Week 3 and the 1st years are asking if they have to come to lectures, they’d rather watch the recordings

[CameForAVacationStayedForTheRevolution]

🙈🙈🙈🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

OMG, and during lock down students (and the majority of parents on MN) complained about online lectures and poor value for money due to lack of face to face on campus lectures. Lots of complaints after lockdown when it was a bit of a hybrid model for a year.

And now here we are with some students saying they’d rather not drive into town for lectures when they could watch them from home. Bearing in mind on our course our “lectures” are more of a lecture/seminar hybrid as it’s a small cohort so it’s not death by PowerPoint. There are group activities, etc, interactive stuff, quizes, etc. Trying to explain to them that discussion occurs at a better level when people are actually there in person as well! People are more likely to ask questions when not online.

Honestly, I’m baffled sometimes! I get it would save money in petrol and parking as well as less time if you don’t have to commute in but I never press ganged anyone to sign up for the course!

There is now research showing that people learn better from live social interaction compared to watching a video. It is quicker and easier to learn when you are there in person.

how you get the students to realise this is a different problem

I think (hope) generally by the time they’re in Year 2 they realise, there’ll probably always be the odd outlier!

“This is not an open university online course. Your attendance at lectures is being monitored”. Trying it on!

We are supposed to record ours. We keep forgetting. Once you have half the class hybrid or not turning up, it makes it impossible all round.

I went as a mature student.
after a month or so I did find it far more producituve to not go into university (across London) for 2 hour lecture, but to watch at home. Also without being distracted by other students chatting or watching videos in front of me.
i attended all tutorials but skipped any lecture which was on a day without tutorials.
after 6 months we went into lockdown.

so for a commuting student with a job too, online lectures helped me a lot, avoiding too much dead time in my days. (Ie 3 hours travel)

Problem is it’s a professional healthcare course so campus attendance isn’t optional. online attendance doesn’t count. The professional body specifies a minimum number of theory hours.

If people are joining from home I have no idea if they turn their computer on and walk away.

Yes. We used to not record and now have been told to record and it is affecting attendance.

We do audio recordings only to be a bit less attractive as an alternative and seminars are never recorded. In my experience, many/most students who don't attend in person, don't listen to the recordings either. Some do both.

@CameForAVacationStayedForTheRevolution The trouble is that you can’t tell whether students are paying any attention if they actually attend anymore than if they’re online. I regularly see students fast asleep in the bigger lectures and I know those who have their laptops open aren’t always taking notes! Regulatory bodies assume just being in a room or in front of a computer means students can miraculously absorb education via osmosis

Do you have links to decent research? Having a similar problem and I'm sure it would save others time if you can post some? 🙏

Depressing. This is what comes of treating students as customers because of the vast cost of the course. Firstly, they fit in as much paid work as they can around the course and sometimes that ends up taking priority over their studies, so lose lose. Then the ones who are still quite young don't have the life experience to understand why courses are structured as they are. Many of them are consumed by anxiety and are being allowed to avoid things that they find difficult rather than being given effective support to develop coping strategies and resilience. They're not going to cope as HCPs if they can't arrange their lives so as to be able to attend their course in person.

I don't work now but when I did have a job working in a university it was depressing to see the extent to which management would insist on all sorts of changes in response to student feedback even when it was clearly not sensible. Don't miss it all. Kudos to everyone still struggling on.

I think this largely comes down to finances. Students have so many expenses and often have to be in paid employment to survive. I can see why they don't want to lose a whole day of pay, to attend a couple of hours at uni (plus the parking or other travel costs).

You are right / physical attendance is much better, but everyone is just trying to juggle everything to make life work. The days of students signing up for courses to have a doss for 3 years and avoid work, are long gone.

Look up De Felice paper in Current Biology around 2022

Maybe if the universities actually offered the support they are meant to to it might be better for these anxious students?

My dd was out of school for 2 years with severe ND burnout. She has managed with the help of medications and a lot of bravery and determination on her part to go to lectures.

Her ILP says ‘her personal tutor will make face to face contact with her every week’ as she has trouble advocating for herself.

Been there 3 weeks. He doesn’t even know who she is.

It can be difficult.

Is it is a time consuming/busy/expensive/unpleasant commute? These problems definitely exist - where my ds is, lots of students don’t come to lectures because of such issues. Even if they do get there, they then have the issue of it being very crowded/limited places to eat/sit etc.

Hope you don't mind, but I couldn't leave this. Your DD could go back to the disability support team and ask for her tutor to be changed to the departmental disability co-ordinator (or whichever department academic leads on disability). Academics are not all equal in their ability to provide pastoral support and getting switched to someone who has that role and an interest in pastoral issues could make all the difference for the next 3 years. I know it's asking her to do something a bit uncomfortable but the disability team will support her and hopefully it will make everything better going forward.

student housing needs to be more available/affordable.
I know students who have a 6 hour roundtrip which is not sustainable. edpecially if they have a lecture at 9am and a practical session starting at 5pm on the same day.

And these are the people we are going to be relying on in the future to be looking after us as a healthcare professional or in another highly important role .

No wonder robots are taking over , because we can’t rely on humans anymore .

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow in my experience, the disability team often put in very idealistic support. A weekly one to one in my team would be extremely difficult to accommodate. We are all part time and workload is huge. It's hard when expectations are raised and then not possible to implement. I would speak to the programme leader and make sure they make sure a meeting with the personal tutor is scheduled.

I have a dozen or more students like this.

If they must come in, then they must come in surely!
Presumably this was made clear in course application process and in the course information? I cannot see that 3 weeks in you are being at all reasonable. But why aren’t the course leaders being more decisive and clear?

I appreciate what others are saying re costs and travel BUT if students were told this before, that in person attendance is required then it’s simple: attend or leave.
If they want a career in healthcare how will they do this if they think everyone can just choose to stay at home?
I seriously worry for the future - we are breeding a nation of people will no social skills and no motivation. Sad.

She won’t initiate contact with anyone. This is why the tutor is meant to do it. That’s what the whole meeting was about.

This is true, but at least I know they’re in the room! 😁

Completely agree with this. We are told that as personal tutors we should be providing academic support, anything else should just be signposting. We are allocated one hour per student per year for each student we’re a personal tutor for on our workload plans.

That hour includes the 3x personal tutorials which are mandatory for us to provide every year, plus answering emails to the student, any other ad hoc meeting chasing them up about attendance, etc.

I would not have time to proactively meet a student every week because they struggle to advocate for themselves.

@Gottonsomedraws it’s not quite that simple - universities need fee paying students to remain afloat. Tariffs are lowered and admission numbers increased (we’re still accepting new students a few weeks into the term) whilst staff resources are cut back to the bone. An institution that got rid of students (and their fees) for non in person attendance would collapse. It’s a miserable situation but that’s the reality of HE

Totally.