Details about the podcast:
Each podcast will have “show notes” with tips and hints for how to get through any questions about the procedures that you may have. Refer to the Show Notes page and scroll down to the individual episode for help. If your answer is not there, feel free to contact me from the Contact Page.
For this podcast series, major changes and edits had to be made to the original cassette tapes. The quality of the recordings are admittedly not very good. They were originally recorded on cassette tape in 1981, and not digitized until about 2010. There is much hissing and popping, but I’ve tried to clean up most of the really bad sections, and edit out irrelevancies. At some points you may have to really ramp up the volume to hear what is being said. There were also many long pauses that I have edited down.
Dr. Lawson had essential tremors, with symptoms like Parkinson’s disease, in which he could not always control his fine-motor coordination. There are occasional noises from the lavalier mic shaking, etc.
Another problem with the audio quality is that Dr. Lawson originally had a team with a unidirectional microphone in the back of the room, aimed at speakers in the audience who asked questions and made comments. Unfortunately, the speaker’s mouths were aimed at the front of the room, and technology, being what it was in the twentieth century was not up to today’s standards, so a lot of the comments are garbled. I think it’s best to listen to these files with headphones. I’ve edited out some of the garbled responses, and just left Dr. Lawson’s paraphrasing of the responses in.
Fortunately, Dr. Lawson paraphrased most of the comments into his own mic, so we can get the gist of most of it. Apologies if some things are not perfectly clear, although this should not hinder your ability to understand the lectures.
There were specific seating arrangements in the classrooms, and some references to them might still be heard in these podcasts. You can ignore them.
Around the 20 – 25 minute marker in each lecture, there was a point where the original cassette tape had to be turned over during the original recording. Sometimes a few seconds of the lecture were missed while this occurred. Unfortunately those few seconds have been lost forever, but you can generally follow the gist of that part of the lecture anyway. My apologies for the very few times that is difficult.
The big difference between the podcast and the original tapes is that in the original class format, after each lecture, there would be an assignment due for the next lecture. These would be handed in to each student’s “01-er” (pronounced “oh-oner” as in the letter O and the number 1.) An 01-er was someone who’d taken and passed the course before, and was certified by Dr. Lawson to become take an 01 level course. They were his first line of assistants and advisors to students. They would review student’s assignments, and pass interesting comments and questions on to Dr. Lawson, who would decide if he would use them in his next lecture.
The subsequent lecture generally started by him quoting those responses to the lecture that was one earlier than the previous one. In other words, during lecture, say, seven, he would quote the responses to the assignment for lecture five. This delay was because the 01-ers had to review them first, etc.
After sharing those responses, he then asked class members to offer comments or questions about their experiences with the previous assignment. Those would be live responses from the students, picked up by the uni-directional mic, and repeated, paraphrased by Dr. Lawson. He might or might not respond to the comments.
Then the lecture would commence, after which he would give an assignment, due for the next meeting.
At various times you might hear him talking about “passing in your assignments,” etc. Since this podcast does not require you to hand in anything, you need not pay attention to this. The same applies to any mention of grading. Of course, your comments about anything in the course or podcast are welcome and appreciated in the comment box.
Seating arrangement, holidays, and many references to administration management of the course were edited out as well as possible, as well as long pauses and unintelligible, non-germane comments. Dates and days of the week may be mentioned, but you can ignore them. I’ve tried to edit out as many as I could.
At times references were made to specific buildings and locations on campus. If they occur for use in an exercise, please substitute a local building that you are familiar with.
On very rare occasions I may have to interject my own comments in order to clear something up. You will easily be able to tell my voice from Dr. Lawsons. I will try to keep my comments to an absolute minimum, commenting only when something needs to be clarified.
Maybe you are wondering why it’s sometimes called “Eduction” and sometimes called “Edux.” The simple reason is that it was originally called “Eduction,” but since it was taught in a college, too many Education majors were signing up for it by mistake, because they thought it was an Ed. course or requirement. Dr. Lawson was finding that too many of these Ed. majors were having to get releases from the course, and the paperwork was getting annoying, so he began listing it as “Edux” in the course catalogue. So, sometimes it’s called Eduction, and sometimes Edux. They are interchangeable.
Finally, of course, there will be no grades in this podcast.