To expect university students to engage with their studies?

[PissedOffProf]

User name changed because I don't want to totally out myself.

I am a lecturer in a management department at a mid-level UK university. I have tons of experience in teaching, love my job, am nice to students and go out of my way to help them with their learning.

Increasingly, however, I am faced with classrooms of blank faces. Students who clearly have zero interest in their studies. Students who never prepare for their tutorials and have nothing to say. Students who are disruptive in class. Students who watch videos on their phones or do online shopping instead of engaging in classroom activities. Students who do not seem to have any respect for each other as they ignore the others when they speak. Students who, in the end, deliver mediocre work with zero critical thinking or creativity.

AIBU to ask why people decide to get tens of thousands of pounds in debt to spend three years of their lives being bored to death?

Because they have all been sold the lie that everyone these days should go to uni. Therefore you have students who do not really want to be there to study but think they should go because everyone does.

They have probably also done the same at school but been accepted by your uni with mediocre results or UIF offers.

I feel your pain.

I am a philosophy lecturer. I once had a student who was completely silent during seminars. I tried a couple of things but nothing worked so a few weeks into term I took her to one side to ask what was wrong. Turns out there was nothing wrong, all she wanted was a Third Class degree and she didn't think she had to contribute to seminars for that. I asked her why one earth she chose philosophy if she was not interested in the subject and she told me it was the discipline that accepted her at that Uni and the it was the Uni she wanted...the town had a great music scene!

I have no idea why she didn't get a job in that town, earn some money, get some experience and enjoy the music scene, rather than getting thousands of pounds in debt studying a subject she had no interest in.

Sadly she was not a one off. The level of commitment and interest in the students overall was really poor. They didn't seem to think that learning was part of the student experience and sometimes this is an institutional problem. It was an institutional problem at that Uni (Russell Group Uni). By contrast I used to give the odd talk to high school students at a private school and they were amazing. Not just knowledgeable but interested and passionate.

I don’t mean this to sound rude but Management is less likely to attract students with a passion for their subject. The people I knew at uni doing Management were purely doing it as a means to an end.

That’s so depressing. When I was a student I had some of the most vivid, interesting, engaging discussions of my life. Not just in tutorials but outside of the classroom as well. It would have been such a waste of time to be totally disengaged with it.

I was a secondary school teacher and I'm not surprised. The students in my classrooms were already switched off from critic thinking; they were so used to being spoon fed their education. Most really struggled with thinking and rationalising for themselves. I taught art and had taken over from a teacher who more or less had prescribed work for a prescribed grade, year after year. Same stuff each year. I couldn't teach like that and scheduled tutorials and talks to help them get into the habit of discussing and critiquing their work and that of their classmates. They should be coming up with their own ideas and devolving work for themselves. Like pulling teeth!
If that's indicative across many schools then no wonder uni students are not engaged. They don't even know how to be.

If you want to enter certain professions then a degree in that subject is essential, some areas of the degree might not interest them but they can't opt out

I do have sympathy with you as a professional person in my 40s but am quite sure I looked bored as hell through some on my university lectures as an 18-21 yo!

I think this was bound to happen with the high targets for university attendance that are now set.
Twenty five years ago when I first went to Uni it was a much smaller %age of school leavers who attended, it was harder to get a place and I think the people who attended were more motivated.
There is no way half of my class mates would have been committed to completing a degree.

That’s sad to hear. Ds18 degree. He’s loving it. Still enthusiastic even though the novalty of university has worn off. Above 80% in all papers and presentations so far (and one 99%). He comes home each day talking about his lectures and seminars, different cases they’ve been looking at. I’m just glad he picked a degree that really he was interested in.

However a lot of his friends are doing the bare minimum at the universities they’ve gone too. One has only been to about 50% of lectures, others are ‘bored’ and are lucky to get 50% on papers. But some started degrees because they were pushed into them by parents, one thought their degree would be an easy way to get a degree, another thought theirs would be an ‘easy’ degree.

So at the moment I’m really happy ds is enjoying his degree and doing quite well. I just hope that doesn’t change!

THIS POST IS TONGUE IN CHEEK. I LOVE MY STUDENTS AND LOVE NOTHING MORE THAN GIVING A LECTURE THAT BOTH THEY AND I ENJOY. This does happen but is much harder work than it used to be. I sympathise with the OP.

Long time lecturer here. In my experience the problem is not that they are utterly passive and unengaged it is that your lectures are not entertaining enough, do you not realise that our job is no longer to help students learn but to entertain? You need to cut all the boring fact and theory based parts out of your lectures and just show them YouTube videos and funny cartoon based slides. Don’t, for goodness sake, have words on your slides, or god forbid, say the same words out loud, this is “reading your slides” , this will bore your students senseless and will condemn you to mediocre satisfaction scores for all eternity. In fact don’t use slides, but also don’t write on the board, your writing is both too big and too small and illegible, you probably talk too fast and also labour every point too much as well. I bet you are also saying things that won’t directly appear in the exam, wasting everyone’s time. Don’t try to be funny but don’t be serious all the time. Be open to questions from the students (this will usually either be “Is this in the exam” or “can you repeat what you said in the last lecture”) but if a student asks something really interesting don’t deviate from the slides to answer it, this is wasting everyone’s time by talking about things that can’t be in the exam because they are not on the slides. Your lectures are both trivial and impossibly complicated, do something about it. You must “flip the classroom” but you must not be expect the students to do any work before coming to class. You must develop your students as independent learners by telling them exactly what to do and giving a precise and detailed marking scheme for every assessment. Do or expect students to do things that don’t contribute to the assessment, what would be the point? Do not ever forget that the ultimate purpose of your course is to get an acceptable pass rate and good student satisfaction scores.

