Page 134 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 1-2: The Language of Neoliberal Education, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 134
šolsko polje, letnik xxix, številka 1–2
enhancement of the senses is involved there are also time limitations to
consider. If a consumer is concerned only with ‘the quantity of experi-
ence-laden commodities one can consume in a certain amount of time’
(Argenton, 2015: p. 922), then there are implications when this logic is ap-
plied to academic experiences. The experience economy appears to be ex-
tending such patterns of consumption into universities as a ‘student expe-
rience economy’. Furthermore, the messy post digital era we now occupy
in society enables an ease of ‘delivery’ seamlessly back and forth between
digital and physical sites of production and consumption, at the hands
of both human and non-human technologies (Jandrić, Knox, Besley,
Ryberg, Suoranta & Hayes, 2018).
If universities have moved into the enhancement of human senses as
part of their strategy, then this begins to alter what HE is. If the labour
of students themselves also furthers ‘the student experience’ commodi-
ty, via students completing feedback online and participating in ‘the stu-
dent experience’ committes for free, they act as ‘prosumers’ (Ritzer, 2015).
In so doing, they may be extending their own entrapment in time-limit-
ed forms of experiential education. Argenton therefore asks an important
question of his readers in modern society: Do we still have time for experi-
ence? We would like our readers to consider this question adapted to the
HE sector, as we ask: Do we still have time for the diversity and creativity of
individual student experiences?
What Themes are Prioritised in ‘the Student Experience’
Policy Documents?
To aid us in considering this question, we analysed a sample of 20 UK uni-
versity student experience strategies, via a corpus-based Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA). A corpus of words is ‘net-like’ (Hoey, 1991) and can re-
veal the values of those producing policy texts, whether the authors are
aware of these or not. Searching a corpus (a large bank of words) does not
explain why particular patterns occur, but it does yield significant empir-
ical content to examine and discuss certain patterns in more detail. The
university strategy documents we examined are freely available on univer-
sity websites to download. The PDF files were converted into text files and
these were examined through software called Wordsmith to observe pat-
terns that emerged through corpus linguistics (Scott, 1997). Whilst not
a particularly large corpus (54, 271 words), themes can be picked up via
this form of analysis and then interpreted more closely through CDA to
see what assumptions these grammatical patters reveal (Halliday, 1994,
Fairclough, 2000). Although it is important not to read too much into the
examples provided below, they do provide useful illustrative content from
132
enhancement of the senses is involved there are also time limitations to
consider. If a consumer is concerned only with ‘the quantity of experi-
ence-laden commodities one can consume in a certain amount of time’
(Argenton, 2015: p. 922), then there are implications when this logic is ap-
plied to academic experiences. The experience economy appears to be ex-
tending such patterns of consumption into universities as a ‘student expe-
rience economy’. Furthermore, the messy post digital era we now occupy
in society enables an ease of ‘delivery’ seamlessly back and forth between
digital and physical sites of production and consumption, at the hands
of both human and non-human technologies (Jandrić, Knox, Besley,
Ryberg, Suoranta & Hayes, 2018).
If universities have moved into the enhancement of human senses as
part of their strategy, then this begins to alter what HE is. If the labour
of students themselves also furthers ‘the student experience’ commodi-
ty, via students completing feedback online and participating in ‘the stu-
dent experience’ committes for free, they act as ‘prosumers’ (Ritzer, 2015).
In so doing, they may be extending their own entrapment in time-limit-
ed forms of experiential education. Argenton therefore asks an important
question of his readers in modern society: Do we still have time for experi-
ence? We would like our readers to consider this question adapted to the
HE sector, as we ask: Do we still have time for the diversity and creativity of
individual student experiences?
What Themes are Prioritised in ‘the Student Experience’
Policy Documents?
To aid us in considering this question, we analysed a sample of 20 UK uni-
versity student experience strategies, via a corpus-based Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA). A corpus of words is ‘net-like’ (Hoey, 1991) and can re-
veal the values of those producing policy texts, whether the authors are
aware of these or not. Searching a corpus (a large bank of words) does not
explain why particular patterns occur, but it does yield significant empir-
ical content to examine and discuss certain patterns in more detail. The
university strategy documents we examined are freely available on univer-
sity websites to download. The PDF files were converted into text files and
these were examined through software called Wordsmith to observe pat-
terns that emerged through corpus linguistics (Scott, 1997). Whilst not
a particularly large corpus (54, 271 words), themes can be picked up via
this form of analysis and then interpreted more closely through CDA to
see what assumptions these grammatical patters reveal (Halliday, 1994,
Fairclough, 2000). Although it is important not to read too much into the
examples provided below, they do provide useful illustrative content from
132
