Daughter struggling at uni - needs academic help

[MakeMineALarge1]

So not really an AIBU, but asking for help.
When I was at uni (6 years ago) and when I did my post grad course (2 years ago) I had an abundance of help from the lecturers etc. Each essay could be seen up to 3 times to ensure all students were on the right tract, this help was available to all.
Now my dd 20 is at at Uni and she is saying lecturers aren't allowed to see any written work, they can only discuss idea's and plans etc.
So where can she go for help, I have offered to proof read any essays and have aked to see the feedback etc to see if I can help her, but of course " I know nothing"!
Please help me, help her.

I take on board my experience was very unusual, I thought that was the norm, I take that on board.

I have said we will look at the feedback together and I will proofread things for her, I suspect the help is there, but she isn't tapping into it for some reason.

Is she a first year? If so she needs to chill out because chances are she only needs to pass the year and her grades won't contribute towards final degree classification.

Disappointing first year grades are an indication of areas for improvement / motivation to work harder next year. But nobody should waste a moment's stress over this.

When I was at uni (6 years ago) and when I did my post grad course (2 years ago) I had an abundance of help from the lecturers etc. Each essay could be seen up to 3 times to ensure all students were on the right tract, this help was available to all.

I was at uni longer ago than you and what you're describing definitely isn't standard. I think part of the point of a university degree is that students are able to produce work autonomously. Of course the lecturers should teach the topics required and be available for general discussions but not to proof read or go through multiple iterations of essays.

Another very useful aspect of university collaboration is getting students to help each other, talk through their work and exchange ideas does she have friends on her course?

Failing all that she could try to find a helpful grad student who might give her some informal tutoring.

Thank you all for your advice.

The uni I work at has study skills courses - either drop-in sessions or ones that can be booked. They're on the Library's website. Librarians are available to help with referencing queries and finding resources. There is also a facility to submit a sample of academic writing to a support team who can give feedback. Personal tutors and module leaders are available as well as the virtual learning environment where each module has a website with resources and content. There is so, so much more available than when I was at Uni: it's so important for students to seek it out if they need it - any tutor or member of support staff should be able to signpost where necessary.

First of all, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, stop hovering over her. Listen to her, commiserate with her, be her greatest cheerleader, but stop trying to solve this on her behalf. She needs to find her own way.

The point of university study is to develop intellectual independence, which means being able to develop a paper more or less on your own. She should be able to give a brief summary of her trajectory of thought, and get brief comments and guidance back to ensure she is on track. When she heads off to what I am sure will be an excellent job after being a student, her boss is not going to look through every detail of her work - she will be expected to have a certain ability to self-start and think things through for herself. THis is what she is now being taught!

The difference between a 55 and a 65 is generally about the level at which they are grasping the subject. A 65 student will be able to situate a fairly coherent argument that shows a reasonably sound grasp of the subject in a context of wider reading. Time and time again, students who are getting in the 50s are either not structuring the essay well, or not grasping the issues in sufficient detail, or not reading enough (and a common mistake with the last of those is the belief that sitting in the library = research, so I'm really glad you pointed that one out already). Your advice to pay attention to the feedback she is being given and work on the specific issues raised is really good. I hope she listens to you!

Unis have masses of resources for studying and improving. Also, as a PP said, the grade is not a definitive analysis of your DD as a person, but of the quality of the work, and areas to focus on, improve on. Most lecturers and tutors will go through a graded assignment in much greater detail if you make an appointment.
A lot of new students think of grades as a competitive thing, bbut its really not like that.

She is right that it's very unusual for lecturers to provide that sort of feedback. We will meet with students and discuss plans and ideas and provide pastoral support as needed, but when you have huge research projects with 10 staff to supervise, 3 courses to teach, marking, publishing commitments you have to keep unless you want to lose your job, up to 100 students who may demand writing advice from you, and only about 40 hours in the week, you can't provide that level of feedback. Even for the MSc students whose dissertations I supervise, I'm only allowed to read any drafts 3 times and can only devote 10 hours in the term to supervisory activities (I have to keep a log!).

But really, lecturers aren't specialists in teaching writing. Some of them are pretty bad at writing themselves to be fair! She would be much better off making an appointment to speak with someone in her university's writing centre, to seek out peers who would want to share drafts back and forth to comment on for each other, or finding a postgrad student to pay for tutoring.

You can't submit essay drafts just outlines here. It's to stop certain kindly lecturers rewriting them for students! Everyone is marked by the same criteria of no help

Scotland or England? ie one or two years to go?

I've proof read a couple of ds' essays (1st year on Scotland) - but really just looking at basic punctuation and reminding him that you don't use contractions in formal English . He's struggled a bit with doing the "right" type of research (ie academic references, not popular ones) (although the formatting of his referencing is apparently excellent just the wrong stuff ) and also learning to reference facts (with academic sources) rather than "obvious" opinions (especially in Sociology, which he's been doing this semester), but that's apparently normal in 1st year, while they get their heads around the required academic rigour.

