A new academic year is about to begin, and students will be bombarded with a plethora of information about all manner of things. Some of it may even be useful. A lot of it could have been left out and picked up as they went along. (Indeed, a lot of information gets given ‘just in case’ so as to avoid potential liability.) Much of this information will be unloaded upon them in Freshers' Week*. And it does not end there. The first week or two of teaching includes further sets of preliminary information. For example, a lecture plan giving what is to be covered, in what order and when, is often provided. I've never been concerned about knowing in advance what’s coming up, but some students have used it to their advantage. One chap a year above me at university only ever went to one biochemistry lecture in the entire two years the course ran. And that was the very first lecture. On that occasion, he was given a list of lecture topics to be covered each week and so decided to go away and study it for himself.
Not being concerned about knowing what is coming up in advance, I was more interested in hearing what might be called the ethos behind the subjects being studied. Each discipline has its own way of thinking about things. Thus, I wanted to know what that was. The chap I mentioned above went away and studied biochemistry in a rather mechanical way. As he described it to me, his approach was that of mere rote learning. Biochemistry was not something that he wanted to pursue. It was just a subject forming part of a much broader degree syllabus. There were other areas that were of greater interest to him.
When beginning a course with new students – especially 'freshers' – I often used to flash up on the screen some pithy statements. These were meant to grab the students' attention, raise a smile (if not a laugh – although these were rather rare) and be thought-provoking. The thought provocation was what was most important.
My favourite opening statement came in two parts. (PointPoint cleverly allowed fades from a simple, initial statement into a much fuller one.)
The statement began:
Believe nothing this man tells you
Then…
Check everything he says by reading about it for yourself
…faded in.
It was not that I was not believable or going to tell them anything false – although that might have been inferred from the opening statement if left on its own. It was that I wanted the students to engage with the subject outside of the lecture theatre by reading about it and thereby engaging in the subject on their terms.
* Many institutions now use the term 'Introductory Week' instead. It’s not a term I ever liked and never will.
