Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

I know it’s perceived to be heresy to ask students what they want or how they feel about something but just occasionally it seems like a good idea…..  You may not be aware but every year we review the Student Handbook and consider such mundane things as the lists of standard texts that we use.  In updating them this year I have acknowledged that DMRB and MCDHW are electronically published as a web resource and not actually documents as listed.  Similarly I feel that there might be a need to move from O’Flaherty C.A. 1974. Highways Volume 2. 2^nd edition to the present 4^th edition but this does raise a couple of questions…

Given the present pristine copies of the 2^nd editions in the library have been there since 1994 yet don’t look like they have been much thumbed bed time reading for the past eighteen courses, are they worth replacing and if so, in what format?

Presuming the answer to the first question is that we do need to provide texts, the second question: ‘What form should the new books take?’ becomes more interesting.  ebooks cost anywhere from 20-40% of the hard copy cover price.  Readers are available for free download and numerous texts can be accessed via the Barringtion Library anyway.  Do we need to hold hard copy, should we buy and give away soft copy, is student access whilst on course acceptable?

So presuming copy is made available will it be read? If not, why not? Is it that there are too many texts issued on the course, that that they have been supplied in a format that students find difficult to access, or simply that we don’t direct you to read passages and then discuss them as might be done in other academic institutions?  Should we make more effort to promote reading around the subject?  Is there too little differentiation on our part (should we tell you which texts matter and need to be read at different times), or should we simply assume our students are luddites that need spoon feeding all information in presentations and as handouts (don’t go there)?