STAFF DEVELOPMENT: SOME THOUGHTS ON RESPONSIBILITY

To many teaching in universities in this country, the whole idea of developing staff seems slightly absurd. After all, did we not choose to work in a university because we had already reached a position of some academic standing in our own specialisation; and surely is not the essential function of an academic to extend the boundaries of knowledge through scholarship and research? Perhaps this is too narrow a view of staff aims, but certainly it is still the widely held belief that promotion comes more readily this way. It is only recently that interest has been shown in the nature of teaching in universities. Doubts have been expressed by Bligh (1972) and others about the effectiveness of the traditionally accepted lecture approach; and attention has recently been given to small group teaching, individualised instruction, the Keller plan and other alternative methods. The emphasis placed on such methods could suggest that staff development is concerned largely with teaching‐‐yet is this not an absurdity in an environment which values mainly scholarship and research? This conflict is one of the major problems facing staff development, and solving it may‐‐to some extent‐be at the heart of the problem of responsibility

In this paper, I will look briefly at some of the early work done in universities in the field of staff development, and suggest certain important character traits needed by anyone involved in this work, before posing questions of responsibility     

Effective desktop videoconferencing with minimal network demands

Desktop Videoconferencing (DVC) has been shown to support effectively remote tutorials, but specific video channel requirements are not known. There is a perception that higher levels of image quality will enhance the effectiveness of the tutorial, and this has implications on scarce network bandwidth. If it can be shown that low levels of image quality are not detrimental to learning opportunities, then the use of DVC will be more attractive to institutions inhibited by fear of high network demands.
Limitations in current methods for assessing video channel quality are discussed, and a new scheme for tutorial content quality analysis is outlined. The scheme has been applied to data gathered from a trial involving 30 students studying for an accredited university module. The results show that increasing the quality of the video channel resulted in no measurable increase in the quality of dialogue within the tutorials. The conclusions are that low quality images are not necessarily detrimental, and therefore DVC could be endorsed more readily where bandwidth is limited.