The Problematic Rise of Audio Papers in Formative Academic Institutes. What does such a topic actually entail?
After reflecting on what an audio paper is and its use as an alternative to a written dissertation within this course, I started to debate the potential problems that could arise from that. While a lot of these problems are not that important outside of university (like the audio paper lending itself to performance), inside of an educational institution where testing is meant to be fair, those problems start to fester.
As someone who has been tested and diagnosed with Dyslexia (if that wasn’t apparent in my numerous grammar and spelling mistakes), a topic such as this is of great importance because I should be in favour of audio papers and not of a written dissertation. However, I realised that assumption made no sense because one would have to write an essay either way. The only way to make the audio paper easier than a written paper would be to have different criteria for marking it that focus less on the actual content of the paper and more on how it’s presented.
Personally, I hate taking the easy path especially when it pertains to important things such as my final written research project. In my eyes, an audio paper would be that easy path because it’s unfair to have it as a direct alternative to a written dissertation when it is not. Also, there is a line of thought that would disagree with opening the option up with every student because it stops being an accessibility option and becomes an easy trap for sound arts students to neuter their growth in formalising their research in sound studies. In the first year, in the reflection of a book reading project we did, it was said that a big roadblock in understanding what was being said was the immense amount of jargon in the books. That jargon is something that we will have to be able to understand and utilise in our own writings after we graduate from university so that we aren’t just seen as amateurs and taken seriously in academia.
I also find it interesting that despite every bit of literature on audio papers stating how they’re either a subversion or fundamentally different to written papers, the audio paper format is being pitched as a 1-1 alternative to the written dissertation just because the audio paper is trying to revolutionise academic research. Nowhere does it say the audio paper is an exact alternative to the written paper meaning that they would not be able to be marked the same, and then different skills would be tested in each format. It would not be fair for those who pick the written dissertation, and if having fair marking is not a major concern, it makes me wonder even more why UAL has marking regulations at all.
The points I’m thinking of covering are these
Ideas I want to talk about
- Audio papers are not equivalent to written dissertations
- It’s not a useful practice in a formative environment
- The format isn’t just judged on the content
- The idea of an audio paper on our course isn’t defined enough to make sense to do at the end of the course
- The idea of an audio paper is different than originally proposed
- The audio paper format is hypocritical
- The reason why written dissertations are done
- The struggle to improve and not run away from adversity (in filth it is found)
- Why I will not make an audio paper despite being dyslexic
There are more ideas; however, it would be prudent to distil my audio paper into a few important points because I have only 10 minutes, and a topic such as this could be talked about ad nauseam.
I need a great deal of research to back up my opinions in linguistics, philosophy and the psychology of writing.
I fear this project is moving away from the desired topics of the tutor(s) who created this assignment; however, I believe it to be important to interact with the course in such a way because the brief talks about preparing ourselves for a potential audio paper in the third year and dictating what that would entail. There isn’t a better time to talk about such a topic than now.