Earth: Mostly Harmless

‘I Spy with Thy Lecturer’s Eye’

This is a story I wrote for publication in my University’s student newspaper. It went out in the 9th November edition of the Strathclyde Telegraph (which went out today, due to late printing). It was edited for publication somewhat but I’ve chosen to publish the version which went to press here in the interests of consistency…

And no, the title/headline is nothing to do with me - so send your groans/complaints elsewhere!

A leaked draft memorandum has revealed the UK government gave serious consideration to asking senior university staff to pass on information regarding Muslim or “Asian-looking” students to the security services. This approach appears to be the latest in a series of faltering efforts aimed at tackling ‘extremism’ in Muslim communities, for which the government believes campuses are “fertile recruiting grounds”.

The memo, which is not publicly available but was obtained by The Guardian, calls for university staff to cede information to Special Branch units of regional police forces regarding the activities of Muslim societies on campus.

It has provoked outrage among students, university staff and among Muslim communities.

Ousman Sadiq, a Masters student on Strathclyde’s Computer and Electronic Systems course described the measures as “a largely unhelpful bit of guidance that will end up only making Muslims feel more oppressed, while still not being a deterrent to those who tend towards an extremist viewpoint”.

NUS National President Gemma Tumelty criticised the plans as likely to introduce a “McCarthy-like atmosphere of suspicion between students and lecturers”, and the Universities and Colleges Union joint secretary Paul Mackney warned that the memo had the implication of “blurring the boundaries of what is illegal and what is possibly undesirable”. “UCU members have a pivotal role in building trust - these proposals, if implemented, would make it all but impossible”. The Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (AVCC) even went so far as to issue a press release to reassure students studying in Australia that such measures would never be implemented there.

While plans to distribute the memo itself among senior university staff appear to have been shelved, its essentially ill-founded premises, unhelpful tone and ham-fisted terminology are further evidence of the Government’s increasingly desperate attempts to foster better community relations from the top down.

The memo is ostensibly aimed at averting acts of terrorism, but confuses terrorism on the one hand, and radicalisation on the other. To say that universities sometimes radicalise people in their religious and political views is hardly controversial, but to consider this radicalisation in the context of Muslim communities a stepping stone to committing acts of violence implies a very dim view of students’ morality. Tumelty suggests that “indiscriminate monitoring of groups on campus assumes collective guilt”.

The accusatory tone of the document also has implications for student recruitment and retention. The numbers of Muslim students on many university courses is already unrepresentative of the wider social mix in many British cities - and Mackney fears that proposals like those in the memo, mixed with unhelpful comments from government ministers in recent weeks regarding issues such as the veil, could undermine the “enormous strides” made in recent years in university diversity and race relations.

The government’s approach of ethnic profiling, as evidenced by the ‘Asian-looking’ reference in the memo, has also come in for sharp criticism. Labony Choudhury, a student at Sheffield University interviewed by The Guardian, pointed out that “being Muslim has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, nor terrorism of any description. It’s like trying to define what a rapist looks like. Far too simplistic.”

By Graeme West

29th October 2006

‘The Podcast Revolution’

This is a story I wrote for publication in my University’s student newspaper. It went out in the 16th October edition of the Strathclyde Telegraph. My thanks go out once again to all my interviewees.

South Kent College has become the latest institution to issue MP3 players to students. The college is issuing iPod nanos to enable learners to download lectures and other content from the college through podcasting technology. Podcasting, for the unfamiliar, is a system of distributing audio or video via web ‘feeds’, where new content is made available automatically to feed subscribers with ‘podcatching’ software such as iTunes or Juice.

Typically, this content is then synchronised onto a music player for listening. Mark Hunter, creator of the popular tartanpodcast (http://www.tartanpodcast.com), is enthusiastic about the medium’s educational potential. “Versatility is embedded in what podcasting is - user-created content. That means that every user can create content unique to them: their tastes; their passions; their vision; their message”.

South Kent is not alone in recognising the power of podcasting: many educational institutions now have podcasting schemes. Some, like Stanford and Wisconsin-Madison University, have set up ‘iTunes U’ sites with Apple’s assistance. Others, such as the University of Western Australia have created bespoke systems: UWA’s solution is now marketed commercially as ‘Lectopia’. By all accounts, both types are extremely popular. Indeed, the Wisconsin-Madison programme was initiated as a result of student and staff demands.

