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).

I do think @ExUCU that everything seems to be increasingly bureaucratized, but I am not entirely sure the push comes mostly from PSS. In my place, every academic colleague appointed to a low- or mid-ranking leadership position seems to have made it their project to introduce some kind of form or another (thankfully things seem a bit better now). But the problem is also the broader mindset, under which introducing a new form is something measurable and tangible that is going to get rewarded in a promotion, whereas something like "I made everyone's life easier by getting rid of useless forms" is not.
I do agree regarding students (and some academics!) having unrealistic ideas about labour laws and how to get people fired. I think a lot of it comes from US influence - where tenure exists and gives great protection, but if you are an adjunct or in a diffrent sector altogether then I understand you can be fired very easily. I wonder how these students would like it if once they are in a professional job they can be fired just because a user, customer or colleague thought something they were saying was transphobic.

Indeed, there’s an inability to imagine what it’s like to be at the receiving end. Perhaps also limited experience with the world of work. I don’t want to be too harsh, I was an annoying, clueless, arrogant nineteen year old once, too, but thankfully nobody took me too seriously.

What sorted me out was engaging with challenging academic work and just growing up, sometimes via interpersonal conflict. I now tell my students to be respectful of one another’s opinions (mainly to enable those with heterodox opinions to speak) but I wonder if I should tell them to disagree more … some of them really seem to think that all it takes to achieve social progress is to spread the ‘right’ ideas among the benighted. Astonishingly naive and also assuming that one has the right ideas … but is this new? I was pretty sure of myself, too.

Hi, new on here. I came off Twitter because I was getting too angry at stuff (a lurker rather than much of a commenter). I wondered if anyone has a sense of how successful the UCU ballot is likely to be? What is the mood music on the bird app? I resigned from UCU last year for various reasons (but many of them to do with the GS).

Interesting. Surely this has GPDR implications?

4X their annual income (despite the poverty please) would be a whopping fine for a university to absorb. Seems strange, that with all their training courses about how vital it is to observe this law - and if you think you've breached it, cough immediately so they can undergo damage limitation - and then disregard it in such a cavilier fashion.

Confirmation, if confirmation were needed, that universities are stumbling around in the dark. If this has indeed been written into policy, they're more clueless than I ever gave them credit for.

Having re-read the above I now see it's not policy, but some outlandish suggestion from the idealist wellbeing folk. That figures.

If SMT ever takes this seriously I'll eat my knickers.

But isn't this just typical of the public sector? All these steering committees changing internal procedures and moving paperwork around, creating more work for others who do the actual job of teaching, mentoring and to some extent even pastoral care of the students. As if the latter three weren't exhausting enough on their own.

All these steering committees changing internal procedures and moving paperwork around, creating more work for others who do the actual job of teaching, mentoring and to some extent even pastoral care of the students

Yes, and very often people with no experience of the coalface ie teaching and research, and often quite contemptuous of academics.

But I get a bit comically evil when I think of the repercussions of making academics NoK for undergrads. For example, I would relish telling them all that they need to be in bed by 10pm on weekdays, and I'll be meeting them each morning at 7am for a run & some yoga and stretching. And banning alcohol from their houses. I mean, if I'm going to be in loco parentis, then I can do this, right?

Demonstrating exactly why academics should not be considered in loco parentis.

But it is tempting ....

Whenever a committee or a low- or medium- or senior level academic manager decides to introduce a new process or form, they should also make it clear what part of our job we should stop doing in order to make room for the new process.

@aridapricot As my place is so keen on us spending hours completing our WAM my approach is similar for all extra work

"Oh that does sound interesting but as you can see my WAM shows I am performing several hundred hours over my allocated number. So if you tell me what I need to stop doing I'd be delighted..."

Easier when you're not looking for promotion or permanency obviously

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.

I have my issues (the usual ones...) with student surveys. I typically teach small cohorts of 40-50, have taught one module for years now. I use the same material every year but my scores vary wildly and often bare little resemblance to what's going on in the room. In various years I've felt they were influenced (positively) by my enormous pregnancy, and (negatively) by a night out the night before the evaluation, one or two dominant personalities, and students who just came along to the last lecture and left when I didn't give hints for the exam.

But. I do have several colleagues I suspect of treating students and the classroom with disdain. There does need to be a way for students to raise concerns without having to pluck up the courage to go to senior staff.

I know the senior staff in our school have no time for evaluations and only pay attention when they reveal a clear issue (often suspected in advance).

Gah forgot to bold the first paragraph, it was in response to @pootleq5

But. I do have several colleagues I suspect of treating students and the classroom with disdain.

We teach several joint honours degrees, sometimes issues come up where the student needs to enter in e-mail correspondence with both departments. I have sometimes been shocked by the curtness and even contempt with which some of the departments treat the students: "Oh you uploaded the wrong assignment file and realized immediately? Though luck see you in August for the resit".
What amazes me though is that for all of the hand-holding and spoon-feeding we do in our department, and pride ourselves of doing, our student satisfaction scores are perfectly mediocre year in year out, and even slightly below average.

Not only are student evaluations invidious, they are probably biased. See the Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews website by Ben Schmidt. Here's an example, analysis of how frequently the term "unfair" is used by students to discuss female vs. male faculty staff: https://tinyurl.com/2s4j7t3w

WTF is with all of the automatically hidden posts?!

I promise I didn't post anything too controversial

This is part of where we're going wrong. The hand-holding and spoonfeeding is not what HE is for. But so much emphasis is placed upon retention, not least getting the backsides on seats in the first place, that a large amount of undergraduate syllabuses these days are swallowed up in the basic study skills, nuts, and bolts that as a student I was expected to find out for myself in addition to my lectures and seminars.

