How is your term going?

[Pancakedayisthebest]

I'm feeling a bit broken! I lost my mojo for teaching in COVID and now feel like I go through the motions. Students are quite challenging, some great participation, others just stare at phones. I'm planning on a device free week at some point to see if they start interacting a bit more.

What age do you teach? I'm surprised by the phones. Does the school allow this? I don't think i could teach with the kids all staring at phones.

Though as we move more towards technology I can't help feel it's not doing the kids any favours. Everything behind a screen and I don't feel they learn as well as with a pen and paper.

This term has been awful! Can't really pinpoint it. I don't mind being busy, I don't mind working long hours, but this term has just felt.... pointless? Like, no matter how much I do, there's always someone coming for me (usually a parent). The kids have just been pretty standard kids tbh. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this 🤷‍♀️

21 year olds 😁

Ah that explains it then. I imagine that's tough, I hate how addicted to phones they are, at least mine try to be discrete and I take phones if I see them.
Can't really do that at 21, or maybe you could ...

A big part of the problem in my opinion is they aren’t considered to be the adults they are.

Am finding managing the growing diversity in academic levels between students in seminars difficult - some are out of their depth (don't do the reading/engage), a few work very hard and do participate, but also seem to be driven by anxiety and stress and need a lot of hand-holding. The rest are apathetic and don't turn up/arrive late and leave early

It is exhausting dealing with all the extra stuff too - students querying marks, feeling like they need to be walked through every step of an assignment - am tired too OP!

I don't do seminars but I do flip the classroom frequently. They are warned that if they don't do the prep they won't be allowed participate. They tend to be very surprised when I ask them to leave the classroom if they haven't done the prep😁.

Mind you, I usually tell them to do the prep and come back and join us except for one workshop that they are assessed on. I do give those who haven't participated a really tedious alternative assignment but don't tell them in advance I will be doing that.

I do find the whole querying of marks tedious. No, it is not a negotiation. I will happily give you feedback but the fact you claim to have worked hard and thought you did better than that is not a reason to change your grade.

And yes, the handholding is insane. I have 2 dc currently in uni and neither of their courses do any of this handholding but unfortunately the norm in our department is "student support" which means handholding all the way.

And don't get me started on parents contacting me. No, I can't talk to you. If your dc has a query, they can contact me

It's not reached parent involvement levels yet, but I've seen students in the university GP getting their parents on the phone to argue/speak to the receptionist/doctor when they've not been able to get their way!!

I'm afraid the contract the university has is with the student. As such, I can only discuss this with the student. And repeat.

Parents giving us their email address and expecting us to email them everything. No, we will email the institutional email, your adult child is expected to check their emails and communicate with us, as adults.

Don't get me started on the inability to write polite emails. I have had one line, no introduction and no sigh off, from personal email. No idea who the student was and no reply to my response.

Students not turning up and or not engaging is standard.

It's getting me down. And I am concerned for their employment opportunities!

It's also difficult not being able to ask students directly to answer a question/for their opinion in seminars - so many of them have anxiety about public speaking/engaging and have special requests, so you end up speaking into the ether with the same 3 engaged students who have done the reading eventually answering. Even worse when nobody says anything at all - I despair.

Disclaimer here as I don't teach seminars but what I tend to do in class now is get the students to briefly discuss it in small groups (2-4 depending on the class) and then ask a group to share what they discussed. It works really well with my first years as they tend not to volunteer to speak otherwise and I'm left chatting with the 2 mature students and the Erasmus student who is usually from Austria or Germany and has excellent English.

Waving in a general direction and asking for an answer/opinion from that part of the room often works too.

Thanks Och - I do this too and get everyone to answer the questions together in small groups and report back - still the same 3 students answer/some students won't even make eye contact. We're encouraged to give students the questions set for discussion before each seminar too but that doesn't seem to help much - apparently they claim that everything is too hard (the reading/the theories/the exams etc.). It makes me dread seminars now as the students just seem so unhappy and anxious in general about everything.

Agree that the mature students are wonderful and a pleasure to teach though!

I feel your pain. Thankfully I'm in the soft and fluffy side of tech so don't have to deal with that level of attempted engagement. Although they do always complain I don't set a full double lecture aside to go through past exams or to explain exactly what is required in the assignments.

My assignment specs are very detailed. For some, they can look at ones submitted previously. I tell them to contact me with any queries but apparently that is too hard. With exams, I tell them the structure is similar to previous years and to come to me with specific questions i.e. if they are stuck trying to answer or are unclear whether they should cover x or y in the answer. Apparently that's unfair too as I should just tell them rather than make them try and reason it out themselves first.

I don't think we are doing them any favours by facilitating this level of non-engagement. Once the hit the workplace, it won't be tolerated. That's if they even get a job at all. The problem is, we don't have any discretion here. We end up in trouble if we try to enforce even low levels of engagement.

Totally agree. But also I'm finding the more engaged feel it's ok to tell me off for not making the others engage, saying it impacts their experience. Yes of course it does but there's only so many times I can call to 'the table at the back' get no response or blank faces and an awkward 1 min waiting to then have to move on as they clearly have no idea what is happening.

