Students taught valuable lesson

A class of students were told last week that their university had outsourced their teaching staff and future lectures would be delivered from India.

Staff deceived the politics students at the University of Edinburgh last Thursday, telling them that an Indian academic, via video, would teach all their future lectures.

As students entered their lecture on International Cooperation in Europe and Beyond their tutors told them this year was going to be “very different".

After being notified that lecturer Mark Aspinwall no longer worked at the university, the students were asked to sit through an short video.

Mr Aspinwall later commented: "I'm really in favor of doing innovative things and illustrating issues, not doing normal lecturing if possible, but trying to bring politics to life."

The real lecturer kept out of sight as the Indian academic on the video, fully informed on their lecture progress, told them he was hired for a fifth of the price their previous lecturer was. He explained how this was a sensible economic move by the university.

“Initially, I was just as confused as anyone else, but slowly it all began to look like an elaborate hoax,” says Louis Chua, a second year student present at the lecture.

As the video came to an end, the students, save for two who had left early, were met by Mr Aspinwall, telling them they had just been taught a valuable lesson on outsourcing.

The star of the video was a doctor from Fife who had never been to India.

Teaching methods incorporating video and other media are not new in the world of academics and are believed to be an effective way of varying teaching-structure to get more student attention.

Universities such as Bath, York and the London School of Economics have already started using podcasts—web based audio broadcasts—of lectures as a learning resource.

Edinburgh University would be joining a long rank of other teaching institutions in using multimedia resources to enhance the effect of learning methods. In addition, the global academic community regularly makes use of guest lectures and contacts from other parts of the world.

On being asked how plausible the scenario really is, Mr. Aspinwall said: "This isn't something [the University of] Edinburgh would actually do, why would we outsource what we do when students make the effort to come here?"

Outsourcing in the academic sector is however becoming more normal as colleagues from different teaching institutions and parts of the world pull together in order to utilise the best possible resources within the field.