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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think that this is a poor way to behave in a university lecture?

211 replies

malificent7 · 30/09/2018 15:13

Sat in front a group of girls in a lecture...first proper one of the module and I wish I'd said something.
They were laughing about the lecturers , were nattering on about everything and seemed to have a comment for everything the lecturer said.
I took 1 photo of a power point slide and they must have had a 3/4 minute discussion ( pisstake) about it. ( apparently it's fine to take photos of the big screen for notes. I had to check as was feeling paranoid in case I had committed a lecture faux pas.
They were behaving like a bunch of year 9 students win a sweet shop not a group of 18 year olds at uni.
In another lecture a paper aeroplane had been made but thankfully no-one had thrown it.
I am a mature student and therefore a boring old fart. Didn't help that I used to teach. But this is a respected science course and these young people will be treating the vulnerable if they qualify.
So am I a boring old fart and next time should I say something? The lecturer had to tell them to shut up several times.

OP posts:
necromumda · 01/10/2018 06:39

A good lecturer can inspire even the most distractable student! If your students are talking, or not turning up, or walking out, you need to do something different!

I once lectured from 8- 6 with no break except for the walk between some buildings. A couple were 3 hr lectures. All standing. You try being inspiring with that all day with every single topic.

Sockwomble · 01/10/2018 06:58

"A good lecturer can inspire even the most distractable student! If your students are talking, or not turning up, or walking out, you need to do something different!"

These are adults not 5 year olds.

CuriousaboutSamphire · 01/10/2018 07:43

A good lecturer can inspire even the most distractable student! If your students are talking, or not turning up, or walking out, you need to do something different!

It's when parents start supporting that attitude that the very best of teachers leave the job. I did.

For years at FE and HE I was a good lecturer. Good results, good feedback forms and all the other hoops. Slowly things changed. I started doing more of the work, I could no longer leave a lecture with a question and expect a single student to have researched the answer by the next session. I couldn't not have them know the information so I had no choice but to provide it.

Because I demanded they were more independent my feedback forms grew more and more negative, including comments about my age, my figure, my accent. I was openly derided for not being young and slim. Parents would join in with this too, it became soul destroying.

One year, in the middle of a good patch, with the majority of students being relatively self directing I had one young man for whom the world was simply an unjust place. He did not work, made no effort whatsoever other than to formally complain, long and loud about every lecturer.

The result of this was that every lecturer was asked, formally, to review their teaching practice, to attend a session on self reflection, to see if there was anything in what he had to say. During that compulsory session I handed in my notice with a 'lunatics running the asylum' comment. 2 colleagues left by the end of the same year, most of the department by the end of the following year.

That A level centre, like many others nowadays, is now staffed by a lot of part time lecturers, all newly qualified, all having to put up with attitudes like that above. They will mostly burn out within 5 years, to be replaced with more and more unprepared and unsupported newly qualified teachers. There will be no 'old lags' to reassure and mentor them through their first years.

But hey! Who cares? It's all the lecturers fault in the first place!

proudestofmums · 01/10/2018 08:39

Years ago I taught an FE evening class. One evening child care fell through so I took young DS with me arming him with a load of coloured chalks to use on the blackboard (thats what it was called then!). At the start of the class the students were all chatting which I always let them do for a minute or two as they hadn’t seen each other for a week. I don’t know who was more surprised - me or them - when a little voice from behind me called “be quiet. My mummy wants to talk!” It worked!

ShineOnHarvestMoon · 01/10/2018 08:40

A good lecturer can inspire even the most distractable student! If your students are talking, or not turning up, or walking out, you need to do something different!

Maybe by using lots of apostrophes!

LemonysSnicket · 01/10/2018 08:56

They settle down eventually, they're just showing off with their new friends. By January they'll all barely go to their lectures anyway

LemonysSnicket · 01/10/2018 09:00

How you can be stressed in the first week I just do not know though

CuriousaboutSamphire · 01/10/2018 09:03

How you can be stressed in the first week I just do not know though

Mature student... paying for the degree... not wanting to miss the basics, wanting to set up an effective routine... just interested in the topic and wants to listen to the lecturer not some twinkly tripe... lots of other reasons that are perfectly reasonable and fairly obvious!

LemonysSnicket · 01/10/2018 09:04

@NameChangedAgain18 my uni didn't take attendance for any lectures in 4 years, I only graduated last year so it's certainly not mandatory...

SchadenfreudePersonified · 01/10/2018 09:08

I would say, too, that being a lecturer should not be a popularity contest.

You are there to teach, not to be besties with your students.

You need to know your subject inside out and back to front and be able to explain it to others (not necessarily the same thing). Yes - it is a bonus to have the gift of the gab, and be inspirational, but some of the most gifted lecturers don't have these properties but can still impart the information required. You don't get a lot of time to deliver your topic and have to cover the syllabus - there isn't time for it to become a joke-telling session, or one in which you can spend time arguing or justifying something which just "is", though most of us will explain difficult concepts if the student needs it, and there is always the opportunity in tutorials for students to bring up things they are unsure of.

Some people here say "They're just kids etc etc etc" - No. They aren't. They are young adults. They are old enough to vote, get married, join the forces without a parent's permission, and they like that adult status. However if you accept adult privileges, you also have to accept adult responsibilities, and this includes being responsible for your own learning.

We can't put information into anyone's brain - all we can do is make the basics available and point them in the direction of the library with enough particulars to help them find out what they need to know.

Universities nowadays offer extra classes on how to use the library, how to take study notes, how to write an essay, how to footnote, how to research information, how to assess the quality of the information, how to time manage - trust me - students are not just thrown in and left to flounder!