Most Unis have other support in addition to the personal tutors (ds' personal tutor seems to be invisible) - can your dd access other support? Ask Student Services or at the Library?

She would be better asking her tutor to go through some of her work that has already been marked and give her some feedback on where she needs to improve. It makes a difference whether it’s lack of reading/depth or the structure of the essay that needs improvement. She should also see if her uni has a student support/tutoring service that she could access.

I think undergrads now have been massively disadvantaged by a school system that spoon feeds to tests and no longer (largely) teaches essay writing skills. Students do take differing times to adjust to a far more obscure marking system and lecturers who are already overstretched can find it difficult to work with an intake who are broadly less prepared for and less confident carrying out independent study.

I'd agree with the advice above: she should seek out her academic tutor and turn up with an itemised list of the issues she wants to discuss, seking clear examples of how to improve. Meet with her personal tutor to discuss her worries about how she is progressing and ask to be directed to relevant academic support. Attend academic writing workshops and read the heck out of as many journals as she can, focusing on how academics in the field structure and support their arguments (also mining their bibliographies!)

I'd also gently suggest taking a step back yourself: she is an adult in charge of her own education and while you can support her emotionally it is not your job to signpost her to the relevant help - that's what the university, beginning with her tutors, is for.

I have said we will look at the feedback together and I will proofread things for her

Please (and I do not mean this disrespectfully) do not proofread the essay for her. Your posts are littered with poor spelling and grammar. I really don’t mean this to sound like I am being awful to you, but I’m the same - my grammar is poor and I get pulled up on it with my assignments.

If she needs help she needs to go to the academic support department.

I went to new uni that hand held a bit and even then course lecturers would only look at essay plans.

Is she referencing correctly? If not you can lose a lot of marks that way.

@AngryFeminst I think undergrads now have been massively disadvantaged by a school system that spoon feeds to tests and no longer (largely) teaches essay writing skills. Students do take differing times to adjust to a far more obscure marking system and lecturers who are already overstretched can find it difficult to work with an intake who are broadly less prepared for and less confident carrying out independent study

I completely agree with this. I teach at a top RG university and many of my students don't know how to put a paragraph together and aren't 100% sure about capital letters. They just aren't really being taught this stuff in schools.

hollowvictory me too. I was at uni 87-90 and we just wrote our essays and handed in the finished product.

My unit had a place called the “writing center”. They hired grad and upper class students with strong writing skills to staff a drop in tutoring service. They could help with a variety of writing struggles.

I agree with the advice to be cautious about how much you intervene.

My dad, bless him, always wanted to 'help' me and thought I wasn't doing as well as I should be. It took me years before he would stop pestering to see everything I wrote. Generally, he'd start telling me what he thought I should change, doing some 'proofreading,' and suggesting improvements to structure.

My dad has a PhD; he publishes papers in academic journals (though he's in industry, not an academic).

Did he have the first clue how to help?

No, he did not.

I'm an academic now, and looking back, I wish I had been firmer about asking him to limit his support to sympathetic comments and nothing more!

Useful advice is hugely discipline-specific, and even quite course-specific. The best people to advise really are the people who're meant to be supporting her at university. For example, blonde's advice doesn't really work for my subject.

so what on earth do you get for your 9K a year?

surely you can get model answer layout examples, so you know what you should be putting in there. and you will get feedback after you submit an essay. No wonder there is a black market going on, though.

Model answer layout examples wouldn't be appropriate for a lot of essay-based subjects.

9k goes on everything from books for the library to wages for the department secretary to the buildings to the electricity bill. It's not just for paying lecturers to interact with students, and in fact the wages of lecturers are relatively small costs in the running of a university.

(Though, I would bet that there is support out there for the OP's DD, even if it doesn't take the form of someone reading her draft essay.)

Skittlesss I rushed the post as I was on my way out, when it comes to writing an essay etc I can assure you I would be more focused! But thank you for your observations. It is always easier to read and critique others and that is what I was offering to do.

I also "get" that I should step back and let her seek the advice and support herself, I think I just went into "mum" mode and wanted to fix things.

I'm a lecturer, we can look at either 20% or a detailed plan for regular work (I.e not o dissertations or similar we are supervising), unless the student has learning needs e.g dyslexia. It has to be fair for them all. She could seek essay writing skills help from the library staff, most universities offer this in addition to help from tutors.

I'm an academic, and agree with AngryFeminist.

Also, the best thing she can do is look in detail at the feedback on her last assignment -- most of it will focus on specifically what she needs to do to improve her grade in future assignments, and may suggest things to target in a one on one session with her institution's equivalent of the learning support centre.

I can see on our VLP whether students have actually read their essay feedback or not, and, depressingly often, they just glance at the grade and don't even open the feedback section. Which I why I now have first years write a brief reflection attached to subsequent essays in a module, detailing how they implemented suggestions in feedback from the previous assignment.