Marking & Assessment Boycott

[aridapricot]

So how do you think this will pan out this time? Are you taking part? How do you think things will go in your university/department?
My uni is docking 30% pay. Also in my department (where the spirit tends to be "yes we'll do whatever UCU asks us to do but we'll also go out of our way to cause any inconvenience to students") people are already talking about mitigations... 🙄I am not a UCU member and won't be taking part but I also fear that at some point I will be asked to cover colleague's marking or (even worse) redistribute it (given that I'm HoD).

P.S. In relation to that podcast: one of the reasons it irritated me is that we absolutely KILLED ourselves trying to apply mitigations which would allow students to graduate with a classification or provisional classification. We had very few students whose degrees couldn't be ratified at all - in a very large faculty in a very large RG uni. If marking is done later and mitigations are reversed, they will get updated transcripts and cumulative average / classification, but a no detriment policy will apply for graduates. I doubt we are the only university to have put these measures in place, so it simply isn't true to assert - as on that podcast - that nobody has graduated and university education management has done nothing.

I don't think you are being unreasonable kirova - it sounds dreadful. My wonderful PSS colleagues have regularly been in tears over the last few months and morale is very low.

@Kirova you are not derailing the thread at all! If anything I was hoping it could become a space for everyone, no matter their side on the dispute, to commiserate or to simply vent.

I completely get what you mean though. In my place, our administrator released the finalists' dissertation grades, but they neglected to release the feedback. Fair enough, because they weren't feeling well that day and shortly after that they had to be rushed to the hospital!!!! I could see the feedback but couldn't release it myself because I didn't have enough permissions on the system, the only other person who had them was the dissertation convenor, who was on MAB. I was at the time travelling in the middle of a massive research event, eventually I had to stay up late copying the feedback into separate files and sending it to the students by e-mail.
The reward for my efforts was that now one of the students has put a complaint against me, because they think that I first decided which grade they should get completely arbitrarily, and then I had to spend a couple of days "fabricating" the feedback to provide evidence. I am sure this won't go anywhere, but yes it is difficult being sympathetic to the students in these circumstances.

Are students seriously threatening suicide in order to get their grades? I may have heard it all now!

@aridapricot Oh, I'm sorry - that is the kind of behaviour which frustrates me. It's basically just petulant and vexatious.

One of our DTs, who I usually work with quite closely, had a spate of similar incidents. The poor woman was working ridiculous hours and has ended up signed off ill. I feel really sorry that this has happened.

I'm a little weary of the number of parents we are getting emails from, too! Every day we get someone saying "no one tells us anything, as parents we have a right to know." I'm a member of a working group looking at how the university is going to implement new NoK contact rules in line with the recent guidance changes and Student Wellbeing were actually proposing that the poor lecturers and seminar leaders should have responsibility for informing parents/NoK if students didn't attend class. Not only is this completely untenable in terms of workload, but it would also jeopardise the student-lecturer relationship - a relationship which is supposed to be between adults! I pushed back on it really hard and now everyone from Student Wellbeing hates me 😃

Only 5 months till I'll get to go on maternity leave, not that I'm counting down or anything!

Oh, yeah! At least twice I come in to read an email from someone sent at 2am saying they have called an ambulance because they're on the verge of taking their own life due to stress over not receiving results; or someone comes in and says the uncertainty has made their life not worth living and they're making active plans to end it all. It was worse during the exams - then they usually did it when their department had refused to approve a deferral.

Not only is this completely untenable in terms of workload, but it would also jeopardise the student-lecturer relationship - a relationship which is supposed to be between adults!

Oh no this is mental and would completely change the nature of what universities are. Well done for pushing back, takes a lot of courage these days.

I think a lot of the problem is the wider rhetoric, which has been the dominant way of thinking for some time now, which regards people in adult education (that is, 18+) as not only consumers, but children.

The expectation upon academic staff is childcare/nappy changing as well as everything else. I’m not sure how some of these students are going to survive in the world of work to be honest. Universities pander of course, since they are terrified of losing bums on seats. And so part of the result is the devaluation of degrees and (some) students coming out with a degree for not much work at all.

