LYRICAL LANGUAGE A conversation hosted by Anna

 

Some thoughts in the order in which they were spoken.....

 

Lots of talk about passion and inspiration.

 

And about the buzz phrase student engagement.

 

We felt there might be a link...(!)

 

Tim Ball talked about how in the first week of their course, his design students are asked to come up with 10 words of what they expect from their lecturers.

Passion is pretty much always on the list.  Once they've done the list, the lecturers indicate that the list is also what they're looking for from the students.

 

Some talk about subversive activity in terms of cutting edge teaching and trying to describe it in non-unorthodox ways.

 

Anna Newell talked about areyoucomingouttoplay? - a voluntary project involving students from across the university in creative collaborative play.

 

Talk about the difficulty of persuading business or science students that the creativity agenda is valuable in terms of developing social/collaborative skills

 

How powerful language is.

 

One member of the group talked about a course she ran called "I could do anything if I knew what it was" - it could have been called "How to choose a career" - she felt she probably wouldn't have had the great attendance that she got if she had chosen the latter.

 

We need to intrigue, entice, inspire, transform

 

A research project at JMU is revealing that students are saying overtly that passionate lecturers who use passionate, accessible and interesting language are what makes them attend lectures.

 

Glynis Cousin talked about the power invested in language and how science students will be failed by writing in the first person (there was a previous battle to stop referring to people generically as "he") and that there is a hidden epistemological argument about how "seriousness" is "proven" by inaccessibility.  And how does this marry with the notion of student engagement!!

 

Jenny from Birmingham City talked about running a module on play with early years teachers who at the end of it said that they still didn't know what play WAS.  And now they play as part of it.

 

We were moving on to talking about play more now after having talked about playfulness with language.....

 

Talk of how Sony and Nokia and other cutting edge commercial sector folks have a playground in the workplace - Tim Ball talked about a session at an ELIA conference where participants were asked to model metaphors from LEGO.

 

Talk about assessment.  As ever.  Lots of good chat about formative/summative assessment.

 

Tim talked about finding new lyrical inventive language by getting ESL students to translate a word into their language and then back again literally - produces creative, lyrical, poetic and original results - which often have more of an emotional connection.

 

Whose agenda drives the invention of language?

Students?

Staff?

An external university agenda?

 

An example given of a problematic staff conflict being approached by getting folks to explore what they did through words and then unpicking the definitions.

 

The connectivity provided by rich language.

 

And the lack of connectivity provided by stuff written "over there" (Glynis' phrase).  Politically this does not produce a sharp tool.  Does not change hearts and minds.

 

The opposite of "over there" writing  - ie stuff rich and connected and often in first person, puts the person at the centre - isn't this what we should be trying to do in many ways?

 

Talk about self-reflection, building self-awareness and therefore self-confidence.

 

We've all found ways to get round learning outcomes - but can we truly challenge how higher education is delivered and envisioned if we keep going around rather than challenging this dead bureaucratic language?

 

Is it in fact academics who perpetuate the use of dead language and inaccessible and unengaging prose?

 

Having unexpected outcomes possible as part of learning outcomes.