Anyone Working in H.E?

[Brian]

Asking for a friend who is a tutor at a Uni running live event courses...

Quote

I am looking into how practical courses are dealing with the accessibility of kit. At the moment, we have a 24h in advance rule, so no-one can come and get a mic or whatever they need as they need it.

And I am facing answers that that is the norm, but I don't believe that other universities do not have the flexibility that we don't

 

Any replies would be very gratefully received.

[J Pearce]

At my last place we had an advance request for projects, but bits and bobs we would usually supply ad hoc. Essentially, if you wanted guaranteed availability it was at least a week in advance, but if kit was available I wouldn't hold it back without reason. Large scale late notice requests would usually be declined on a staffing time basis.
Continual last minute emergencies from a student would have triggered a conversation about planning being a professional skill. I had the advantage of only needing to serve around 50 students from my store.

My colleagues in music tech servicing all the musicians and music tech students had to be stricter, though would still be willing to help if possible.

[p.k.roberts]

We have an online booking system and expect all items to be booked 24 hours in advance. We also allocate a pickup and drop-off time. This ensures that kit is available; if you hand out kit 'on-request', then every time you do that you have to check that no one else already has it booked. It's also sadly the case, that as soon as (some) students realise they don't have to plan, then they won't!

[TomHoward]

We deal with requests as they come in, so if they are late but we can handle it we do, but have a rule that “last minute planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours” so there’s no panic on our part even if you’ve got an audience waiting.
 

A few years ago we trialled last minute requests needing an email request cc’ing in an appropriate teacher/course leader or line manager for staff before they would be actioned, which was quite good at highlighting repeat offenders rather than them just being let off the hook under the radar.

[Simon Lewis]

For my old place, it depended on what was wanted and what it was wanted for.

For quite a bit of the year there would be a live sound, lighting and video rig set up in the performance space, and if the space wasn't in use/about to be used for teaching, students could go in and use equipment. We had a technician responsible for that area who could provide access and support. He would also know if a rig was about to be prepped for an external event, so that everything was available when expected.
We did not make our AVL equipment available for student's own events or to take offsite, only the specific events that we were officially supporting, were part of teaching or possibly a final year project. We might have been a bit more lenient for an odd mic, but didn't want a £25,000 mixer being stuffed into the back of a student's car and driven off into the sunset 🙂 

Separate to the live performance space, we had a booking system for recording studio hardware (usually more esoteric mics etc.) that could be booked online, typically in the same day. This was primarily for studio use, but could be taken out for location recordings etc. There was also an equipment store run by colleagues in Art, that carried some AV and camera gear. This could also be booked online and picked up almost straight away, and could be taken off site. The more canny art students quickly realised that they could run a small photography business with some nice borrowed bodies and lenses if they booked the stuff at the right time...

Overall, small items could be booked at pretty short notice, subject to the rules regarding return times, etc.

[J Pearce]

2 hours ago, Simon Lewis said:

a £25,000 mixer being stuffed into the back of a student's car and driven off into the sunset 🙂 

We did once get the ML3000 on the campus shuttle bus...

[Simon Lewis]

1 hour ago, J Pearce said:

We did once get the ML3000 on the campus shuttle bus...

Ah - that was only about £6000! 😉 

 

[Junior8]

On 9/24/2022 at 3:44 PM, TomHoward said:

 have a rule that “last minute planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours” so there’s no panic on our part even if you’ve got an audience waiting.
 

Over 21 years of dealing with coursework deadlines I developed a pretty good sense of what was an emergency rather than bad planning but dealing with students made me stick to basic rules pretty strictly even if occasionally this led to failure (after all I had my deadlines too) - they do need to learn organisation and systems and actually do a bit of growing up. As for the OP's question - 24 hours isn't much in the way of advance planning after all is it.

[kitlane]

On 9/24/2022 at 6:06 PM, Simon Lewis said:

There was also an equipment store run by colleagues in Art, that carried some AV and camera gear. This could also be booked online and picked up almost straight away, and could be taken off site. The more canny art students quickly realised that they could run a small photography business with some nice borrowed bodies and lenses if they booked the stuff at the right time...

Overall, small items could be booked at pretty short notice, subject to the rules regarding return times, etc.

For the past couple of years it has been 24 hours notice for the Media Loan Hub (no prizes for guessing why), but I just checked and it is now a minimum of 45 minutes notice! But consider that this is a facility set up specifically and exclusively to loan equipment to students and staff. It is not staffed by technicians who have lots of other duties and responsibilities.

24 hours notice seems reasonable as a rule, but I think some flexibility for genuine last minute requests could be accommodated.