TRANSCRIPT OF TAPED INTERVIEW
with
PROFESSOR MIKE WATERSON
Key:
HN
TK
HN
MW
Tim KELLY
Hilary NESI
Professor Mike WATERSON
Right. So, what is a seminar - in your department?
MW Well, it’s a meeting of a smallish group of students - I mean I guess,
typically 10. And really they take two different forms, depending on the
nature of the subject. So. Yeah, there are some where in the more
quantitative aspects, where the essential role will be to go through a series
of questions, usually the students will have done the questions
beforehand, and so the tutor will want to pick out questions which the
students have found difficult, and try and get other students to explain
how you might do them, and then the tutor will assist in the explanation.
So that would be one sort. And the other sort is more directive - they’re
all quite directive in economics. So there will be a series of more
discursive questions and maybe students would take it in turn - you know
they’re pre-allocated to answer particular questions. Or, maybe, the
person will pick upon them at the time, or whatever. And they all should
have prepared. Or maybe someone will be asked to do a presentation.
But that - then that would be more discursive type - for more discursive
type subjects.
HN
What’s the relationship between lectures and seminars?
MW Well, essentially the lectures are usually - although not at the graduate
level so much - but usually they are quite big groups, so - I mean, you
know, our largest lectures are around 250 students. Or we have quite a
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number of lectures of over a 100 students. And so they are essentially
one-way communication. Whereas the seminars are much more two-way
communication, and really the seminars are where the work programme is
engaged in by the student. So the lectures are more passive learning and
the seminars are meant to be more active learning.
HN
What do your students have to do before the seminar?
MW Well, it depends a bit upon the nature of the thing. I mean, quite
commonly there will be - in the more quantitative aspects - there will be a
sheet that they have to go through, answering the questions - to get them
to appreciate where they don’t understand things. Usually, those won’t be
part of their formal assessment, but it’s meant as a formative process.
And even in more discursive subjects there will be often be a sheet which
they will have been asked to do something. It’s very rare to have a
seminar which is completely open-ended without a defined set of tasks.
HN
M’m. And during the seminar what - if they give presentations, for
example, as you mentioned -
MW M’m?
HN
- as an example, you mentioned - do you give any advice as to how these
presentations should be delivered?
MW Yes, it can be a bit tricky though, because - I find this anyway - that
obviously you don’t want to be openly critical of the students because else
the incentive is on them to - not to turn up.
HN
M’m.
MW So, you want to try and give - well, I think general advice beforehand and
you try and emphasise that they’ve not only got to have worked out what
their answer is to the particular question, but also be fairly fluent in that,
so they’re not just trying to read some badly scrawled notes on it. And,
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you know, depending on the nature of things - I mean sometimes it will be
a sort of semi-formal type of presentation where they might have prepared
an overhead or two, or whatever. Occasionally there will be groups of
two or three, but more commonly I think it’s individualistic in economics.
HN
Do you give any particular advice about preparing overheads, or - ?
MW Well, I suppose the main advice is that you can always get much less on
an overhead than you expect, that you have to write really quite large in
order for - or have, you know, at least 24 point type, in order for it to
appear well on the screen. But that - that’s I mean - a fairly basic point
really, but it - it’s something that’s often ignored, even by sort of
academic presenters.
HN
M’m. And do you set a time limit for presentations?
MW Well, try to. I mean, I guess, usually an individual person you wouldn’t
want them speaking more than five minutes. But they - some people - I
think the tendency is more towards not realising how little you can get
through in five minutes, rather than the other way round. You know.
And it’s quite easy for it to stretch and to longer than that. And then it’s a
problem, because you want to curtail them in a way, but on the other
hand, you don’t want to sort of cut them off.
HN
What do you think are the learning outcomes of seminars generally?
MW Well, - (laughs) - that’s a very broad question!
HN
As opposed to lectures, let’s say.
MW Right. O.K. Well, I mean lectures are much more to do with absorption
of material, really, and getting an overall view of the material. Whereas and of course in doing that, you can - there are all sorts of areas where
you might think you know what’s going on, but you don’t. And so it’s an
attempt - a seminar is much more an attempt to maybe apply theory to a
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particular area - or to try particular examples, in order to capture - in order
to gather understanding through using the material, rather than just
absorbing material. I think it’s that using material really.
HN
I am a very shy student and my first language isn’t English.
MW M’m?
HN
So, is there any way - is there any advice you could particularly to me and
how I could take part?
MW Right. Well, actually, we do occasionally have problems, with people.
There was - I was teaching - this is a slightly side issue. But I was
teaching on a course, maybe about five years ago, where presentations
were actually compulsory. They weren’t marked, but they were
compulsory. And there was one student came and he was not actually an
overseas student - he was actually in - you know - really quite panicked
about the idea of doing a presentation. And eventually I steered him
round to doing it. But it - you know, some people, they do get extremely
nervous, and I mean, I think that applies to some extent to overseas
students, particularly perhaps girls from places like Singapore or
Malaysia, where they - you know - they may have been used to being
relatively quiet members of the family group or whatever. You know. It
can be difficult for them to engage effectively in sort of leading something
in a sense - rather than taking a more subordinate role. And it can be,
you know - so you do have to try and explain that to them, that - you
know - that they are supposed to take an active part.
HN
M’m.
MW That can be difficult then.
HN
What would you think would be the mark of a really good seminar
participant?
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MW Well, I think actually someone who’s willing to challenge what another
student has said. There are very few who are like that, who are actively
willing to challenge. Because maybe in the nature of the subject of
economics, people are often worried about making mistakes in terms of
sort of technical points, and so are a bit reluctant to challenge other
students. But I think it’s very useful if they can - if they can do that.
