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NE W S
We were promised jetpacks!
CLIFFORD McCARTEN
Dean for a Day
As Dean, I would standardize the format and
delivery of electronic readings across all courses.
I have been a post-secondary student off and
on for the past ten years. In that time, institutions have gradually shifted from a predominately
physical (i.e., coursepacks) to a predominately
electronic mode of delivering edited collections of
primary and secondary materials. Costly printed
coursepacks of materials freely available online
through institutional subscriptions and CanLII
have long been a source of grumbling amongst
students. So, like many of my colleagues, I laud
the curation of digital links and PDF files of journals, cases and other materials.
But when we envisioned a future free of physical coursepacks, we never foresaw the multi-format, unedited overabundance of files, subfolders
and changing content we see in course websites
and syllabi today. With the transition to digital,
we were promised jetpacks, but are stuck driving
rattly old trucks. Every course has its own set of
multiple PDFs, .docs, links to journals, instructions on accessing journals, policy manuals, and
links to unedited hundred-page long SCC cases.
Every course website has its own file scheme and
naming conventions for readings — or maybe
none at all. In the halcyon days of coursepacks,
these materials would have been edited, stable
and accessible.
From the student point of view, downloading, organizing and reading these multiple files is
proving increasingly unwieldy. It’s often unclear
when materials have been added or changed, and
virtually impossible to tell what is properly “part
of the course” and what is obiter. How does one
properly review this disarray of changing materials before an exam? For those (like myself) who
read and learn most effectively by underlining
and writing comments directly on materials, the
multiplicity of file formats makes it extremely difficult to have any consistent digital strategy for
note-making. Instead, we’re left printing out individual articles and building ad-hoc coursepacks.
In short, in the transition from physical to
digital, institutions have quietly and transferred
a significant burden of work and time around the
preparation, organization and editing of course
materials from professors / administrators to
students. Over the past ten years, the basic organizational work I’ve had to do just to get to my
readings has increased dramatically. For schools,
this is a customer service failing and a disincentive for student reading.
But it’s a relatively simple problem to solve!
As Dean, I would support standardizing the
delivery of digital readings to maximize acces-
The Obiter Dicta
sibility. This means (i) creating a single collated PDF
file of all readings for each
topic/week of class; and/
or (ii) creating a single collated PDF file of all course
readings — in effect, a complete digital coursepack.
Indeed, to the relief of students, some professors (eg,
Rehaag) are already practicing this method of delivery.
Standardizing and collating readings would greatly
increase the accessibility
and manageability of course
materials. It would stabilize
the increasingly nebulous
record of what is actually
being covered in courses
and would drastically cut
down student time dedicated to administration of
readings.
Kind regards,
Clifford M cCarten
2L Osgoode
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