@Pancakedayisthebest same with the complaints from the engaged students! It's actually these students who are the worst as they are a small, but vocal minority who are very bitter and difficult to deal with. They seem to becoming increasingly demanding and blaming us for everything even though obviously we can't force students to do the reading/speak/engage.

We also have cultural differences. Our Chinese students are very quiet so I tend to have different interaction styles with them, I won't call them out in class so much but will wander over and have one to one discussions with them. I've had some students complain that I'm not calling them out and it irritates me that my judgement in teaching style is openly questioned like this.

@Pancakedayisthebest I once had a male first year student give me pointers after our first seminar on how I could improve my teaching style and the seminar - sometimes I feel like asking them to get up and teach the group themselves if they know so much more than me 😂

This makes for quite depressing reading to be honest. One wonders if they are really suited for academia.

Thanks for starting the thread, OP.

My teaching is a mixed bag - some excellent seminar groups, some more quiet ones, some where its like actually pulling teeth. I just take it an hour at a time and over the last few years I've been quite explicit about the consequences of lack of engagement - that the students that contribute are essentially getting one-on-one time with me, they're getting to test out their ideas, they're developing their presentation skills, all at everyone else's expense.
I've been clear that students who engage more in seminars generally do better in assessments and yesterday I actually called it out to the individual level in a seminar group where only three people routinely speak - I said "George, May and Elle are going to out-perform everyone else in this group when it comes to assessment because they do the preparation work and they actually participate". I'm expecting comeback in my feedback but I don't give a fuck.

My main observation about students this year though is their lack of criticality. I teach social sciences and I'm finding most students just parroting opinions at me - basically just repeating the lecture content or what they've come across in the preparatory reading but sometimes parroting social media nonsense at me. So I find that I'm spending a lot of seminar time teasing out critical perspectives which is something they should automatically be doing ahead of the sessions.

Outside of teaching, research is brilliant. I'm working on two publications which I'm really enjoying. One is a book chapter which "doesn't count" for REF and so I was discouraged from writing by DoR. But I'm doing it anyway and very much enjoying it. I'm also running a seedcorn project in a fairly new area for me and I'm excited and intrigued to see the results.

I know this sounds incredibly shallow but I've also treated myself to a few new clothes recently which have given me a real confidence boost. I'm perfectly sashaying into seminar rooms these days 😆

Interesting reading here, and I'm basically having the same term as most of you! I find the refusal to do any preparation really difficult to deal with - perhaps it was ever thus, but this cohort's willingness to openly acknowledge that they've done none of it is something else. I don't think they are defiant or hostile for the most part - just kind of passive and apathetic about it. After a seminar with first years on Monday where only one person had read the five - FIVE - pages of an article I assigned, and nobody at all had watched the collection of clips from a film that took me ages to cut, edit and collate, I got a bit cross I have to say. My third years are a bit better, thankfully - but still, more blank faces than you'd expect in an advanced module in a specialist degree that they have chosen to do. And why does nobody take notes anymore - I'm not even expecting a pen and paper, even on a device? Instead they are all taking photos of slides, which is bananas since they all get posted to the VLE anyway.

Our school - and uni - are hot on student-centred stuff too, so we must strive to reduce expectations and give grace and leniency and cater to different learning styles etc. Nonetheless, I agree that students as a whole seem determined to be unhappy and dissatisfied. I understand why that might be the case, but it is draining.

I have given up on research entirely, for a variety of reasons both contractual and existential. I'm fine with it, for now. I figure the amount of work I currently put into teaching and teaching-related admin is adequate exchange for my full wages.

I may follow your lead, @KStockHERO , and procure some new teaching outfits for a little boost. Fake it till you make it etc. I lost some weight over the last year and none of my old reliable "I'm a professional" rigouts fit me anymore. Now, just to find the bloody time to look in shops...

An interesting article from The Guardian about students and AI also contains this quote which maybe serves to explain some of the apathy

Achieving that goal would be easier if students arrived at university as open-minded critical thinkers instead of stressed-out, debt-burdened consumers.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/13/software-student-cheated-combat-ai

Why aren't they doing the prep? Same issues here. Is it really time? Could it be post-MAB backwash- many of ours still have missing grades. I've never seen such a lack of reading. Could it also be that the more we are reaching the smartphone-raised cohort the worse they are at reading?

I don't care if my students don't take notes. I find note taking in itself distracts me so I end up thinking about the pen on the paper and my handwriting instead of taking in the point. It's well documented that ND students may find it easier just to listen.

My UG group did none of the reading this week. We had to go through it in the class. It's incredibly annoying.

I also put them into group work and instead of TALKING they all immediately look to their screens and start sharing Google doc links and then work in silence, it's bizarre. Next week I am going to set them a talk only task, no devices.....and I'm sure I'll get complaints because it makes them feel anxious

I also work with pretty privileged students (I overhear their conversations and it's all things I can't afford by a mile!) Rather than anxiety debt ridden students I suspect they are quite laid back about landing a job with parents' connections at the end of the year.