laurencetotelin
The last few months have been particularly difficult in UK Higher Education, with constant news of restructuring, loss of jobs, and the end of long-standing degrees. My own institution has not been spared: it announced the loss of 400 academic jobs, as well as the end of degrees in nursing, music,...
laurencetotelin
It has been a very long time since I last wrote here. Many things have happened, not the least a pandemic. I have often thought of returning to this blog, but things got in the way. Over the last couple of months, however, my fingers have been itching more. So here I am. While I have not...
laurencetotelin
As university teachers, we are encouraged to embrace ‘innovation’. ‘Innovation’ often boils down to adopting new technologies. I’m very much a nerd, and I love to try out new software and gadgets. But at the end of the day, in my opinion, the most effective teaching methods remain the oldest: the...
laurencetotelin
It’s day three of our strike. The weather is wet and generally miserable. This is where things are starting to get tough, and resolve can be dampened. For various reasons, I find it hard to stand still on a picket, so I have asked our strike committee whether it would be OK for me to tour various...
laurencetotelin
Content warning: blood So here we are again: we are back on strike. We are on strike over pensions, pay devaluation, pay inequality, job insecurity and rising workloads. We will be out for eight days, but the union is talking in terms of ‘waves’ – so we’ll see. When I last wrote, our union, the...