Near Future Teaching

Home
About
Videos
Materials
Outcomes
Blog
Team
Contact
Search for:

Search

Opinion Cards

The opinion cards distill the ideas that came out of our interviews, focus groups and events. They were devised via an affinity mapping approach across all our data. Each opinion card has a theme on one side and a sample of quotes direct from the students and staff of the University of Edinburgh on the back.

Opinion Cards

Arial image of many students

Opinion 1: Education should not be treated like a commodity

“We resist being treated as consumers, and seeing our education treated as a commodity.”
“It puts everyone into a box and if you don’t fit in you won’t do well.”
“The risk of reducing every aspect of learning ro a form of economic capital.

image of fist pump between colleagues

Opinion 2: Students should be encouraged to cooperate, not compete.

“Negative emotional consequences for many from intense competition in schooling… we should be taught without having to prove our worth.”
“We resist assessment systems that force us to compete instead of cooperate.”

Opinion 3: Assessment systems are one dimensional

“Academic performance does not reflect the ability to be a good clinician”
“We resist assessment systems that tell us how to teach, learn and research, and ignore extracurricular learning.”
“We resist hierarchies that defer to credentials before and above the learned experiences of teachers, students and non-academics on the ground.”

Opinion 4: Education should encourage creative thought

“The university should be a space for learning and un-learning.”
“The opportunity to wonder about stuff… I think that if you lock that off too much you will be too deterministic.”
“… avoid being too driven by training in some sense it should be on education that we are focussing on. It should be trying to encourage curiosity.”

Opinion 5: Students should be given the freedom to fail

“Having the opportunity to fail and take risks”
“Is a future without failure a good future? What is the educational value of mistakes?”

Opinion 6: Disciplinary silos should be broken down

“Use Technology to make it possible to explore connections between different courses and course content.”
“The first group designed a random curriculum generator which would force students and academics out of their disciplinary silos”
“That’s… why we want to have interpersonal dialogues.”

Opinion 7: Diverse perspectives in education enhances learning

“Inherent biases and prejudice should be challenged through critical engagement with literature, which is diverse in race, gender, secuality, ability.”
“One of my lecturers and I had a discussion about the content being quite difficult to discuss… pretty much everyone bar the four of us are very middle class.”
“How does what we see feed into what we believe to know, how that confirms existing biases.”

Opinion 8: Financial barriers are affecting students

“We resist financial barriers to education, including tuition fees, hidden course costs and high costs of living.”
“We resist living under debt.”

Opinion 9: Precarious employment is affecting staff

“We resist precarious employment in all its forms – including short-term contracts, zero hour work and poverty wages.”

Opinion 10: Education is enhanced by personal exchanges

“A huge part of learning is about… discussing ideas, benefitting from someone else’s experiences.”
“Ideas spark in the exchange between people.”
“There is a very different empathy when you are with people.”

Image of hand writing business notes

Opinion 11: Tech should strengthen relationships between lecturers and students

“Free up lecturers time to actually talk to students about what matters to them.”
“Continuing desire for personal contact with academics and teachers, but perhaps more as guides and mentors than as didactic lecturers.”
“Lecture capture us good for reviewing but don’t make it accessible until after the live lecture. You build a relationship with your lecturer – this is important.”

Opinion Card 12: The university’s governance is too opaque and hierarchical

“We resist the undemocratic and opaque governance of our university.”
“We resist inequality between inequality between the remuneration of the lowest paid staff and the excessive salaries of senior management”
“Staff and students need to pull together against efforts to run universities like big businesses.”

Opinion 13: Students and staff should be more involved in decision making

“Co-curricular and students as partners”
“I didn’t get a voice and couldn’t shape the way I learn or choose the material I work with.”
“Students and staff who should directly and cooperatively control their learning, their teaching, their research and their contributions to the common good.”

Opinion 14: Learning experiences should be more tailored to the individual

“Eliminate lectures completely… using other approaches such as flipped classroom to develop a more personal learning experience.”
“Focus on the individual student and consider mental health.”
“Use a range of technologies to make the individual learning experience more flexible and tailored.”

Opinion 15: Students should have the opportunity to shape their own learning paths

“Students already collecting and displaying the learning path they have designed for themselves.”
“Possibility that students might craft their own learning pathways.”

Opinion 16: Tailored one-to-one experiences between students and staff should be supported

“I really do value that personal one-on-one experience with a lecturer”
“The thing you get from university is the community and the sort of in-person help which is tailored to you.”

Opinion 17: The expansion of universities lowers the quality of teaching and learning

“My fear is that as we expand, we don’t expand on all resources. Could tech be used as a substitute?”
“The rapid expansion of student numbers without space to accommodate… has produced pinch points.”

Opinion 18: Too much technology can threaten wellbeing

“Always being online and available, students have less separation between university and home”
“As technology changes, you have to evolve instead of letting tech take you over… 5 o’clock on Friday you have to say no more emails’”
“The university should be teaching students how to separate work and non-work time, and time management skills.”

Image of lots of small lego peoples heads

Opinion 19: Technology can play a powerful role in the formation of a collective identity

“The role of social media emerged in discussion as a means of forming and finding welcoming communities”
“All… [the IoT ideas] were about strengthening connections and community”
“An aesthetic vision of presence,… is critical to ensure that all are involved in the community.”

More Materials

Future Practices

These further speculations emerged…

Future Universities

These speculations were used as source…

Future Worlds

These were written from the Future…

Value Cards

These are one of the most important…

Opinion Cards

The opinion cards distill the ideas…

Future Reviews

We wrote two short reviews which…

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh 2019.

The University of Edinburgh’s commitment to accessibility

© 2024 Near Future Teaching All rights reserved

Privacy Preference Center

Privacy Preferences