The policy of institutions distributing MP3 players to students is more contentious. The first institution to do so on a large scale was Duke University in North Carolina, where media reports suggested that students and staff were failing to take full advantage of the devices. A report in Duke student paper ‘The Chronicle’ even contained a plea for the programme to be scrapped, according to Christian Science Monitor. Beginning with the current semester, Duke will instead lend the devices to students, with a fee charged to those wishing to retain players after term.

Meanwhile at Strathclyde, some academics have been pushing forward with podcasting. Kevin O’Gorman, PhD student at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, is creating ten video podcasts based on BBC archive material thanks to Higher Education Academy funding. The ‘Talking Hospitality’ collection takes in such themes as the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the indigenous hospitality of the Bedouin peoples. The BBC programmes were sourced through Spoken Word Services at Glasgow Caledonian University (http://www.spokenword.ac.uk).

Does this new technology pose risks to the traditional relationship between lecturer and student? Hunter sees podcasting as a way to “augment traditional learning” rather than replace it. O’Gorman concurs, seeing the mechanism as “another space for learning and teaching”. Lack of appropriate written evidence on subjects of interest led him to look elsewhere, and “constructing podcasts from BBC programmes has been a particularly rich theme”, he attests.

A wider podcasting strategy at Strathclyde is currently in development, according to Prof. James Boyle, Academic Champion for Teaching & Learning Through Technology. “Mobile devices, including the ability to work with podcasts, will have a major role in the future”, Prof. Boyle explains. He notes that Strathclyde has plans for deploying infrastructure to support technologies like podcasting: “Learning Services also recognise that their existing Streaming server (for streamed video and audio) should be extended to allow podcast downloads”.

The opportunity to be Scotland’s leader in academic podcasting is still within reach, if staff and students are willing to embrace the medium soon. Persuading them to do this shouldn’t be hard: Hunter suggests that part of the appeal of podcasting is the masses of free content for MP3 players. And who could say ‘no’ to that?

By Graeme West


9th October 2006

Social networking

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how to provide some sort of social network service for students and alumni at universities in Scotland. The thing is, the social side of things at Scottish universities is pretty good - but it does pretty much consist only of bars and nights out, and it’s difficult to meet many people from outside your own faculty other than through this sort of thing. What I’d like to see more of are kind of ‘half-way’ activities like informal societies and shared interest groups, to try to extend the links between disparate groups at the universities, and increase the general sense of ‘community’.

First of all, my journey started at the Facebook, an impressive social network for students and alumni, which having expanded out of its US homeland is available in about 20 HE institutions in the UK. Andrew Gruen introduced me to this, and while it’s impressive, it’s really only the beginning of what might be possible using social networks.

Last week in a History tutorial I discovered a whole range of interesting, and obscure, links between people attending. Several groups knew one or two other people there, but gradually it emerged that a lot more linked the attendees than was obvious at first. The tutor also mentioned that he had been keeping up with what a few ex-classmates were up to using Friends Reunited. While the intentions of FR may be admirable, it has two limitations for me: firstly, the only real semantic information is based on names, classes and schools; and the second is that it’s a horribly commercial endeavour. I think anything of this nature should essentially be student-led.

What struck me was that all of the extraneous information which people might want to submit could be presented in a semantic form, à la Facebook, but that on the scale of an individual institution, much deeper and more interesting links might be formed than what’s possible there.

The most obvious difference is that people will often know each other better - but on an institutional scale, it might also be possible to leverage clubs, societies and unions into providing semantics (or even allowing users to create metadata on their membership of such things that would emerge into a structure of sorts). Furthermore, the social network itself might be a highly suitable place for clubs and societies to base themselves and recruit new members. After all, if you can see others who are also interested in 2nd century Greek pottery, you might find (obscure societies permitting) that there’s a group set up for just your sort, or choose to set one up of your own.

Enter Ning. A development platform and API for social network apps. I’m going to give this a go, and possibly steal huge swathes of code (possibly). I don’t think it’d be very suitable for actual deployment but it might be useful as a playground to see what’s possible, and how it might work. Also, I’ve been tentatively looking into joining the Geek Society at UoS, so I’ll see if any of them are interested in looking into it. Spoken Word (where I work) might also be interested - hopefully in hosting, but it might also be relevant to the Shibboleth project we’re bidding for.

Unfortunately, as you can see, Strathclyde doesn’t exactly have a thriving societies scene, so I think a Glasgow-wide deployment might be appropriate. It also makes sense given the large numbers of intra-institution social links between students at the University of Glasgow, GCU, the University of Paisley and so on. Who knows, I might even get the unions on board.