Futures of social policy

So, teaching at Stirling has so far been very different from at Heriot-Watt. So far most of my teaching has been on an enormous second year module called "Understanding Social Policy" - I'm module coordinator on what is essentially social policy 101. It's good fun, but as it has 367 enrolled students I have to use the tried-and-tested lecture and tutorial method rather than my preferred class activity-based method.

However, it's giving me some great public speaking experience. I've recently discovered that the lecture theatre has radio lapel mics and roving mics, so I've been doing a bit of interaction which has mainly involved me running around the lecture theatre a lot. 

I've also been playing around with the number of slides in lectures following a twitter conversation with some colleagues. For a lecture (well, political rant really) on poverty, I reduced the slides right down to a few graphs the students needed to see, but provided them with a full set of slides on the VLE which were essentially my speech notes. At the end of the semester I'm doing a future, blue-skies, "Future of Social Policy" lecture. For this I'm going PowerPoint less. However, this has meant I've had to produce something for me to speak to, so I don't just ramble on too much for an hour, and also for students who have accessibility challenges. So, I thought I might as well make my essay on Futures of Social Policy available for the rest of you. Enjoy. All errors and omissions my own.