Because I think it enhances understanding.
HN
So you’re saying that it’s better to make comments and to ask questions,
even if you might have made a mistake?
MW Yes, yes. Yes. I often tell students that - you know - if they’ve got a
question and they think - it’s something that they really think they don’t
understand, then it - they are unlikely to be the only one in the room who
is of that view. There are likely to be other people who are embarrassed
to ask, because - (phone rings) - Shall I just….?
TW
Sure.
MW (Answers phone, while Tim and Hilary talk quietly together.)
HN
Now, where were we?
TW
Yeah, could we ask that question again - the last question?
HN
The question was - whether it was O.K. -
TW
And I wanted to ask a related question as well, because you said it was
O.K. to presume a good student would question other students?
MW M’m h’m.
TW
Is it O.K. also to question the tutor?
MW Yeah, right! Yeah.
HN
Is it running?
TW
It’s running, yeah. O.K. I’ll let you off that.
HN
O.K.
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TW
Then the third question.
HN
You said that it was a good thing to - for students to question -
MW Yes.
HN
- other students?
MW M’m.
HN
Should they be encouraged to question the tutor as well?
MW Oh yes. That’s - that’s right. I mean I think that it’s important - I mean
the tutor can make mistakes. And some tutors can be ones where they’re
just starting out, of course, they can be rather nervous about that, and they
can - they can be worried about being picked up, and I remember being
like that when I first started. But, no, it’s important because - of course,
the tutor may have glossed over something or - or they may not have
explained it particularly well. And if one student doesn’t understand it’s
likely that the others - it’s likely that there will be others in that similar
position.
HN
M’m.
MW And of course, the tutor may be making assumptions. I mean any
economics involves a certain amount of assumptions really. The tutor
may be making assumptions which are - you know - are implicit, or
maybe even questionable assumptions, and, you know, I think it’s quite
valid for the students to say, “Well, why are you making that
assumption?” - or “Wouldn’t the argument be different if you were
making this alternative assumption?”
HN
And so you say it would be better - it’s better for a student to say
something, question what has been said by another student, or the tutor,
than just to stay silent?
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MW Oh yes, definitely, yes. Yes, I think actually also there is also a cultural
difference here, that - that my impression is that the - in many countries
the sort of distance, if you like, between the student and the academic
member of staff, in many countries it’s a greater distance than it is in the
UK, or maybe in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. And, so in some cultures it’s
not common to question the academic. But I think within our tradition it’s
- it is common, and it’s also quite useful, as I say.
HN
Are there any particular qualities that international students bring to a
seminar?
MW Um h’m. Yes, there are - to focus on the sort of positive qualities - I
mean, if you’re - Well, let’s take the subject area of micro-economics,
which is quite a broad subject area, but - Now, micro-economics is quite
a lot to do with things like relative prices, and of course, within a country
you don’t see a great variance in prices, and so, you know, if you get
people from different countries, where there are, say, different relative
prices between goods, then you can observe differences in behaviour and
so they may be able to comment on something which is not apparent to
home students, because they haven’t - because the home students haven’t
got the range of experience.
Or you can get different institutions. And this is another good example.
That different institutions, for tackling the same problem. So you can get
general economic problems, which arise in all countries, and in different
countries different institutions will have grown up to tackle those. And
then - then there’s a question about why - if the institutions are different,
you know - why - why that difference might have occurred? And what you know - what one can - it can learn from another country, in terms of
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developing these institutions. I mean we can think of all sorts of
examples - like - I mean just a couple of examples to illustrate. You
know, in different countries it was a case that different types of industry
would have been under state control. And then there’s a question,
“Well,” - you know - “Why do you have, say,” - to take a fairly modern
version of this - “Why in Britain do we have competition between bus
companies? - Whereas in Italy you normally have a particular bus
company that does all the buses in that city?” And “What are the positive
and negative features of that?”
HN
In that kind of discussion -
MW M’m?
HN
- Are you expecting students to come back with opinions and ideas that that are not written in any text book? - and that are not part of the sort of
???common??? life?
MW Oh yes, definitely yes. Because, I mean, the text - the text-books that we
use in economics, for better or worse, are quite North American biased
really. And so they will often actually make implicit assumptions about
things which are just not true elsewhere. For example, there are very few
American text-books in economics, outside sort of specialist topic areas,
that wouldn’t even mention trade unions. They’re just not thought worthy
of mentioning. Whereas, in many European countries they play quite a
significant role, and, you know - so that would be an example, where, you
know, where you might get - the text-book might give a misleading
impression, or an incomplete view.
HN
So you encourage quite a critical approach to the text-book?
MW Yes, that’s right. In - not in terms of - if you like - a sort of basic analysis
- but more in terms of the implicit assumptions and so on.
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HN
M’m.
MW I mean it’s - it doesn’t always necessarily work like this, but that’s - one
would like it to work, how it - one would like it to work.
HN
Do students in seminars argue? I mean, is it possible - it is acceptable for
students to have different viewpoints and to engage in argument?
MW Yes, it’s - it’s certainly acceptable, yes. It’s not - I should say it’s not very
common, but, you know - it’s unfortunate perhaps that it’s not very
common, but it’s certainly acceptable, and can be quite useful.
HN
M’m. Can you think of anything else?
TW
I can’t think of anything else. Is there anything else that you’d like to
say? - Any areas that we haven’t got to?
MW I don’t think so, no. No. Can I just read them out - ?
HN
There’s two sets of questions here. One’s with me -
(Tape stops abruptly in mid sentence.)
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