There are many things about university which go unsaid with students. Academics write about them a lot; but the complaints, concerns and empirical and theoretical research about the university and its multiple failings do not find their way easily into student hands, hearts and minds. There are numerous examples of literature suggesting students are not in, or entering, an entirely healthy or functional environment when they sign up for their course. We may speak of the ‘good university’, but for academics studying the dysfunction involved, the good university means the university we ought to have, but don’t.

“It all begins with an idea.”

When you use a website service like Squarespace they provide you with idiot-proof page templates. Each template carries repeated text such as “It all begins with an idea” that they assume you will delete and replace with your own text. In the case of what I am developing here for university teaching and learning this given sentence is entirely true and so I’ve kept their phrase.

An idea is born. I am not aware of any other such service (although I am bound to discover others soon, as is always the case…) offering pedagogic consultancy to universities. Is there a need? Definitely. Why? Because again and again we find that universities - despite being bastions of education - are not taking into account the social science of the teaching they use for students.