To wish my university lectures were... well, lectures

[reallyyyy]

I started a new course a few weeks ago, it's my second degree and it's a healthcare degree so that might be why. But our lectures are so interactive and filled with so many activities that feel like a waste of time. I had a 2 hour lecture today and 40 minutes of it was spent making posters of different topics to put on the board at the front, with the vision that we would be learning from each other. Only, we couldn't read the posters as they were too small and far away and it didn't teach us anything. There are also lots of 'discuss in pairs X, Y and Z' and it's not helpful or useful. It was nice in the first week as a bit of an icebreaker but now it just feels annoying.

I'm finding it frustrating sitting in a 2 hour lecture and being taught 1 hour of content. I'm not sure if it's because I studied a different degree before but lectures were 2 hours of information and I learnt a lot from them.

We have seminars too so it's not like I'm not enjoying the interaction, just not in a lecture.

I know IABU but I think I'm just overly tired from getting up at 5:30am to commute in for a lecture just to spend half the time making posters or colouring in diagrams.

It’s hideous. The anxiety it caused made me unwell, I was too stressed to learn.

I ended up skipping lectures and then my marks for assignments shot back up to normal. I found it quicker to study on my own than using this approach. Though I would have enjoyed and I believe benefited from hearing an expert share their knowledge.

i was bored to death by lectures and couldn’t focus for that long. So facilitated learning suited me. Good courses need to provide a range of different ways of teaching as we obviously don’t all learn the same way.

Yep I’ve just started a masters and feel like I’m in primary school not university. One of the lecturers commented to me that it’s not about education anymore just the piece of paper at the end.

I've adhd and I'd probably die of boredom in a 2 hour lecture where someone is just talking. I actually would take in very little information. A mix of presenting information and then doing activities would actually suit me better because it gives me a break from having to force myself to listen. But with a whole 2 hours of activities then I'd get bored probably towards the end 😅

Pre recorded lectures with a dead professor sounds the better option.

You can usually find some excellent ‘old-fashioned’ lectures on youtube. For most subjects.

I have autism, and this infantile style of teaching was a waste of time for me. I retained nothing because I was too stressed by the forced interaction. University is supposed to be mainly self taught anyway, but I feel that actual lectures would still have been beneficial. I stopped going to them and watched older lectures on YouTube.

I also ended up feeling used as I believe this approach only really helps the lazy who never bothered reading around the subject and came to lectures unprepared to concentrate. They’d sit waiting for someone who had to tell them what to do.

Screw that. I’m wasn’t being paid.

I’m an academic and deliver this sort of stuff in seminars. At my previous institution they were trying to get us to deliver lectures like this as well - so with 200 people in a lecture theatre which was a nonsense. Anyone who argued against it was bamboozled with ‘Well, the research says…’ crap, when that’s not necessarily the case. Then I went to a guest lecture myself and spent a wonderful two hours just fully engaged in the content. Sometimes, nothing beats spending a couple of hours listening to someone who really knows their shit and can communicate effectively. I am the Sage on the Stage - that’s what I’m paid to be - the expert. Now I limit my interactions to a couple of questions and a few Mentimeter polls, but I work hard to make my lectures interesting, with examples, stories, hints and tips (e.g. for lit. searches). I’m not going to ‘co-create’ a module with students when they don’t yet fully understand the topics!

2 hours is a long time to concentrate in a conventional lecture. If done well interactive sessions can improve learning and retention.

I felt so desperately ripped off by my MA that was taught in this way. Hours of faffing about discussing in pairs and drawing mind maps. The few of us who’d bothered doing the reading had to explain all the content to everyone else, in 5 minute bursts between group discussions and role plays and coffee breaks and whatnot. It felt like asking the conscientious students teach whatever they’d only just superficially learned to the people who couldn’t be arsed.

The only learning I did was in writing my essays and dissertation. The rest was just a frustrating waste of time. I was so bitter about having to give up a day of paid work per week to sit through the endless nonsense.

Thank you @romdowa and @Kitanai - the institutions need to be clear what teaching methods they are going to use, and posibly do a properly inclusive impact assessment too.

I think this is how I’d feel. It would put me off signing up.

