New to university lecturing

[WickedElpheba]

I'm moving to or academia after 20 years in practice. I'm looking forward to it as it's something I've wanted to do for a long while but it is new so I expect it to be a challenge initially.

Any advice especially if you moved into it from something else? Anything that surprised you? What was your biggest challenge?

What level are you teaching? I think for me lecturing has changed a lot since COVID. I find the students' attention spans are a lot shorter and they expect more spoonfeeding. So they don't understand or refuse to use the library for example and expect all articles provided for them. Lectures need to break every 3-5 mins for something interactive. It's like being a YouTube content creator now. They will also try to use phones and chatgpt to answer questions during seminars and workshops and we can't say not to because some need to translate and others have learning plans in place that require such tech. Overall I find it quite depressing compared to the in depth discussions of a decade ago!

It's post-grad. The phones and chatgbt aspect is interesting. When I was at uni it was rare for someone to even take a laptop into lectures and phones were not "smart" then but I've been thinking about marking essays and how I'd identify if they've used AI to write it. I'm sorry you find it depressing!

They all have iPad pros or MacBooks open. You can only tell bad prompting in essays. I have students who have told me that students (not them of course !?) upload the course readings,.the lecture slides, the essay question, then provide chat gpt with one paragraph to guage their writing style, and then ask it to generate responses. They then tweak it to remove em dashes etc and bobs your uncle. Essay done in 10 mins.

I've redesigned all my assessment to try and counter it. But it's the live chatgpt use I find disturbing. I'll ask an opinion question "what would you like to see happening in xyz field" or "what kind of job are you looking for upon graduation?" And they all turn to Google and chatgpt to answer it.

At post-grad level, it's good to apply the theory/research to real-life examples from practice and research, especially from cross-cultural contexts. Try variety of activities. Avoid reading off slides or image only slides. Use animations to reduce the amount of content appearing at once. Students definitely like it when the content is linked to the assignment on a regular basis.
There is certainly a lot of admin involved in ensuring the content is interactive, released at a specified time before the class, upload all the materials on the VLE etc.
It's great fun, all the best!

I find that so weird!

Thanks this is all useful!

This is fascinating. I’ve just been accepted into a healthcare degree 10 years after I graduated from an essay subject (BA, MA) and this sounds bonkers to me. I knew I’d feel old at 30 but I didn’t think I’d feel like an alien!

Can I ask how you got into it? I've had a 20 year hiatus but nobody will hire me now, I'd love to return to academia although i understand scholarship moves on.

I'm moving straight from practice but it's teaching practice modules mainly so they value that experience. PM me if you'd like more details.

Full disclosure I was a contributor to this book but would highly recommend for someone moving into HE from practice. I did it many years ago and have just about survived!

That's interesting Ivy. I actually bought this book a month or so ago after it was recommended on another thread when I was looking at moving. I know I should read it now that I'm due to start the job soon!

I think for me the biggest surprise was how needy the students are and how much they require spoon feeding. I spend about 30% of my working time answering emails from students. I remind when I was a student many years ago we didn’t have email addresses for our lecturers. If you wanted them you went to try and physically find them, most of the time they weren’t in their office so you had to wait for a lecture to ask them something. By the time that came round you’d normally worked it out yourself. We enable their helplessness by being so available.

most of what they ask me is in the programme handbook/assessment handbook/module handbook!

when I started someone said to me to never answer a student email quickly….take the 5 days or whatever the expected timeframe your uni suggests. That way they will stop using you as a personal Google. Sadly I’m not very good at following this advice.

That's interesting but sounds like good advice. When I'm supervising people I will encourage them to read the material for given them first or have a go at working out the answer. I'm interested to see if we're given any guidance on this in induction, whether they recommend a way to deal with it.

I definitely remember at uni not being able to just email tutors for answers.

We have a 48 hour email policy. I'll get students emailing me Friday pm and then Saturday am to complain I have not answered the Friday email.

Well I could be teaching all day 2 days in a row no problem, so when I am supposed to answer my emails with a 2 day policy? But yeah I get the odd antsy student when an email isn’t answered over the weekend 😁🙈

I first read that as they'd email on Friday morning and expect a response on Monday morning, which is bad enough, but that's ridiculous.

