More academic discussion

A few days ago I had the opportunity to attend to a colloquium in one of local univ. In the last post, I mentioned about the lack of healthy and useful discussion which I observed from a seminar I attended last month.

Unfortunately, it still happens and it bothers me. This is even worse because a colloquium is supposed to be an academic discussion in nature. It means that the discussion on theories and applications should be more rigorous. Moreover, the colloquium was presented by a foreign professor who I thought was quite impressive in his talk.

When someone finished talking and followed by Q&A, there are two assumptions can be made. First, if the audiences are engaging and knowledgeable, then there will be a lot of Q&As. Second, if there are only one or two questions asked, then the assumption is either the audience clearly understood what he/she was talking about or the audience understood nothing.

Going back to the colloquium at the local univ. that I attended, I have reservation because the latter took place. First, the talk was less than one hour, to be precise it was about 45 minutes. The ones I usually went at the Univ. of Bath easily took one hour, more often one and half hours. Second, there were only three questions in the Q&A session.

From quantitative view, it sounds not good. If the audiences were more knowledgeable, the numbers should be bigger. Of course, I cannot judge the quality because it is subjective. Furthermore, the professor was a foreigner. I'm sure he was paid handsomely to come over here and give a talk.

I wish the colloquium was more lively because that is what the foreign professor was paid for.