Making the syllabus cheaper

In the Middle Eastern studies subject «MØNA2503», lecturer Jan-Erik Smilden shrunk the compendium to half its size by putting out links to the remaining articles on the subject’s webpage. The articles are available through the University of Oslo Library’s (UB) website. -We have made our own web portal with material relating to the Middle East. Currently we have over 60 articles there, both articles from the syllabus and other recommended articles, Smilden says.

Students can click their way directly to the articles and save them, or print them out.

– This is cost effective and saves time, while at the same time giving you access to more resources and more information, Smilden states.

Compendiums are sold with a standard price per page of 1,43 kroner, so a reduced number of pages in the compendium will also reduce the price.

The project is currently a collaboration between the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at the Faculty of Humanities and UB, and Smilden believes that lecturers are not being well enough informed about the possibilities of an online syllabus.

– The system can be used at all institutes, and it is easy for lecturers to use, if they are just made aware of the fact that it exists, he believes.

In last week’s copy of Universitas, Leader of the Student Parliament Heine Skipnes criticized the University of Oslo (UiO) for making compendiums unnecessarily expensive. As the university is already paying subscription charges for online access to the material, then you are paying double if you also have to pay an independent photocopying charge for the printing of compendiums, he stated. The UiO administration claimed that Skipenes was wrong, and that the example syllabus he put forward was not representative.

Head of Department at the Department of Academic Affairs (SST), Torbjørn Grønner, says that the administration at UiO does not have a formal policy that states that lecturers should use the system that IKOS is now taking into use.

– Shouldn’t the administration have a super ordinate plan concerning this issue?

– It seems reasonable to offer such a thing. However, this is an academic matter, and the people who make the syllabuses must decide whether it is a good idea to use these resources with the subject’s goals in mind, Grønner says.

Grønner agrees that students and lecturers should be made aware of these resources.

– We think that the possibilities should be made known among the lecturers who are putting the syllabuses together. And it is a plus that, unlike other online resources, these have been quality controlled by UB and the individual lecturer.