This blog is powered by the Moveabletype blogging software. I discovered it a couple of years ago, and have since used it in many locations thanks to its adaptability and straightforward interface.

The company behind Moveabletype, Six Apart, have kicked up a little storm over their announcement last week of new license fees that will extend to those using MT for non-commerical purposes. Such has been the backlash, that they’re asking for feedback on how people use their software. So here’s my contribution:

My main use of MT is here at anthropiccollective.org. I use this installation to host six blogs (eight authors) for friends. They’re all personal blogs of various sorts, and while Steve often uses his to sing the praises of his most recent CDs, I’d describe the uses as non-commercial.

The other place I’ve used MT extensively is for the Delicatessen site. The use there is a little more sophisticated, with the software handling the artists’ bios, reviews, information on upcoming events and various other things. I’ve written a little extension to MT to pull out random images to appear on pages whenever we update the site. It’s good to be able to easily hand control of the site to other members of the team without having to train them extensively. While the site exists (at least in part) to sell tickets, we don’t make any money out of Delicatessen, running it in order to promote the musicians who play there.

I’ve been looking around for alternatives to moveabletype, but haven’t yet found anything that’ll do quite the same job with quite the same simplicity. I had hoped to stay with the current version, but I now discover it’s no longer available for download, so I’d better hope I never need to reinstall…

My last University of Reading meeting was that of the Careers Advisory Board this morning. It was the second meeting of the board this year, and therefore the place to discuss the annual, government-required Graduate First Destinations Survey. Such surveys are always good sources of spinnable material.

The survey is prepared by HESA to ensure the same template is used nationwide, and the results themselves were relatively unremarkable. Some slight fluctuations, and a few concerns that electronic engineering students seemed to be having some trouble finding employment in that field, but no real surprises.

Once we had reviewed this year’s results, however, we were informed that there would be a change in categorisation from next year. No longer would we simply have “graduate”, “graduate track” and “non-graduate” jobs, instead we will have: “traditional graduate occupations”, “modern graduate occupations”, “new graduate occupations”, “niche graduate occupations”, and “non-graduate occupations”. This list, unsurprisingly, raised some bemused smiles.

Finer grained information is useful, but this new categorisation raised questions in my mind about government claims of increasing requirements for graduates in the modern economy. There is little doubt in my mind that the economy will need an increasing number of employees who have training that can be provided through higher education, but further examination of the new categories suggests that the revised survey will not allow easy comparison between this past year and next year.

“Graduate-level job” is set to become much more diffuse, the numbers of such jobs is certain to increase, and the statistics will become still less useful.

There is currently much discussion about reforming the university admissions system in the UK. The current system, whereby students apply to universities during the autumn of their final school year and are then offered places subject to interviews and particular grades in exams yet to come not only places a huge amount of pressure on students, but leaves a high degress of uncertainty for universities. It is also said to often fail to adequately distinguish between the high number of students achieving the top grades, and certainly produces dilemmas of how to respond to particularly able students held back by a range of societal factors.

This week’s most talked about suggestion is to allow universities to see marks for the individual modules or papers that comprise a given subject’s grade. This, it is argued, would allow admissions tutors to better distinguish between students who may all finish with the same grade, but whose skills may be skewed towards particular areas of their subject.

The proposal is controversial, and with good reason. Not only would it considerably increase the administrative burden (something that intelligent use of software and further investment should be able to overcome) but it is not nuanced enough to take into account the differing ways students’ learning developed. On modular courses, some students will consistently achieve grades which reflect their final result, but others will find that there will come a point where their knowledge and understanding reach a critical mass, and as a result their performance will be considerably better later in the course. Many A-level course providers acknowledge that by providing the option for students to re-take early modules later in their courses.

It can be argued—and is often true—that consistently high grades are a sign of a particularly able student. What such an approach fails to take into account is that those students who need a certain range or depth of knowledge before they can really understand the content of their courses and perform in exams are not necessarily less able to make the most of university courses, and it may be that their learning style is better suited to the more in-depth teaching provided at university level.