I have decided to set you a series of workshop topics for you to research and deliver orally (in the form of a workshop) and in writing, in teams of three or four.

Obviously you have to decide who you will work with AND select a topic WITHOUT DUPLICATION.  

I have tried to make the topics germane to your course and the context in which you are likely to find yourselves working.  I have tended to write them as statements for you to discuss, giving you some direction as to what you need to cover – but how you do it is up to YOU.

The object is for you to COMMUNICATE – in English – in such a way as to INTEREST and involve your colleagues in the topic. Treat it rather as a ‘workshop’ (as opposed to a straight presentation) Make it though-provoking – controversial even!   Use whatever tools you wish to achieve this…. yes, use an internet connection if you wish, yes set your colleagues questions or tasks like a quick brainstorm, but whatever you do make sure that it is MEMORABLE and ALL of us can walk out of the room having been challenged, excited, interested and knowing and understanding more than we did when we walked in.  Don’t just read a script… don’t just do wall-to-wall Powerpoint….

We have four more, three hour classes and we can easily cover two of these in each slot AND leave time for discussion and other topics of your choosing.

I suggest the format for each week should be:  Team  workshop, followed by discussion / plenary session.  One hour.  You should be speaking / involving the group for about 30 minutes of that hour.  We will then discuss the issue and I will ask you the audience to give feedback (constructive critique) to your colleagues on the quality of their workshop highlighting things that went well and how other things might have been improved.

Marking.

Workshop.  I will be marking your use of English of course – the key being that you should at all times be clear in your meaning / intention (even if you make the odd mistake in grammar, pronunciation…….  In addition I want to see that you really have comprehensively addressed the topic/question you have chosen.  Do READ the questions – they are there to help you understand exactly what I want – you may find there is more than one question on more than one subject.  You are in L3 and understanding what has been requested of you in English is also of critical importance – we can’t mark you well  if you don’t do what was asked of you.  I also want to see you generate interest and involvement on the part of your colleagues: they are not to be ‘read at’ – as I said above, think of this as a workshop you are leading rather than a paper you are presenting.  I want to see clarity in your analyses and evaluations.  I want to see a good structure with an introduction to your task and method of approach plus, at the end, well-draw and justified conclusions on the basis of evidence cited.    Boring us will not generate a good mark – even if the English isn’t bad – so beware.

Written.  For submission in hard copy the session AFTER  your workshop (to enable you to benefit from any feedback I may give you during the workshop itself). A minimum of a 2x page A4 synthesis, in English, of your evidence and arguments.  You may use further pages as appendices to include things like screenshots etc.

The Workshop Topics.

There are 14 of you working in threes or fours, so each team will be covering   one of the four topics offered below:

1. “Technical advances in ICT are generally predictable with a high degree of reliability. What is by no means so clear is how such innovations may be diffused and whether & to what extent we might adopt them”.    Vaughan, D.R. (2000)  Discuss.

2.  “In my day at University (late 70s and early 80s) the problem was that there was never enough source material to go around – typically one textbook on short loan or one paper-based journal article on restricted loan. Access to limited information by large numbers was a real problem.  Nowadays we have a very different problem: typically 2.6 million search returns in under 1.06 seconds available to anyone connected to the system. Result: information overload with little or no time, ability or inclination to analyse the validity or reliability of such sources and find the ‘best’ material for our purposes.  Let’s face it: who scrolls further than page two of Google’s search returns?  Both yesterday’s and today’s problems were and are difficult to address, but today’s problems are perhaps worse and even more impossible to resolve.”   N.X. Student (2014)  Discuss.

3. “Companies and organisations which once led the way as innovators and early adopters of ICT are now beginning to back-pedal, and fast.  They are bringing back mid-line managers and realsecretaries that they once unceremoniously ‘dumped’  (this activity we now call  ’right-sizing’) by using ICT as an agent of downsizing. They are developing ‘no email or ‘no email after hours” policies, monitoring PC use and cutting staff off if they are too connected and putting lots of effort into ‘work-life balance’ by ensuring that work does not follow us home via wi-fi evenings and weekends.  We are perhaps seeing the first wave of a general commercial ‘backlash’ against ICT.”   I.M. Ludd (2015).  Discuss, reviewing the evidence and providing examples. 

4. “ICT works faster than we do or can. We are constantly bombarded with requests for information and the reading of countless reports and papers.  Our former secretaries (who actually helped us do our jobs) are now management/administrative agents of command and control generating more work for us whilst we have had to become our own typists, organisers, administrators and out-of-office services.  We have now become over-burdened servants of the technologies we thought were going to make our working lives easier.  We no longer have the time to engage in what we really ought to be doing: being creative, problem-solving and actually thinking – all things that ICT is NOT good at at all and our fast-changing world desperately needs.  ICT has most rapidly and comprehensively devalued us. ”   I.M. Over-worked. (2015)   Unrealistically one-sided, or closer to the truth than we might like to think or admit?  Discuss using case-study examples to weigh up the arguments on both sides.