Student expectations are often ridiculous unrealistic and many parents much better.

One of my colleagues receives a phone call from a tutee's mother lambasting him because her son had got drunk one weekend! She seems to expect the lecturers to make sure they were all in bed by 10.00 with cup of warm milk and a cuddly toy.

abacucat · 01/10/2018 11:25

This is all as a result of the infantilisation of young adults.

Lydiaatthebarre · 01/10/2018 14:26

Too many young people going to University and College nowadays. A lot of them aren't mature enough to benefit from it, or academic enough to be interested and engaged in what's going on.

They should be out working/training on the job/doing practical and short courses. They're wasting their time at university, and taking up places and resources that others, including mature students, would benefit more from.

I really do think a lot of kids are at University for the social life, or because their friends were going or their parents wanted them to go. Entry to university should be made far more difficult. As it is, degrees are being devalued and a lot of spoilt brats are being enabled to defer going out into the real world and growing up a bit.

NameChangedAgain18 · 01/10/2018 14:47

LemonysSnicket - we are audited by the home office and have to be able to show that our tier 4 visa holders are attending. It may be that your university does this by other means, but a lot of universities will do it by taking a register.

CuriousaboutSamphire · 01/10/2018 14:54

Don't think I've ever worked in a Uni where attendance wasn't recorded in workshops and seminars. Lectures are different, many don't as they are often public, to all intents and purposes.

FruitofAutumn · 01/10/2018 14:59

Yeah I don't see why the university would caremuch about attendance in lectures tbh.It is all about visa holders.I vaguely remember in the news some years back a university was sanctioned as a result of not satifyin home office rules.
maybe someone can remember what happened

user1471426142 · 01/10/2018 15:01

I don’t think it does young people any favours to say ‘they’re just young’ and learning etc. I remember a degree of laziness in the first year but very little after that. Yes some people didn’t turn up but that is very different to actively disrupting other people’s learning. I’ve had very good graduates at work that I’ve had to bollock for pissing around in their phones during meetings. They might get away with it during lectures but it does them no favours as they all seem very upset to get negative feedback about phone usage and being told it is rude and makes an awful impression. In every other way they’re always excellent but it’s like they’ve never been taught to put the phone down.

ToftyAC · 01/10/2018 16:51

My teenager is gearing up for uni so asked him. He said that he’d have told the childish bints to STFU. His words.... lol

Orchiddingme · 01/10/2018 16:58

I never attended a single lecture during my time at uni. Graduated with one publication, several awards, and a scholarship offer for my Masters. Not attending doesn't mean a lack of interest or lack of commitment to the course

I was not a great attender and went on to have a good academic career.

However, highly self-motivated and exceptionally bright students are just that, the exception.

In general, there's probably 1 or 2, possibly up to 5 students in any class who could still do well without attending, the rest absolutely do need to attend as they don't always grasp concepts first time, need a lot of support to widen their reading and become independent and generally tend to do very badly idling away in their rooms.

Attendance in seminars is monitored for other reasons as people have stated, but few are those who can bypass the lectures and write brilliantly.

Orchiddingme · 01/10/2018 17:02

I mean 1 or 2, possibly 5% out of 100. Classes are large these days!

TeeBee · 01/10/2018 17:07

I went to uni about 25 years ago (gulp). One girl once turned up at a lecture and sat down with an open bag of chips! She was immediately turfed out by the lecturer.

PanGalaticGargleBlaster · 01/10/2018 19:16

Different people take different amounts of time to realise their flaws and how to behave!

Seriously, you would think 18/19 year olds would have grasped by that age that talking through a lecture is in equal measure rude and disrespectful. Did they talk through lessons at school without censure from the teacher? I doubt it, what makes them think uni was any different?

angelfacecuti75 · 01/10/2018 23:51

I remember someone's phone going off and playing "slap my bitch up" at uni . Oh such fun times i was the annoying 18 yo with a coffee . But i was dedicated and didnt talk through lectures...

DSHathawayGivesMeFannyGallops · 02/10/2018 00:44

Two incidents stand out from my time at uni - spotting the guy next to me playing the civ 5 game on his laptop during an intimate seminar with about 8 students (I wasn't impressed), and someone falling asleep mid lecture & snoring. The lecturer was very nice & laughed along with us! I was at uni 2008-2011 at a UL college doing a fairly academic course.

Kokeshi123 · 02/10/2018 00:59

I heard of one university professor who had a rule that if your mobile phone rang during a lecture, you had to come to the front of the lecture room and SING your mobile phone to everyone BlushBlush. It never happened twice to the same person, apparently.

I can see universities increasingly banning phones and laptops other than for students who have disability accommodations. It's apparently much better to take notes by hand anyway (for understanding and retention).

EmperorTomatoRetchup · 02/10/2018 01:00

My teenager is gearing up for uni so asked him. He said that he’d have told the childish bints to STFU

You might want to have a word with him about referring to women as 'bints'.

Why do I not call them on their texting, Facebook ING, chatting in lectures? Because in the 'student experience' culture that blights universities, if I asked them to stop doing any of the above, they'd doubtlessly go bubbling to student support that they'd been, 'shamed', bullied or that being told to stop texting when I was trying to give a lecture or a fellow student was speaking in the seminar was 'triggering' as their goldfish died when they were sending a text message and I would get a bollocking. The university students seem to have bought into the consumer rhetoric of buying a degree and they as the 'customer' were always right and how dare we make them concentrate on listening to one another and actual learn something.

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