Taught content is inevitably suffering as a consequence. And no, to come back to your point, I do not think this makes the students more appreciative of us. The reverse is true, I suspect.

Our own MEQs and NNS responses consistently state that students want more time with us. In response to those requests, we factor in more time. What happens? The students rarely bother to turn up for any additional sessions or drop-ins we offer. The complaint 'we're not given enough assessment guidance' is perennial, even in one particular module where every weekly seminar is devoted to completing one small piece of work toward the summative assessment. They also get a suggested template (my own lecturers would have laughed at this and told me to crack on and arrive at my own structure!)

I'm not sure what more I can do, other than write the damned assessments for them.

I can't remember whether I've made this point upthread, but I also find the practice of asking students to critique their lecturers is so, so damaging and undermining. As the above example illustrates, students don't necessarily know what they want: what they think they want and how this translates into practice are two entirely different things. They might not want some boring drill on a supplementary issue, but actually need it in order to pass their course: as lecturers, we and not they are best-placed to judge that particular point.

Invite negative criticism, and you'll get negative criticism. Aside from this, the union apparently has records somewhere showing that MEQs consistently rate women lecturers lower than men. For various reasons that I won't go into here, I'm disappointed but not surprised about this one.

I'm so jaded by this time. Most academics I know are incredibly committed and contribute a not-inconsiderable amount of goodwill to their work.

Academia most certainly does not love us back.

What amazes me though is that for all of the hand-holding and spoon-feeding we do in our department, and pride ourselves of doing, our student satisfaction scores are perfectly mediocre year in year out, and even slightly below average.

I see the same patterns in the places I have worked. I wonder whether one just lifts expectations by treating the students generally well - so they complain based on the occasional lecturer who doesn't provide the same support, or the occasional assignment that was too difficult. And that students who are treated less well have lower standards? But perhaps that is providing a rationale explanation for something that defies rationality.

As the above example illustrates, students don't necessarily know what they want: what they think they want and how this translates into practice are two entirely different things.

As part of my Teaching Skills qualification I had to do a project on how to improve a course. I chose our dissertation course. Students almost unanimously said that they would like more time with their supervisors. We had at the time and still have now a specification that each student is entitled to 4h supervision throughout the year. I always say to my students that if they feel they need more time, I won't be counting the minutes on my watch. So far I've had maybe 2 or 3 students who have made use of the full 4 hours.

My post at 17:09 today* has been cleared by MNHQ*

I don't think the pressure to restructure and change comes exclusively from PSS, but there are people who basically come in and their entire remit seems to be to "reimagine room bookings" or whatever. I also think there's an element of some departments having got extra funding for additional PSS in the pandemic and they're now trying to find stuff to make it look like everyone is super busy so that they can hold onto the extra funded positions.

On the other hand: what I do is primarily regs and appeals and misconduct, and I could genuinely do with duplicating myself at the moment.

😂

there are people who basically come in and their entire remit seems to be to "reimagine room bookings" or whatever.

Unfortunately this is how the incentive system works in universities nowadays @Kirova . There are many academic roles, in many contexts, for which you don't need a leader or an innovator, you need someone who can keep things ticking in a competent way ("if it's break it don't fix it", etc.). But nowadays at universities it's not enough to competently do a role, even a difficult one, for promotion and progress: you have to be transformative and radical. At my place there are people who undertook quite major and quite nonsensical curriculum reforms for the sake of ticking the box, without stopping to consider whether such radical reform was needed. They then duly got their promotion while others were left to deal with the consequences of their choices...

Interestingly DD’s cohort of final year students have just been given £1000 cash (bank transfer) each for them all to drop a lengthy complaint they made.

it’s not strictly related to the MAB as their work was marked. The complaint related to lack of brief/instructions, no second marking so policy wasn’t followed. An investigation found that the course “was not of the standard expected for this institution “. They all got two modules remarked, £1000 and free gown hire for graduation.

It has made me wonder if there’s a possible implication for MAB affected students that they could expect a similar recompense. Because I would say that any course where work hasn’t been marked isn’t of the standard expected. When students pay for a service and don’t get it they should expect a refund? Would certainly be true for any other sector.

It's occurred to me today - with the re-ballot, do you think that there will be UCU members who are not participating in MAB (be it because they don't have marking duties, be it because they stopped participation) but will STILL vote for the mandate to be extended (and presumably for MAB to be continued - although I understand the option is "action short of a strike" and not MAB specifically)? I've noticed that, possibly because of social media, there is a strong pressure to vote "the right way", and this may or might not correlate with one's individual intentions whether to take part in the action.
My institution sent an e-mail this week that the number of MAB participants has been steadily decreasing, obviously their take on the data will endeavour to minimize MAB, but anecdotally this ties in with people I'm aware of who started off taking part but then withdrew. Not in my department - everyone who started on MAB is very strongly determined not to falter, and I have to say I enormously admire the determination.

There was a thread on MN a few weeks ago started by someone (a nurse IIRC - not a lecturer) who had voted to strike but was never planning to strike herself as she couldn't afford it. Apparently she had voted that way "to give her colleagues the opportunity to strike if they wanted to" 🤦‍♀️

What is the latest on the new UCU ballot? I haven’t found much detail online: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/13141/More-strike-action-to-hit-universities-as-employers-refuse-to-negotiate

I’m just really sick of it all. I haven’t had a ‘normal’ workplace since 2018 and I’m tired of the extra work strikes create. I almost preferred pandemic teaching, at least we were all in it together. The students are sick of it, too. I feel sorry for academics who have sacrificed a lot of their salary but at this point I’m more concerned with the endless chaos caused by strikes. And I never want to see UCU pink hats/stickers/posters/smoke flares again. Keep your naff merch. Ofc all this may look differently in a less unionised department or institution …