University Research Unit Planned

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32145, 14 November 1969, Page 10

University Research Unit Planned

An educational research and advisory unit ! will be established at the ' University of Canterbury. Two of its main aims will be to provide greater institutional selfknowledge and in the long term to improve teaching at the university.

“The new unit is part of! our answer to the old gibe that universities investigate everything but themselves,” the vice-chancellor (Professor N. C. Phillips), said yesterday. He said the research function of the unit, which had been approved by the University Council, would involve the collation and analysis of academic information, largely statistical, with the assistance of the registry’s computers. “The university is conscious of pressures for the gathering and dissemination of basic facts about its academic activities, and there is a need to mobilise and co-ordinate data-gathering activities already going on in the uni-

versify,” Professor Phillips said. The results would be helpful as a basis for decisions on academic policy. A recent example of the use to which such data might be put was the decision to review the records of students who ; failed all their subjects in their first year. Design Of Tests The unit would also provide services to academic departments as required. It could assist them on such matters as methods of examining, formal and informal, including, for example, the design of "objective tests.” “I would also hope that in due course it would assume responsibility for organising courses on teaching methods,” Professor Phillips said. “In the past the Association of University Teachers has voluntarily organised one-day courses for new members of staff. These have been most helpful and they recognise the fact that academic staff cannot be assumed to possess innate knowledge of bow to teach.

“Plainly university teaching is different from school teaching and within the university differences in teaching methods are to be expected among different departments and at different levels.

“With increasing numbers of staff and, still more, with increasing sizes of classes, sooner or later the new unit will have to accept the task of arranging courses of instruction. “Naturally the unit will call on the services of academics for this purpose and I should also expect that attendance at such courses will continue to be voluntary. Equally, however, I have little doubt that academic staff will turn out in strength for courses of proven quality and usefulness. It will be up to the unit to see that courses are attractive." Full-Time Officer Professor Phillips said the unit would be served by a full-time officer of high academic qualifications, but would otherwise consist of existing members of the university staff. The unit Would report direct to the professorial board’s committee on education policy and would probably have many of its assignments defined for it by the committee, although it would be able to undertake particular tasks on its own initiative or at the request of other academic bodies of the university. “The unit will make itself available to departments seeking assistance or advice,” Professor Phillips said. “It will not force its services on anyone, although its research activities will call for widespread co-operation. “This new development is on a modest scale and can begin with little delay, especially in its data-collecting role. If the experiment succeeds, the unit will grow into a more ambitious enterprise.”