Last year I had one day of teaching all day and I would then put an out of office on to say 'I'm teaching all day so won't be opening email till Tuesday and will be replying from that point on' just to manage expectations.

No phone use during discussions or seminars (take spare pens and paper for those who claim they have to 'make notes'). Make the the second-to-last lecture of every module a participatory revision session (for that end-of-term feeling). Best I've ever seen is PowerPoint Karaoke: prepare a lecture summarising the entire course content but with images only and no text. Each student goes up front in turn, to explain one slide, handing off to the next student in line to do the next slide. They effectively give the revision lecture! Take a kitchen pinger, so it's like a game show: they have to talk until the pinger goes off. It can be both hilarious and genuinely useful: if the designated speaker gets stuck, the class has to call out anything they remember, and you find out if there's an area they all go blank on! Don't make it the final lecture, because they'll find out and bottle out. (Plus remember the obvious: never ever close your office door with a student in the room with you. Remember you are not a counsellor [even if you are, professionally!]. Refer students in distress to appropriate services. Do not get involved. Puncture any expectation that you're a 'mother' who 'cares'.)

I love the idea of the karaoke. I teach post grads but for their professional exams. I can see me using Spin the Wheel to get them to explain the concepts. Thank you

I did the karaoke thing a decade ago to develop presentation skills. If I did it now I'd have a ton of complaints about anxiety.

Ours have to develop their communications skills and their only get out is if they have informed us that they can't be asked direct questions up front. They are allowed to play the joker & nominate someone to help.

😩

@busybusybusy2015 I love the karaoke idea - will definitely try something like that. True - some students will have an SSD opt out though. I teach UG and PG - would work well for both. For my PG students - I've done a Dragon's Den style session for pitching projects.

@Dearover Joker idea - might pinch that too.

One of the issues we have is that lectures are recorded - but that limits interactivity as students can't be recorded. So sessions tend to be old style lectures or interactive seminars - but middle ground is tricky. Seminars work best if flipped so that they do prereading - but of course only a few actually do that.

I do want to switch things up a bit this year but would prefer to avoid digital solutions. I'll keep my class padlets going though.

I found an entirely different scenario. I taught back in 2009 for a few years then started again in 2023. Students this time seem to want/need way less spoon feeding than they did back then. If anything it’s gone way too far the other way. Last year’s co-hort were the year who had gone through their 5th/6th year at school doing home schooling during lockdown. They were really good at self teaching, but this meant they felt class was optional. I made it clear to them with my second course they would not pass without coming along to my lectures because they needed to do class exercises to learn it properly and that was part of my teaching. They all turned up, were engaged and all did really well in their final exam.

The main difference I’ve found is with AI. Essay questions for coursework are largely a waste of time. AI generated responses are easy to spot but quite difficult to prove. I avoid using essay questions where I can, but where it is needed, I tend to be very specific in the question which I know an AI generated answer won’t give the right answer to.

I moved into lecturing from professional practice to teach a PGT course. My thoughts/tips are:

Student expectations are sky high yet we’re working with minimal resources. Set boundaries for yourself otherwise you’ll find yourself working and replying to emails around the clock and that’s not healthy.

If you’re worried about marking/assessment ask
a colleague for advice. At my university it was something we were just expected to know so seeing how my colleagues did it was invaluable.

AI is a big issue in HE so find out how your university is tackling this and how you are expected to deal with suspected use of AI in assignments.

Think of ways in which you can AI proof your assessments! And how you can use AI in your role to make life easier!

Get to know your course admin team - they’re invaluable ! They should be able to provide you with key dates for exam boards, moderation etc. I like to have them all in my diary at the start of the academic year!

My PG course had a lot of mature students so a close relationship with the academic skills team was vital as many were returning to studies after many years.

I found my first year really stressful as I felt I was preparing lecture content just one week ahead of delivering it but it meant the year after it was just tweaks!!

HE is a tough place to work at the moment but there are still some real positives. I still love the flexibility I get and for the most part the students are wonderful. Good luck