In theory...

Recently I exchanged a number of emails with my supervisor and the Human Resources person where I work, which resulted in a deeply philosophical conundrum.

The background to this is that I am leaving in June as I don't want to renew my contract here, but have accrued 16 days of leave that I am due.

First, I wanted to know what would happen about that leave I'm owed.

Instant and very clear answer from HR. I will be paid in lieu. Great.

Next I wanted to know if I could take a single day of that leave during the semester. There is one working day coming up when (for that day only) I have no teaching. I also won't be required for exams or for marking sessions. Could I take that single day off?

The HR person said "Certainly, if your supervisor approves it."

The Supervisor said "It's unprecendented and it can't be done."

I said "OK, but HR seem to think differently."

Supervisor replied "HR was talking theoretically about institution policy. Honestly I've asked "higher" and "higher" says it can't be permitted."

I thought of emailing Supe to elucidate the difference between a theoretical policy of yes which always in practice comes in as a no, and an actual and admitted policy of no... but I decided not to.

Just as well.

I'm pretty sure Supe doesn't see there is one.

(It occurs to me to hope that the payment in lieu will not merely be a theoretical one...)

Reflections of ELSS part 1

Top of the head phrases

- is there anybody there? said the traveller (in cyberspace)
- what if they gave a collaborative working exercise and nobody came?
- the natives (cf Prensky) are not nearly restless enough
- the sound of one blog blethering

This really started to emerge for me during week 3 when it seemed that the tumbleweed was blowing through the deserted alleyways of the VLE. Then, when I signed up to follow all the participants' blogs that I could find, I noticed that only Patsy was following anyone else's blog.

It's early days, I thought, and sure enough Marion found her way to mine, (welcome Marion! - a 100% increase in readership already), but other blogs remained unvisited.

This connected for me with a suspicious feeling I have about much of the Internet, that there are an awful lot of talkers and precious few listeners.

In the context of the course, and especially when getting ready to work collaboratively, it played right to my insecurities.

I'll say something positive in a later post, but I want to get this feeling in focus first, as it coloured my experience of the course considerably.

More thinking

Have done no more actual work on the topic but just a bit more thinking.

Part of what I teach here comes under the heading of "career preparation" - focussing on skills in English which will be useful when our Business and IT and Engineering students get jobs. The kinds of tasks we ask students to do include job applications, CV writing, etc.

For example an assignment was to find an advert for a job you really could do and write a letter of application for it. But naturally most of the jobs the students look for are advertised online and don't even give a land address - it would be odd to reply to an online ad with a letter unless it was specified.

Students tend to use email principally as a private-life means of communication, which means that they are not usually familiar with the norms of business-style email communication... sign offs like "I miss U" etc abound.

So it needs some thought and a bit of work...