Agree with what has been said about the infantilising of our ‘customers’ (which is sometimes driven by lecturers for their own political reasons, so they can speak for ‘the vulnerable’) but on a different note, did you hear Jo Grady and Adam Tickell (VC Birmingham and big cheese in UUK IIRC) on Radio 4 this morning?

Both came across as quite reasonable and the reaction from a member of my household was: ‘well, this dispute really seems solvable, why don’t they sort it out?’ I guess Grady’s demand that universities who claim they cannot pay higher salaries should open their books to UCU is a demand that VCs will likely resist, but surely there must be a compromise …?

Whilst I agree about the rhetoric point I also think it’s important not to demonise students and hark back to some apocryphal age where students were super independent .

My own youngest dc is now at the same university in the same accommodation that I attended in the early 1980s and it’s interesting to not only be on the other side from my everyday job but also to have a comparison over time . I have been surprised to find that I was much much more looked after in the 1980s, if anything it was like a giant boarding school compared to now., critically there were far less students and far more admin staff to help, and much less anonymous IT and call centres. Yes we didn’t bother lecturers so much ( we were terrified of most of them) but equally getting a degree was enough.

I have had two elder ones at other unis and the admin is universally useless at the front end and confusing even for me who works in the sector, I have been shocked and humbled as someone involved on the periphery of system implementation. We absolutely do not assume no prior knowledge and first gen students are especially vulnerable . One of my dc signed up for his first year modules 6 weeks ahead of the deadline using the university system which was labyrinthine in its complexity only to find out when he arrived that the dept concerned had without telling the students decided to opt out of the system and use its own paper system 😮 it turned into a free for all and he was expected to navigate the whole scenario with practically no guidance from the equally bewildered staff . These 18 yr olds are coming from a very rigid school system often into an understaffed and chaotic environment which they haven’t been remotely prepared for. Frankly it’s a mess.

There is also no way we would have been queuing outside for private accommodation at 4am only 4weeks after arriving for the first time. it’s a lot for them to cope with and financially a much higher proportion are having to work outside studying .

I’m not denying there’s some bad and entitled behaviour but students have largely supported the MAB and strikes, it would be a shame to demonise them all now.

This makes me mad though because their accounts are readily available , she just has to download them

I'm a member of a working group looking at how the university is going to implement new NoK contact rules in line with the recent guidance changes and Student Wellbeing were actually proposing that the poor lecturers and seminar leaders should have responsibility for informing parents/NoK if students didn't attend class. Not only is this completely untenable in terms of workload, but it would also jeopardise the student-lecturer relationship - a relationship which is supposed to be between adults! I pushed back on it really hard and now everyone from Student Wellbeing hates me

Thank you thank you thank you, @Kirova

I could rant about Student Wellbeing at my place. There's such a disconnect between what & how we teach, and the so-called "reasonable" adjustments, particularly around absence & not "being called on" in classes. I teach a subject with lab-style work which involves a lot of collaboration. If someone is absent, it affects the whole group. I also teach seminars - where the learning is through participation & discussion. If a student won't speak, the interaction then becomes limited. Anyway ...

I think this NoK stuff is going to be horrendous.

OTOH, I once broke the law about not talking to parents without student permission. I just couldn't resist telling a parent exactly what the impact of their precious child's behaviour had had on the other students in their group. It shut down this particular parent's attempt to threaten us about our treatment of their DC. We had documented evidence of the disruption & impact on other students.

So, you know, double-edged sword & all that.

And @aridapricot this is mental stuff. Sorry you're going through it.

The [deliberate?] ignorance - or even learned helplessness - of students about how we assess their work constantly astounds me. We go into quite some detail in our teaching to explain how we assess their work, and the process of anonymous submissions, 2nd marking & moderation, and the External Examiner etc etc etc. Yet, when I had a complaint of transphobia made against me, one of the claims was that because of my (moderate & quite normal) views, I would obviously be biased against any trans student. The stupidity of that part of the complaint was so easily demonstrated.

Honestly, I really love teaching, and most students are interesting & lovely people to engage with. But it's that 1% or 2% who are just awful in one way or another. I guess in future years, their colleagues will write AIBU posts about them ...

Ha ha ha ha, I used to work with Adam Tickell. Nuff said.

But actually, you're right about them both sounding reasonable. I thought Jo Grady sounded like she's had intensive coaching for media appearances, as she didn't sound deranged.

