Tech Lunch

I spent yesterday in central London at a joint meeting between JISC and the Higher Education Academy. The aim of the event was to explore ways in which the two bodies, who both have responsibilities for differing aspects of Higher Education, could collaborate strategically. The discussions focused on e-assessment: the process of using more automated and computer-based methods for measuring student attainment, progress and testing. Of interest to me were the debates around the use of new technologies in these areas and in particular discussion of the potential for Web 2.0 and social software.

This throws up interesting issues, for example, if a class works together on a wiki about a subject, how can the marks be divided up fairly? One speaker pointed out that different subjects have different views on the use and uptake of automated assessment, explaining that, for example, Philosophy lecturers have not, to date, seen the benefit of using such methods as they rely so heavily on the essay as a form of assessment. Other speakers took up this theme and argued that although this was an issue it was at least partly because too many academics see e-assessment as being all about the use of what is called in the jargon MCQ (or ‘multiple choice’ to you and I).

The venue for the event was the magnificent, neo-classical, One Great George Street, just a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament (although stone throwing is not actually allowed, for obvious reasons). The venue is partly home to the Institute of Civil Engineers and they had laid on a reasonable lunch including roast vegetable frittatas and chocolate fudge cake. However, I was most impressed by an exquisite range of herbal teas from the Mighty Tea Leaf Company which came in an interesting range of flavours and each in a large muslin pouch (rather than a mere paper bag) which contributed to an enhanced brew. As far as I can see from their website they are not fair traded, so I won’t be able to justify buying them, but if you ever come across them at functions or tea shops I can recommend the green tea.

I have to say that I was rather surprised and pleased to find such attention to tea detail at the Institute of Civil Engineers, as, generally speaking, civil engineers are not renown for their appreciation of fine tea. Is this a sign of changing times?

At Leeds on Friday (see yesterday’s entry for more background) the main keynote speech was delivered by Dr Andrew Herbert, Director of Microsoft Research, Cambridge, who was a student at Leeds in the early 1970s. His talk was entitled, “Why everything I learned at Leeds in 1972 is no longer true” and he declared it to be, in part, an opportunity to have his revenge on his lecturers of thirty years ago. Continuing this blog’s interest in all things lunch oriented, Andrew noted that revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and that in this case, given the thirty-five year wait, it was “glacial”.

His main point was that there have been enormous technological changes and much of what was being taught in the ’70s was focused on “overcoming the limitation of the machine” e.g. speed of processor, size of memory, poor quality displays, use of punch cards etc. Some of Dr Herbert’s points were more obvious, for example: the day of the stand-alone computer is over, we live in the age of the networked computer. Secondly, software is much more complex than it used to be: testing code by simple ‘desk’ review (people who work in publishing can equate this to being a bit like proofreading) is no longer sufficient. Also, we need new ways of organising and visualising the large amounts of information on our systems – hierarchical file systems have had their day.

Other things were more complex. For example, the questions affecting Artificial Intelligence research have changed – the issue now is how far are we prepared to put our faith in computer algorithms that demonstrate ‘intelligence’. What if computers can’t explain WHY they’ve made a decision?

He also made the point that we are still in the process of defining the subject of computer science and there is a need to make it clear to people today that there is a definite discipline of computing and it is not just a group of techies playing around with gadgets. He said: “we have some way to go in persuading other disciplines that we have a theoretical underpinning”. This was very interesting to me as I feel quite strongly that we need to keep the ‘science’ in computer science. And when I say that, I mean we need to keep hold of the importance of ideas and the spirit of exploration and investigation, rather than turning into a purely vocational course of study.