Learning Games Learning about games, games about learning

A worrying piece in the THES on the impending cuts facing universities as part of the UK’s comprehensive spending review and Browne report. An eye-watering 82% cut to state funding for university teaching is heading our way (For a Scottish university, the actual cuts may be different… but it be a while before we find out specifics. I wouldn’t rule out something equally awful).

The comments in the THES run the usual gamut… with a number of folk with teary eyes remembering the glory days when only the nations elite went to university, and eagerly anticipating the closure of a large number of universities. (Such folk generally see a single factor as the basis upon which to decide which universities should be closed down – the date at which the institution became a university. Anything after 1991 or perhaps anything after 1960…). But wade through the usual trolling, sniping, and predictable arguments and you get the odd gem such as…

Back to basics 15 October, 2010
There is a simple solution here. Remove all IT support, computers, administrative staff, powerpoint, email and buildings. Instead, run all classes uses chalk and blackboard from the upstairs rooms of pubs, and move from region to region as a university, to areas which support universities and their students best – ie, return to the 13th century approach of university management.

Perhaps it’s time for ‘Free Universities’ following the ‘Free Schools’ model?

Augment the blackboard with a laptop, a cheap projector and mi-fi to provide internet access for students (who’ll have their own laptops, phones or tablets of course). Rather than rewind the clock back to the 1950′s, why not go the whole hog – lets go back to the 13th Century model, but augment it with modern communications. All that’s left is tutors and their personal reputations, and students and their personal choice of classes. Indeed, this might be the perfect complement to online Open Education.