Excellence in teaching

Jane Balme is a Senior Lecturer in the discipline of Archaeology, within the School of Social and Cultural Studies. Jane received the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004. This award represents a joint effort by the Guid and the University to recognise and reward exemplary teaching.

Like most archaeologists I know, rather than having a burning desire to excavate Egyptian tombs and dinosaurs as a child, I kind of fell into archaeology. When I was 18 and visiting Oxford, a friend suggested that I join them as a volunteer on a Roman pottery excavation. I had no idea what they meant but I liked the social side of digging and I liked gluing together the pots afterwards. So, on my return to Australia I volunteered at the Museum and helped excavate a cave site. After the excavation I worked in the laboratory and realised what I really liked about archaeology – the ‘detective work’ associated with interpreting human behaviour from artefacts and animal bones. I began a degree in anthropology and archaeology. I can’t remember much about my teachers except that, at that time, the overhead projector was at the cutting edge of technology. Rather than preparing A4 overhead sheets beforehand, the lecturers drew straight on to a transparent film roll. There was no easy way of correcting diagrams during the class (although one enterprising lecturer overcame this by spitting on the diagram and rubbing it with his sleeve) so the decipherability of the overhead very much depended on the artistic abilities of the lecturer. As a consequence, many of the diagrams produced were pretty well incomprehensible. On the other hand it made the lectures memorable. With all of the slickness of PowerPoint and WebCT today, I wonder whether any of our students will remember the lectures. For visual disciplines such as archaeology, these modern technologies are great, but, without the quirkiness of earlier technology we do have to work harder to engage students. Some lecturers are good performers. I just use the simple technique of asking questions that make them think about the ‘detective work’. Many students still prefer to take notes passively though it does work for the keen students.

On the issue of work-life balance, I think that you get better at it as time goes on. One thing I have noticed is that many academics measure their life’s success by how quickly they get promoted and how well recognised they are in their field rather than how well they do in all parts of their lives. They often set up unrealistic expectations about what they can achieve in their academic work. The problem is that academic work is never done - you can always improve a lecture or write another paper. In this situation it’s easy to make excuses for not to going to a concert or have a weekend away. I have decided that the best way to get a life is to plan ahead - book those opera tickets well in advance.