The computerised course database, in my vision, uses technology to offset the alienation and intellectual isolation of student life in higher education. It holds out the opportunity for students to engage with something more than their own individual academic careers. It offers a chance to be acknowledged and remembered for good work.
Ideally, each student obtains a copy of the master disc at the start of the course. This, copied in turn, becomes the basis of an interaction between student and database. New work is added and then transferred to the master disc, where it is collected and collated. At the end of the year, a final edit becomes the master disc for the next year, and so a sustainable project comes into being. Before very long, each new student will start work standing on the shoulders of the ones who have gone before, if only two or three years before. Each will have the chance to lend their own shoulders for later students to stand on in their turn.
The research database promotes the growth of academic life. Just as philosophy, literature or history have their own major texts and authors, so a course-based database contains major student texts. The index will record their best work topic and name. In a few years the work of generations of students will be represented in the files, whose work will be part of the appeal of particular courses. A small-scale tradition forms around the data base. New students are invited to take it up and carry it into the future as a project to which they can make a contribution.
Jeff Mason, 67 Harvard Court, Honeybourne Road, London NW6.