I did a masters degree a few years ago, not medical. Invariably the last hour of a three hour session would be some kind of interactive thing, where we would have to split into groups, do a flip chart of something and then present back to everyone whilst the lecturer but his or her feet up for an hour.

@RedHelenB If I sound like OFSTED, then it’s because I’m accountable to them (well, the school is). Interactive, ‘busy’ lessons are a very noughties idea of what learning ‘looks like’. I used to stress about my lessons not being interactive enough. Now I’ve got permission to just teach without disruption or interruption, and the children know more (going by results and outcomes).

It sounds like foundation stuff, rather than degree level. BUT healthcare is essentially practical and collaborative, so ultimately that's the work you're ultimately building to.

YANBU.

But this doesn’t come from your lecturers. This comes from high up in the university, where people who have not done teaching in years (or ever) and have no specialist knowledge are pushing a one-size-fits-all, interactive, flipped classroom, buzzword of the day style.

You are a mature student and can see the value of this approach. But the younger students will gulp it up and rebel if not placated by this nonsense.

You could try speaking up - not to individual lecturers but through student reps, at the Board of Studies, through feedback forms.

Good luck.

I don’t learn from lectures. I can’t retain the information. Not everyone has the same learning style.

I quit lecturing partly because of all this nonsense we were pressurised to implement in our teaching.

I'm doing an OU degree so the teaching is very different as it's all online, but I would definitely hate this

I'd much rather listen and take my own notes than faff about chatting and drawing pictures

Worth noting I have ADHD and I'm possibly autistic as well - in secondary school I hated the forced interaction element, it got in the way of the learning, and the noise and general hubbub was overstimulating for me

Does anyone else remember doing comprehension about once every half term in primary school? Reading something from a textbook and then answering questions about it in your best handwriting, in silence. I was the only child in my class who used to rejoice when we had to do this. I enjoyed reading and writing and everyone shut up for an hour, it was my idea of learning heaven

MAs are meant to be about independent learning though - I’ve done both an MA in education and an MSc in epidemiology, and DH did an MSc in urban studies, and all of our seminars were like that - you were meant to do all the reading beforehand. The aim of the seminars was to work with other people to put your reading into practice. There weren’t any lectures.

I do agree that undergraduates need a bit more handholding.

I’m a university lecturer and when I did my pg cert this was very much promoted as good pedagogical practice. Lots of talk about active learning, that the evidence shows it promotes better understanding than traditional didactic methods. Lots of talk of different activities and chunking.

I prefer to teach more traditionally but will pose questions in my slides without the answers to try and get discussion going. Chuck in a few videos and maybe a short quiz at the end. 🤷‍♀️

Small group discussion should work, probably better than from-the-front delivery, when students have a reasonable chance of figuring out the answers (but the answers are not super-obvious things they probably knew already) and are guided appropriately by the lecturer - making the parameters of the task clear from the start, helping people who get stuck, bringing it all back together at the end.

Other stuff (e.g. facts the students could not be expected to come up with themselves) is best taught entirely from the front.

Unfortunately it sounds like some people have gone overboard and think small group discussion is always better no matter in what context or how it is moderated.

A solution for ND and other students who may not feel comfortable with the discussion element is to let them think over the problems privately during the group times. ("Get into groups of between 1 and 5 and try to work out ...")

In schools we are swinging back the other way because research still shows that direct instruction is the most efficient way to learn a completely new topic.

Making a poster is a very, very low impact way for adults to learn.

They can't suit everyone. I prefer lectures but many people find it difficult to absorb information that way.

And even though I prefer lectures I always uses to think what was the point in attending one when you'd be given hand outs or a copy of the slideshow anyway.

This is the method that's being used in the degree I'm on at the moment and can't say I'm enjoying it either. Reading all of the materials etc is interesting and useful, but the actual classes I attend to 'discuss' the topics are often pointless with no real application of anything learnt and frustrates many of us. However, I believe the point of it is to develop soft skills alongside the actual primary skill/knowledge but it's too much when it is every single subject.

I went for a lecturer job interview recently and was asked to prepare an interactive teaching session- they don't want to hire people who just stand and talk! So I'd say it probably comes from the university than the lecturers

Nail on the head there! It's the result of the commoditisation of uni degrees. Thanks Blair!