part of this - realise that a generation is now growing up expecting their media when they want and how they want. And if this isn't 9am on a Monday morning then so be it.
There are examples of educators getting this: in the US, Duke College started handing out MP3 players to students in 2005 so they could listen to lectures outside of the set times. And now Apple have got involved, enabling students to access lectures and other video and audio course materials through the iTunes U initiative.
It may be a more litigious society but it's also a much more dynamic one.
Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 5:05 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Greater London Volunteering event
I went to an event yesterday evening in the 'mayor's living room' of the the splendid city hall, which overlooks London Bridge and, beyond, the mess of skyscrapers, ancient buildings, city centres and village-like neighbourhoods that is all of greater London. Sponsored by Greater London Volunteering (another essential acronym: GLV), it was a celebration of volunteers throughout this big city.
Greater London Volunteering is the network of London volunteering development agencies and centres, and a partner of Volunteering England, Time Bank and, of course, do-it, the national volunteering database, developed by YouthNet, where many London and UK volunteers find their first opportunity.
There were many speeches, as anticipated - from volunteer centre managers describing a rise in numbers and appealing for more money (a London Year of the Volunteer, please?), from charitable organisations lauding their volunteers' efforts, and from city staff looking forward to the 2012 Olympics with its promise of civic renewal (one speaker remembering the Sydney Olympics in which 50,000 trained volunteers encapsulated a community spirit special to the games). We heard young tabla players. We watched a hip hop dance. I didn't stay for the steel band.
But the more moving moments were speeches from volunteers themselves. One 20-year old woman left school as a young teenager with few options, and found a volunteer role at a local youth centre where she filed, assisted with outreach projects, and dreaded answering the telephone. She was recently told by a recruitment agency that she had a nice phone manner: everyone chuckled.
The canapes weren't half-bad, either.
~ko
Posted by Kirsten Olson ( 3:34 PM ) Link to this post Comments[1]
Always judge a website by its homepage?
A new bit of research from a team in Canada has suggested it takes users around 50 milliseconds to make up their minds about the quality of a website - not too long to play with then.Does this mean we can forget about not judging books by their covers when it comes to websites then?..
If the research is right then the implications could be really big, especially for charities asking for donations online (no pressure with the new YouthNet site then guys..) ;-)
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 3:20 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
