Students taking the P!

[T4Opal]

I teach on an undergraduate programme and run a specialist module where students will have that specialism named on their degree.
1 particular student chose my module and has not attended a single workshop, nor have they bothered responding any of my emails. Despite academic regulations stating 3 missed sessions can lead to disciplinary action nothing has been done regardless of the fact I have raised this many times.
I said if they submit the assessment I refuse to mark it but have been told by the programme leader and HoD that I must.
What are your thoughts on this? I know they are our paying customers, but to be declared a specialist in an area they have neglected to attend at all just seems wrong to me.
Allegedly said student has mental health issues but has managed to complete their placement for this academic year. I think them passing this assessment makes a mockery of the whole system.

I do think 1st year students get the shitty end of the stick tbh timetabling wise but perhaps that's always been the case?

Ds1 commutes in too (his choice to go local for the course) and it's working out pretty well BUT he found the first term really hard....

However, so did his friends who were staying on campus 🤷‍♀️

He had also made a real effort with sports clubs/societies and has met some really nice people who have has made all the difference as they all go out socially now too.

Pre COVID I used to do tutorials for 15 students - 10-12 would turn up, 2-3 wouldn’t, 2 ish would email saying they were ill

now it is 5 turning up, 5-7 not showing with no notice, 2 saying they are ill, 2-3 with some crap excuse (for example multiple emails on the line of ‘sorry I didn’t come. I’m going on holiday next week and don’t want to risk catching COVID from you. Even though they can dial in!!)

no surprise exams have been AWFUL this year. Just no engagement and they don’t understand anything

pre pandemic i’d have said online learning was just as good - boy was I wrong

I rarely turned up when I was a student. I did put in the work to understand the material and delivered good essays/exams. My lecturers never punished me for non-attendance and I follow suit with my students. Maybe it depends on the subject, but I don't understand people who take attendance so personally. Students have a choice to make. If they don't turn up and they are not capable of understanding the material by themselves, it's their problem and it will be reflected in their grades. Also, I find maybe students have jobs to pay high rent or caring duties at home. That doesn't explain all non- attendance but it is a factor that requires flexibility

The better universities tend not to allow students to work in term time.

They covered that news article on Jeremy Vine today.

Total commiserations @T4Opal Yes, this is students taking the piss. Although
I know they are our paying customers,

They're not. Remember this. They are paying tuition fees to the university for the opportunity to study for a degree; what they do with those opportunities is up to them.

In my degree programme, we mark participation, which includes attendance & contribution, as well as other stuff. It's 10% of their module mark, and we are really clear about it being possible to get 100% for this component, or 0%. If they do turn up & contribute, it's the easiest 10 marks they can ever earn!

Yes, work has come in and it has not met the LO for multiple reasons- 1 of which is they have not gone into sufficient depth in their analysis as they were asked to discuss 2/3 concepts and this person has done 7 very briefly.

If the work doesn't meet the assessment criteria & learning outcomes, then award it the mark that your univerty's grading criteria & guidelines allow you to award. Fail it if necessary.

And I agree with your cynicism about excuses around mental health; if it's diagnosed & the student follows the advice of medicos and university procedures then of course we make reasonable adjustments, which are agreed on a case b case individual basis. And would NEVER include complete non-attendance and non-participation.

When students take the mick, it does make it harder for students with genuine difficulties.

The other thing - to all the students making rude comments on this thad about universities & lecturers is - what you don't realise is that deep learning is not just individual. It is collaborative, and you learn within a 'learning community.' This is an essential skill for the modern world and our knowledge-based economy and society.

Good luck @T4Opal and I hope your HoD et al show some backbone. Can you look at your module assessment specs for next year to ensure that students can't get away with not actually doing the content of the module, and assuming they'll pass?

Most students are great, and we want them to learn & we understand that sometimes really difficult things get in the way of their studies at university. But this sort of behaviour is very damaging, both for the discipline, and the student's own learning.