I can't find the general academics chat thread, so hope it's OK to ask this here.

How is admissions going for everyone? We seem to have lost a LOT of students to poor A level results, below the level of tolerance which the university sets for not meeting the offer. We're talking about 5 or 6 times the number we usually lose . . .

I haven't had a chance to look yet but we could do with lower numbers on some programmes this year, to be honest. The overshoot last year was still insane. We don't have clearing (hope this isn't a giveaway about where I work, lol) so once it's done, it's done.

How is admissions going for everyone? We seem to have lost a LOT of students to poor A level results, below the level of tolerance which the university sets for not meeting the offer.

I have heard the same across a number of the RG universities - much lower rates of meeting offers, in some cases below 2019 levels.

Both came across as quite reasonable and the reaction from a member of my household was: ‘well, this dispute really seems solvable, why don’t they sort it out?’

I think Adam Tickell's discussion was much more nuanced and detailed that I would have expected - talking about the potential unintended consequences if collective bargaining were to be ended, and the inevitability of pay rises being constrained by the universities with weaker financial performance if collective bargaining continues.

Jo Grady's claim that UCU would take into account universities with difficult financial circumstances is hardly in line with the fact that many universities accounts (already in public domain) show that they are really not in a position to pay more.

Yes, RG here, and significantly below 2019 levels. We're, as a result, massively below target for our programmes unless (very unlikely, given what results are looking like) we make a lot of offers through Clearing,

Honestly, I really love teaching, and most students are interesting & lovely people to engage with. But it's that 1% or 2% who are just awful in one way or another. I guess in future years, their colleagues will write AIBU posts about them ...

I do get it is really a minority of students, but what really gets me - and this has been exacerbated by the constant cycle of feedback and the student-as-customer mindset, as well as anonymity and a certain dehumanization of lecturers/PSS staff coming from the generalization of online communication - is the presumption that as a student you can just say whatever, and in a lot of cases thank God it won't get anywhere, but it's just the fact that so many of them feel it is ok to say things that are patently untrue: "no help whatsoever with assigments" (when there was something about assignments in every single class), "no communication about MAB grades" (when there were weekly e-mails either from the University as a whole or from me), "lecturer completely made up the grades" (when there is a clearly documented paper trail), etc. It's like I go somewhere and complain, I went into this Mumsnet academic common room thread and everyone was horrible to me, when a cursory look at everyone's nice messages will confirm this is not the case by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that not a majority but a not insignificant number of students think it is ok to do this leaves me quite worried as to whether this is going to become acceptable behaviour in professional settings and other spheres of society.

Personally I think student surveys are completely invidious and are at the root of so much that is wrong in hE today. The idea that most undergraduates can judge highly experienced members of staff and what’s more be taken seriously is frankly nuts.

The point about people believing they are entitled to say these hurtful and often ill informed things is well made. My dh works in professional services and whilst most young people are delightful and hardworking there is a significant and growing minority who behave as if they can say what they like with impunity and be taken seriously and who are very bad at receiving any criticism at all.

We’ve known for years that students make personal and unpleasant comments in anonymous surveys (which is why Universities have to pay staff to routinely filter those out). What seems to be new are students using complaints processes to try to get lecturers fired. They are ignorant of employment law and the protections of academic freedom. I’ve heard about complaints (along the lines of ‘lecturer did not capitalise ‘black’ on teaching materials’) that some time ago would have been resolved by a conversation and certainly not escalated. I think the problem lies with both students and uni employees who impose bureaucratic processes where they are not needed. Is this mostly driven by PS staff, I wonder?

What seems to be new are students using complaints processes to try to get lecturers fired. They are ignorant of employment law and the protections of academic freedom.

I agree with this - I think it's related to hanging around in social media echo chambers where misconceptions do not get challenged.

Of course a small number of staff also seem to be ignorant of employment law at times - I have seen online discussions from the UK and elsewhere suggesting that academics with certain kinds of views (on trans issues etc) should not be hired.

we have less students meeting the A grades - it seems like there has been a big correction for teacher assessed components and covid correction.

i feel for the young people and their families.

at least unis could go into clearing. 20 years ago bbb may not have been an exceptional result, but it wasn't the disaster the equivalent seems now