What has a murder mystery novel got to do with tackling empty lecture halls?

Frustrated by poor attendance, Denise Baden,?professor of sustainable business at the University of Southampton, said her upcoming book,?The Philosopher and the Assassin,?was inspired by the notion of ¡°entertainment education¡±.

?which explores responses to the climate crisis through a murder mystery set at a fictional university,?

The term, coined by the head of Southampton¡¯s business school, placed student enjoyment and ¡°entertainment¡± at the heart of learning, but Baden recalled how many ¨C including herself ¨C had looked down on the concept at the time. ¡°A lot of the academics were appalled,¡± she said, explaining that they thought the notion risked ¡°degrading academic quality¡±.

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It is no secret that student attendance has?plummeted in recent years, with near-empty lecture halls a?staple of the post-pandemic world. But Baden believes the trend preceded the pandemic, and instead started with the rise in tuition fees, when, she said, ¡°we got an immediate drop in attendance¡±.

There was ¡°a change in relationship¡± between students and academics, she said, where the attitude among students was: ¡°¡®Give me good service¡¯, rather than it being this joint learning journey.¡±

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Despite her initial scepticism, Baden was later won over by the concept of entertainment education.

¡°The fact is we are competing with so many distractions now. Attention spans are getting shorter and we can¡¯t teach stuff that we think is really, really valuable to an empty class.¡±

Although?she firmly believes in the importance of verifiable evidence-based research, she also began exploring methods to get her work across to wider audiences.

¡°It worried me that you could be working very, very hard, but academic articles are read by only those who are already interested in quite a narrow audience¡±.

Consequently, she established the Green Stories Project in 2018, a competition that invites writers to submit stories about the climate crisis and green solutions, with the aim of engaging a "mainstream" audience beyond academic circles.

Having first started writing as a form of escapism after she lost her job earlier in her career, Baden turned her hand towards fiction again during the pandemic. It was then that she penned her first novel,?Habitat Man, about a man who gives up his job to help turn gardens into habitats for wildlife.

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She subsequently conducted a survey of 50 of her readers, finding that 98 per cent had more pro-environmental attitudes following the book, and 60 per cent had adopted at least one of the green alternatives presented in the book. She joked, ¡°I've had way more impact from that than any of my academic work.¡±

This inspired further consideration on how to best convey her academic research,?reflected in?The Philosopher and the Assassin, which?explores responses to the climate crisis through a murder mystery set at a fictional university.

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Baden has yet to set any of her own work on her university reading lists but said it is something she would consider. Instead, she tries to ensure that, in the lecture theatre, academic scenarios are illustrated through stories with relatable characters, so this are ¡°no longer some hypothetical dilemma¡±.

¡°Doing this brings it alive, and you notice when you¡¯re lecturing, students put the phones down and they¡¯re paying attention, they¡¯re interested,¡± she said.

Having spent a significant part of her career outside academia, previously working in business and social enterprises and being self-employed, she believes this has given her a wider and more interdisciplinary approach towards academia.

But while she said the best academic papers were ¡°really quite dull¡±, she hasn¡¯t given up on them yet. Instead, she thinks it¡¯s about leaning on the best form for what she¡¯s trying to convey. ¡°My driver in all this is what¡¯s going to be most effective getting us where we need to be in terms of sustainability.¡±

Academics, therefore, need to be more open to experimentation on how best to engage their students and wider audiences in an age of dwindling attention spans and ¡°constant distractions¡±.

¡°You can be as right and as knowledgeable and as evidence-based as you like but until that lands with your students or with those you¡¯re trying to teach, it¡¯s kind of almost useless. You need to bridge that gap, and I really do feel that the stories are the way to do that,¡± she said.

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juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com