I think sometimes students instrumentalise things so far that they forget they're at university to expand their thinking and to LEARN.

Research has shown that it is better for the mental health of most students to attend. Studying remotely is so isolating.

My undergrads this year were positively glowing and excited to be back in the seminar room. They were such a joy to teach - my eyes well up wit tears even writing about this here - it was so lovely for us all to be together, and they worked so hard.

Student MH is awful, but many circumstances around them are making it worse, like not feeling in control of their schedules.

But you know, it's a fairly well-known phenomenon that young people go through a sort of 2nd adolescence at age 18/19/20. It's a transitional stage - finding your place in the world beyond the family home.

And really, if students won't get involved in clubs & societies, or get a hobby away from university, or something - if they don't help themselves, what are universities supposed to do?

The amount of resource - taken from tuition fees which don't actually cover the cost of most degrees - used up on initiatives for students, which they say they want/need, but which they don't actually use of access. It's very frustrating.

I'll go back to my pipe dream - every young person should be required to do a year's civic service away from their families straight after leaving school, before they go to university, work, or further training. They would do community work, learn to mix, all be treated the same - like national service but for pacifists!

I’m a (taught) pg student and I would love to see my PD make greater use of the supposed penalties for non-attendance. I attend all sessions and get all my work in on time and it pisses me off that some of my peers fail to turn up, fail to provide peer to peer feedback, miss deadlines and receive no penalties. They boast in the bar about being too drunk or stoned to bother so it’s not MH issues. I would love to see a small % of the assessment changed to include a contribution mark as their failure to do this affects all of us.

@CaptainCaveMum I've had students say this t me. The good ones find it very frustrating that others don't collaborate or participate.

It used to annoy me when I was an undergrad - I remember a seminar where one student wrote down everything the rest of us said, but never offered anything herself. It's selfish & ungenerous.

I remember a seminar where one student wrote down everything the rest of us said, but never offered anything herself. It's selfish & ungenerous.

Not necessarily. Speaking to a group doesn’t come easily to everyone. The thought of having to do so can make some of us feel really anxious, believe it or not!

I don't work in England. Where I work, universities, "better" and otherwise, have no right to tell students when they are allowed work or go on holiday - unless they are international students bound to visa restrictions. Universities can, of course, make recommendations about working and some courses can insustent on student availability for labs or placements.

The only universities that I know do this are Oxford and Cambridge, who have longer holidays that students can work in. Maybe some other universities do, but none I’ve had experience of (including very highly ranked/RG unis). If they did, many students wouldn’t be able to study at all.

@RubyRoss Oxford and Cambridge discourage term time working. TBH the workload is so heavy and the terms are very short and intense that term time working would be very difficult anyway.

I do think Universities need to become more flexible to mature students - every mature student in my department does have to work during term time because we do not have parental help.

However, I know we all try to come to as many classes as we can, but we are often exhausted. From what I know, we often explain our circumstances to academics regarding this. But we do try and engage when we can.

I think there's a lot of pressure on younger students nowadays - for me, they seem so serious and dedicated to their studies - it is as if qualifications are the most important thing and I don't think many can cope with the pressure and end up on extensions - and most do not have learning difficulties. Most of them do not work either, so I do not know where their time is going. I am not sure how they are going to cope in the workplace.

i think your comments regarding the student are cruel and vindictive. I honestly think you should be unable to teach any further.

this comment just sums up the attitude from so many students (and some staff). Unless you indulge me totally and have absolutely no boundaries as to what you expect of me, you deserve to lose your job.

I couldn't agree more. I've been dealing with a case where a student is raising grievance after grievance about a grade based on the argument that it is "not fair". She's completely ignored the advice she has been given, which is that there is no case to answer and no further recourse by which this can be addressed, and I have no doubt that she will go to the OIA. The ridiculous thing is that the grade isn't even bad - a lowish 2:1 and not massively off her average. She's now threatening to start a smear campaign and says we're causing her to experience severe MH problems. It isn't helpful to her to accommodate this (and we've been ridiculously accommodating, IMO) and everyone involved (including the student) could be putting their time to better use.

