Oh what joy! Teaching Monday-Saturday

[historyrocks]

We've been told that, to allow for social distancing, classes will be timetabled Monday-Saturday, 9am-9pm. Can you imagine teaching a class of 10 students (of which 7 will probably turn up) on a Saturday evening for two hours? I usually run my seminars by dividing the class into groups and get them to discuss material. That's not going to be possible with social distancing. There's going to be a lot of tumebleweed moments.

I don't know. I think he has probably forgotten about it. He was really busy when he found it.

It's almost inevitable when everything: slides, notes, supporting material, even the lectures themselves are available online.

Any of you having to deal with more than one cohort? My uni are going to two admission points. September and January. Not only am I having to double up on lecturing, supervision, and admin to cope with this, they are also saying that we need to be 'flexible'. I'm so blinking flexible at the moment, I could join a circus as an acrobat.

@petrocellihouse that’s really bad. No. But this is in a way is what my university is threatening, not two cohorts, but splitting the cohort and teaching twice over.

And I may steal your acrobat line!

Not having 2 admissions but some teaching will have to be done twice as some sessions the cohorts will be split.

It seems that we are going to be expected to run our modules online for those international students unable to return to the U.K. and those who are self-isolating / shielding, while also running the seminars face to face (most likely twice as large enough rooms probably can’t be found to ensure social distancing).

And of course while our workload doubles recruitment has been frozen. No more staff for programmes with increased student numbers, staff who have left/are leaving not being replaced.

I'm increasingly & reluctantly coming to the conclusion I cannot risk teaching in person given the figures of the almost 19-fold increased death risk for staff over 60. Pretty scary stuff.

And yes, we're dividing all classes into groups of a max of 12, and teaching twice/three times. As well as online for international self-isolating, and shielding students.

I really really would prefer to teach in person, but I don't think the risk is worth it. And I'll have to teach online as well anyway ...

There were huge redundancies after the 2008 recession, my university made a third of teaching staff redundant (including me). Those full time jobs were never replaced - instead there was a trend towards employing hourly paid teaching staff because it was cheaper and they could avoid forking our for sick leave, maternity, pension contributions etc. Over time the salaries of the hourly paid staff were eroded further until they were literally on a tenner an hour. The remaining full time staff were expected to support the hourly paid staff who weren’t paid enough hours to do their jobs properly.

Most of the hourly paid staff put up with the situation in the hope that eventually they’d get a permanent post. I wonder how many of them will hang around now there’s clearly no chance of that happening. I’m still friends with a number of ex colleagues and there’s widespread horror at the way things are going - workloads up, salaries down. Again and again this sector is being cut, despite tuition fees being higher than ever.

My university always scheduled classes till 9pm though, albeit not on a weekend. The burden fell disproportionately on the younger and more junior staff, and the hourly paid staff, while the senior staff had their pick of the cushy convenient hours. I expect this unfairness to be further amplified now that more classes are being scheduled at awkward times.

Our hourly paid staff aren’t even being given the choice of whether or not to hang around. We’ve been told that we can’t re-employ them next year. I suppose that’s one way of dealing with the casualised workforce issue.

Ditto at my place. No doubt the annual report will self-congratulatingly (?) announce the great progress made in reducing the reliance on hourly paid staff.....

That’s dreadful. I would be totally stuffed if I had to teach on a Saturday as I am a single mum. I already struggle with the pressure to teach til 6. Fortunately we haven’t gone down that road and our extended teaching hours are only into Wednesday afternoon.

We are doing all our lectures asynchronously and students won’t be timetabled. From. A pedagogical point of view its shit but I can’t see how we could do it another way.

Our hourly paid staff aren’t even being given the choice of whether or not to hang around
How do they plan to cover the classes that were previously taught by those staff? Especially now that teaching hours have quadrupled due to having to deliver the same lecture four times to smaller groups of students.

How do they plan to cover the classes that were previously taught by those staff?

The permanent academic staff. Unlimited work can be given to them.

Yes, the permanent staff now have to cover the teaching of hourly paid staff. Plus we will have less optionality next year. We often hired in hourly paid staff to expand the range of modules we can offer students, as we are quite a small department.

There isn't going to be quite so much extra teaching for me. We already have small groups of 10-12 so that would be OK for social distancing. All lectures/stuff like film screenings will be done online. I don't mind teaching on a weekend (it would work out OK for us), but I already have an agreement that I don't teach after 5pm (approved by Occupational Health). Some people actually prefer to teach on an evening.

The difficult thing for me will be getting materials ready in case we need to switch to 100% online teaching.

the permanent staff now have to cover the teaching of hourly paid staff
Do they not have a maximum workload! Their own teaching hours will have quadrupled due to repeating classes for smaller groups, and they also have to cover additional classes that were previously allocated to hourly paid staff? How are they supposed to have any time for research?

@GCAcademic @ghislaine have they said why they’re getting rid of hourly paid staff? Has the university lost money, or are student numbers down? I’d have thought they’d be more needed than ever due to increased teaching hours with smaller groups.

How are they supposed to have any time for research?

We’ve been told research is on the back burner next year, and teaching takes priority. All institutional study leave has been cancelled.

Pretty sure, thought that none of this will be taken into account when it comes to applications for promotion (although promotion is another thing that has been suspended) or to the REF, and we’ll still be expected to have a full set of research outputs and impact case studies. We’re already being pressured to put in large grant applications to bring in the ££. I’ve pointed out the contradiction in telling us that research is not a priority while expecting us to write hugely time consuming grant applications when our teaching load had quadrupled.

Unlimited work can be given to them

Yes clearly this is the way professional staff think of academics. We all received an email telling us to do some admin stuff to do with examining that usually is done by PS staff because they didn't have the time.

It was a flat-footed email from a team leader who does not work directly with either academic staff or students. They.Had.No.Idea.

Although, it did clarify the contempt for what academics do.

@GCAcademic - we may be at the same place! that's pretty much what we've been told. Our workloads will be "rebalanced" officially to increase the % of time for teaching ...

Do they not have a maximum workload! Their own teaching hours will have quadrupled due to repeating classes for smaller groups, and they also have to cover additional classes that were previously allocated to hourly paid staff? How are they supposed to have any time for research?

Of course there is no maximum workload for academics: the business model for universities depends on this. The workload has been escalating for years and universities rely on academics working evenings, weekends and not taking annual leave to fit in research with admin and teaching.

Social media went crazy with Mary Beard when she stated she works 100 hours per week, but this is what the whole HE model is built on.

@Molocosh

We have to save £50 million next year. It’s eye-watering. The university has lost huge amounts of money from its usual conference income, from releasing students from their accommodation contracts, and expects 50% less incoming first year students in September, the majority of those being international students who pay way more than home students.

At the end of the day, at least in the short term, academic staff will grit their teeth and get on with it (at least those who are not in a position to give up work) because the alternative is the institution going under.

We have been told much the same. We need to quickly cut outgoings and bring in any money we can to keep our favourable terms with the banks. If we don't manage it, we will fall into massive financial problems which can realistically only be resolved by mass redundancies.

We have been provided with a list of all the things the university proposes to cut and have had to produce a list for the department based on our own allocation.

In my department, the extra teaching time needed to cover more seminar groups and losing our GTA and sessional teaching staff is being shared out between all our permanent teaching staff.

Same with us - the permanent academics will simply teach more to cover the gap left by casual staff who will not be re-employed for next year.

It’s all very well asking us to teach more, but I could barely teach material of one other colleague. The rest are so specialised, it’d be the equivalent of asking a philosopher to teach engineering.