Bulletin Special Supplement Jun 1965

of the contents of a n inaccessible book. ( b) Students need to he encouraged to participate more actively during the lecture b y being given assigned reading and questions to t h i nk oat beforehand, by asking questions d u r i ng the lecture and by doing written work and attending discussio n groups afterwards. Intelligent note-taking is usually a sign of active attention, but it is hard to lay down rules about note- taking. Students in their first year should certainly he given advice and i t would be helpful if their notes could occasionally be checked or if they were to write, as an exercise, a summary of the lecture. T u t o rs may help in this as i n other things, and this should be borne in m i nd when appointments are being made. (c) Lecturers need to b e asking themselves not only whether their lecture is really necessary hut whether they are " s t i mu l a t i ng and inspiring" their students (see Appendix A, Section 1 ( b ) ) Th e ir lecture should fit into the whole scheme of their programme, including reading, w r i t i ng and tutoria l groups. (d) Certain courses at present are offered in alternate years so that students o f two different years can attend the same lecture. T h i s practice should he encouraged wherever practicable to lighte n the lecture load of the teachers. I n the end, when all three colleges have moved out t o Ma L i u Shui, a careful intercollegiate coordination of teaching programmes should further reduce the teaching load. C11. T u t o r i a l G r o u p s . (a) T he teaching of small groups or of individuals i s usually accepted as the most effective method. Learning to t h i nk for oneself is a psychological an d moral as well as an intellectual problem. T o persuade student s to think for themselves, to break dow n their fear of venturing on their own, co wea n them f r om their reliance upon 'authority' — this task needs not just a Socratic attack on their intellectual inertia hu t also pastoral care on the part of their teachers in w i n n i ng their trust. W e agree w i th the Vive-Chancellor that it is above all in the first year that this must be done, and the smaller the groups the better, so that teacher and student can get to know each other and establish f r om the start that basic of mutual cooperation and confidence on wh i ch the student's whole career to a very great extend depends. (b) But the great difficult y is the lack of time. W i t h a staff: student ratio of 1:10, tutorials wo u ld be either too big o r too infrequent to be of much use. T h i s is a problem no t peculiar to our university but one that is going to loom larger and larger in the whole rapidly expanding wo r ld of th e university w i th its demands for more and more staff. We can suggest only the following measures:— (i) Cu t t i ng down on the number of lectures (see section 10(a) an d (d)) (ii) Using audio-visual and other aids (see section 16) (iii) Emp l o y i ng tutors and demonstrators to lead tutorial groups (iv) Emp l o y i ng graduates as part-tim e tutors as soon as graduate studie s have begun, ( c) T u t o r i a l groups are not automatically a panacea for all teaching difficulties. Ther e are different types, hearing and commenting on essay s by one or two individuals, giving back and discussing written work, group discussion of paper by one of its members, discussion by a group o f a theme or book, and each type needs careful thought an d preparation on the part of student and teacher. (d) Departmental programmes should b e so flexibly organized as to encourage thos e members of staff who are w i l l i ng to d o so to experiment in different types of tutorials. We als o recommend that members of staff who are just beginning on their careers should be given definite advice and help on the r unn i ng of tutorial groups (see section 24) . (e) Departmental programmes vary so widely that it wo u ld be pointless t o recommend a definite number of tutorials. But we urge that d u r i ng the first two years, students should be give n some tuition in small groups every week; ideally th e number in each group should not he more tha n six. D u r i ng their last two years mu ch of th e teaching is done in small groups in any case, and b y then students should be familiar enough w i th their teachers and mature enough to be able to approach them o n a more informal basis, (f) We further recommend tha t inter-departmental groups should be organized w i t h staff as well as students f r om more than one department . Sometimes the subject could be a completel y general one to wh i ch students of several department s could be expected to have some interest, e.g., moder n methods of advertising, and sometimes one in which the students of perhaps only two departments wou ld be likely to have the specialist interest; e.g., physic s and religious knowledge students could discuss th e influence of modern cosmological theories on religious beliefs. I n this way students might be led to lift their heads out of their own exclusively departmental studie s and to realize that they can lear n f r om and teach students in other departments. C12. W r i t t e n W o r k . Practice varies greatly i n the different departments of the thre e colleges, but our impression is that there is not enough of the k i nd of written work tha t makes students think for themselves instead of merely copyin g out information f r om lectures or books. T h e correction of written work again means work fo r members of staff, and we can only refer to what we say in section 9 ( d) and 22. We believe that a definite number of essays should be demanded of each student every term and that of these one or two shoul d be on some subject that cuts across departmental boundaries. Such essays could, perhaps, be organised by the departments in cooperation 12