There’s been a spate of disagreements from students about what grades they think they deserve versus what grades they received this year.

comments like

’I did everything you told me in that lecture but still only got 60% can you mark it again?’

’I can’t have failed this assignment and I want it remarked by someone else’ (we double mark all fails)

‘Can you read through my assignment I submitted and see if you think it should get a higher mark than the marker gave me ?’

FWIW Im always happy as a marker to go through an assignment with a student verbally (and they get extended written feedback anyway) but rarely get students wanting that.

Presumably the assignments are anonymised so you won't know which assignment belongs to which student. In any event, I'm sure it will come out in the wash. Just be on high alert for plagiarism.

There isn’t a single course in my School which has anonymous marking.

This may be field specific but I teach in medical sciences where we have students now graduating having never set foot in a laboratory ( by choice) going on to do research PhDs. This has lead to senior academics from other universities emailing my head of department complaining thst students from our course can't do the most basic of lab skills.

My university does not have an attendance policy however there is a strong correlation between attendance esspecially at labs and workshops and outcome. We had well below 50% attendance across most of my module, the median grade for the module was 42%. There were firsts in the cohort and low and behold these were the students with good attendance. My module got recommended for scaling and I simply put up my correlation graph and my head of department agreed that the poor grades are a reflection of the university wide attendance issue so they were not scaled up.

I failed a year ( 1st year) at uni by fucking about and not trying but it gave me the kick up the arse I needed to get my head down, my hope is that some of our students will get the same realisation and show up.

DD's has just graduated with a first in biomedical sciences, which she worked her socks off for. She and her cohort were told that labs and seminars were compulsory.

I assume you didn't do a STEM degree @RubyRoss, because @Coffeaddict is correct that not turning up to lectures, labs, seminars etc does affect the outcome with STEM degrees. The way DD's degree was marked also meant that you lost marks by not turning up because you simply wouldn't be able to complete the work without having attended the various components of the degree.

I have read several threads recently from posters with humanities degrees (and it is always humanitis degree graduates who say this) who say that they hardly did any work at university and still graduated with a 2.1 or higher. This must mean that either all humanities graduates are brighter than STEM graduates or that humanities degrees are easier. You can bullshit your way through a humanities degree in a way that you can't with STEM degrees.

Maybe this is why STEM degrees are more highly regarded.

@RampantIvy I’d be the first to acknowledge legitimate criticisms of the humanities, but I can’t let your post go without comment.

“You can bullshit your way through a humanities degree in a way that you can't with STEM degrees.”
I didn’t bullshit my way through a humanities degree. I had the ability to understand the material without attending all the lectures and seminars. In many humanities subjects, the hard work is reading and understanding the material whether that is maths, philosophy, or literature. Lectures and seminars are just a guide. That was my point about attendance.

Separate to that, there are issues with dumbed down degrees and grade inflation – those issues are not limited to humanities.

@RampantIvy I’d be the first to acknowledge legitimate criticisms of the humanities, but I can’t let your post go without comment.

“You can bullshit your way through a humanities degree in a way that you can't with STEM degrees.”
I didn’t bullshit my way through a humanities degree. I had the ability to understand the material without attending all the lectures and seminars. In many humanities subjects, the hard work is reading and understanding the material whether that is maths, philosophy, or literature. Lectures and seminars are just a guide. That was my point about attendance.

Separate to that, there are issues with dumbed down degrees and grade inflation – those issues are not limited to humanities.

There’s been a spate of disagreements from students about what grades they think they deserve versus what grades they received this year.

When I get students moaning like this,@damekindness I give them the learning objectives/outcomes for each assignment and the University and Departmental grading & marking criteria, and ask them to re-assess their work in theseterms, with examples.

We do this exercise with them in the dissertation research methods module, and what's interesting is they often undermark the really good essays, and overmark the mediocre essays ...