ANd obviously don’t use paragraphs.

My classes are all third years this semester, and on the whole the ones I see are quite interested and engaged.
My problem is that only about half of them are regularly turning up - I can't teach them anything if they're not there!

I am currently a trainee solicitor after qualifying from a mid-tier university 3 years ago with a first. I wasn't the most engaged student ever. I missed lectures, I often spent the lectures I did go to organising various bits of life admin, and arrangements for my then part time job. I was a full time carer for my gran at the time, and relying completely on my job to keep money coming in - so I had little choice.

When it came to exam time, I prepped beyond belief and I got my first and my training contract with a top firm. A huge part of the reason why I secured my job was becuase of the life experience which was partly obtained during lectures and less because I listened to the ins and outs of consitutional law and theory.

I understand that its frustraing for those delivering the lectures (and indeed rude) however people learn in different ways and there are numerous reasons as to why they may not be paying attention - not all of which can be attributed to online shopping.

I was definitely uninterested and didn't pay attention at times during my undergraduate degree (russell group science degree within the last ten years, for context), although I was definitely never disruptive.

For me, it was a combination of the following reasons:

• there were quite a lot of modules I wasn't that interested in, but had no choice about doing
• some of the lecturers were terrible. Just read off slides. I could read them at home in half the time (and often did, if I knew in advance).
• tutorials were often on topics not that relevant to my degree, and whilst I tried to prepare for them, I often didn't really understand the material so had little to contribute
• one tutor I had, I literally couldn't understand (between his strong accent and stutter)
• university was definitely pushed as the only way to do a good job
• to be honest, there wasn't much space for discussion within any part of my degree, especially the first two years. It was mostly fact learning - by necessity, as you can't critically engage with the scientific literature without a decent background understanding. But it's not the most riveting.
• the labs had faulty equipment, the PGTAs didn't have a clue what we were doing, and I never really understood why we were doing what we did.

I was never disruptive or rude (and I didn't have a smartphone either), and I did the work to the best of my ability. So maybe I'm not really who you're talking about. But I found most of my degree pretty dull. The last year was more interesting.

I went on to do a masters and PhD, and now work in a university. And thank my lucky stars I generally only teach post grads.

Round of applause for chemenger
That is, sadly, spot on.

I never used to speak in my classes when I was at uni. I would sit, listen and scribble down everything, but social anxiety stopped me from talking.

I was a University Law lecturer and used to get so sick of students turning up to tutorials for which they were expected to prepare in advance with blank sheets of paper and blank minds. Once I asked the first question to get the discussion ball rolling. Cue the usual dead silence. So instead of filling the silence myself I thought S** it, and maintained the silence myself . We st insilen e for 30 minutes! I had always sid I was perfectly happy for a student to say h/she had tried to answer the question but couldn’t, if they could explain exactly what they didn’t understand. But to sit there with a blatantly blank sheet of paper having clearly not lifted a bone idle finger and expect to be told the answer infuriated me. I,used to point out that employers would come to us for references and the degree of engagement with their studies throughout the academic year would form a part of the reference. But even that didn’t help. One of the reasons I left the profession. Getting irritated all over again, 6 years on!

Oh and in my last degree we had one student who had her phone out constantly. Not texting etc, but say for example the lecturer asked ‘does anyone know......?’ She would google, stick her hand up with the right answer. All.The.Time. But of course when she was asked to ‘expand’ on her answer, she never could because she only googled the definition. It sounds petty, but when it was every lecture it became eye rolling to everyone else.

Actually it was also her that would sit talking with four others at the back. So if you happened to be sat by them you’d miss half of what the lecturer was saying. And yes we all did report it to our lecturers and our course rep, but they were spoken too but it didn’t stop them. It’s students like these that spoil it for the group. Funnily enough ds says he has one in his group too- are they everywhere??

Thanks, everyone! It's good to let the steam off sometimes.

chemenger - you've got everything spot on. I don't actually think the management in my department expects me to care of my students attain their learning outcomes. All they seem to care about is the pass rates and NSS scores. It's as if we are all locked in this perverse system where we pretend to be a community of scholars, but in reality we are a just market for indulgences.

And it is really shit when you put your heart and soul into your teaching and get indifference back.

igivein - I actually like it when the students who would not engage anyway do not show up. Brightens up the mood in the class without them sitting there like damp towels.

tipsytrainee46 - I understand that you were in a difficult situation. But it's exactly this kind of indifference that is soul-destroying for the lecturers. And perhaps the degree that you did did not actually need to be a university degree and could have been delivered in a form of an apprenticeship or a further education qualification. But this is an institutional problem.

Shallishanti123, I'd be happy to see some scribbling. Very rare these days.

Creatureofthenight, no you are not rude at all. You are right, in fact. Sigh.

proudestofmums, in some ways I envy you for getting out.

I am also biting my tong as hard as I can trying not to use the reference threat.

Hugglessnuggles, they are indeed everywhere. It is actually rather comical as they will use Google to find answers to questions that were already clearly answered during the lecture with requisite text and illustrations on the lecture slides. Google trumps lectures every time.

Interesting my DS is working way more than he did for A levels. Seems to really be relishing it but he did pick a subject he has a passion for. Perhaps that is the trick for students - choose something you love.

jewel1968, I agree that picking something you love definitely helps. That's why I am baffled that most don't.

I lecture occasionally and have noticed such a big difference between student engagement across different institutions.

Those being taught in smaller centres seem the most interactive - perhaps they’ve got confidence from spending time together (and with the lecturers) in several modules.

Though only one of the courses still require students to read before tutorials - otherwise it’s activities based. Readings are done later in relation to coursework only.