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.

When I give careers advice I often tell students to find out what style of teaching ie problem based learning, evidence based learning is used and how much contact time they have and how this might influence their choice of university.

I have a suspicion that this style of teaching has gained traction in clinical subjects such as my own (dentistry) because clinical subjects are notoriously expensive to provide and teaching staff have been cut to the bone.

Most of us who have been post graduate trainers have noted how much more we have to teach clinically and in theory as the years have gone by . It is also distressing that non conventional ways of gaining information such as you tube have gained traction without the critical analysis that a tutor/lecturer would have provided.

It has its positives in as much as when I qualified it wasn't until a couple of years later I learned that what I was taught as dogmatically right was not necessarily so. These days students have a wider experience of differing views. However they have not necessarily been well grounded in basics to allow them to critically review sources of information.

However especially in clinical subjects there is a lot of knowledge that you just have to force into your brain , retain and be able to use. Chalk and talk absolutely gave you those basics without which you are not safe to practice. Indeed part of the student experience was learning the skills to assimilate the huge body of knowledge you need , and to continue to need these skills throughout your practicing life. You might need different skills ,according to your learning style , to retain information given in a lecture but there is little to beat the concentrated power burst of knowledge in a lecture that forms the basis of your study . In any lecture it's a good one if you remember two things from it , but it's your notes that form the start of your study.

There are times when moving bits of post it notes around has been quite interesting (this technique was used quite a lot on dental educators course , however these are for people who have the knowledge but had to think about the different ways of presenting it to different styles of learners). But in terms of the hard graft of learning a really challenging clinical subject to a safe standard lectures are the bedrock .

I had the opposite experience. Did a masters and was really impressed with the flipped classroom model that the lecturers used. It meant that after doing two really quite difficult and long readings, I could compare my understanding and interpretations to that of others in the class and test it out in class discussions with the lecturer, who was an expert in both the subject and guiding the discussion. I'd have been fine with taking notes in a lecture too (like my undergraduate days) but this was far far better for me.
IMO learning is a social activity. Why bother to come to the classroom if all you are doing is listening? You could just watch the recording or do the readings on your own.

Totally agree. I'd rather read an article and take notes at my own pace than hurriedly take inadequate notes at my lecturer's pace...
if you prepare before class by doing the reading, you can consolidate your knowledge during the lecture time.

Surely it's all about the Uni being upfront as to how each course/module is being delivered. That way students can choose a Uni/course/module that suits their preferences as to how they prefer to learn.

They might not know what works best for them until they have experienced a variety of different university teaching methods.

It's tricky if they call that format a lecture given that it's not what the average person would expect from the term lecture.

The problem as I see it is this. Universities used to prefer the lecture method because it was a cheap, quick cerebral dump of a lot of information to a lot of people. Lecture theatres can hold scores, even hundreds of students. There's no expectation of interaction. As an undergradate myself I rated my lecturers, many of whom were undoubtedly knowledgeable and produced outstanding research. But the lectures were of pretty poor quality: I quickly realised I could glean the same information as I could get in the introduction to most of the books we were studying. I also got the sense they'd probably been delivering the same stuff for about 20 years.

I keep mine current, put time into researching them, and review them annually to make sure I'm using the most recent, and relevant, research. I don't want to get up there and just spout the same old tired, uninspiring stuff year after year. But a further issue is that now there's a trend toward 'whole group' teaching rather than lectures. And one thing the research does undoubtedly show is that talking 'at' people for ages at a stretch is unproductive: they will switch off. My undergradute lectures only lasted 40 minutes. That's ample.

So my lectures (around two hours) have around 30-40 minutes of delivered content, then an activity/guided discussion. Then the remainder of the guided content is delivered and, time permitting, we have another discussion building on the first, which then sets up lines of thinking for the smaller seminar sessions.

The problem is that for a lot of teachers, lectures and seminars now look pretty much identical. I try to keep a distinct style and feel to my 'whole group' sessions, seminars and workshops, but it would be easy to fall into delivering the same sort of thing every time. Then the students get bored with the same dull routine, and stop attending. In summary, all this is down to cost-cutting. The days of the cosy chat about books with your lecturer in a tutorial of about 10 students are gone. Lecturers are not lecturers anymore. We're teachers. There is a difference.

I agree with the points upthread that spending valuable teaching contact time making pretty posters and playing with glittery post-it stickers is of use to no-one, and that would never happen in my sessions. I have seen a poster used as actual assessment for one module; likewise, there's an emphasis on variation away from 'traditional' assessment methods. This is one particular form of assessment I'd never choose under any pretext. The word-count of most essays is also shorter. I'd have hated this. I loved my good, beefy 4000-word Level 6 essays where I could really get stuck into my subject.

I feel people's frustration. £9K is a lot of money to spend on tuition per year. Students deserve value for money, but IMO management are going about this in the wrong way. There's too much emphasis put on students as 'customers' (they're not) and on what they want from their education (as opposed to what they might not think they want but actually need). They're paying for our expertise, whilst at the same time being actively encouraged to discount it.

It's a frustrating time to be a lecturer. And don't even get me started on study skills, which are currently the bane of my life.

Having experienced yet another terrible ‘interactive’ masters session this evening I think the main reason they don’t work is the fact the academics aren’t good teachers. I am a teacher and it takes a lot to effectively manage discussion, plan activities that further understanding etc. and these guys just can’t do it! Stick to lecturing and read seminar format unless you are actually a good teacher I say!

Someone up thread replied to me saying undergrads need their hands held and masters students need to be more independent. This is total opposite of my experience (both at top 10 unis, study a social science). Undergrad was actually HARD, e.g. lecture, then read classic text and expect to be able to participate in a deep conversation about it. This MA is total Mickey Mouse stuff! Obviously can’t say if it’s representative but seems to foreground people’s experiences and thoughts rather than knowledge and intellectual debate.

*trad seminar format

I think the main reason they don’t work is the fact the academics aren’t good teachers.

Much too sweeping.

The academics who taught me were in the main fine, inspiring teachers. Their knowledge and passion for their research field was infectious. And they knew their stuff.

I can't judge my own teaching. I know I have the subject knowledge in spades, and this tends to communicate itself in your style of delivery. All I have to go on is my students' feedback, and my modules consistently register extremely high satisfaction scores in MEQs. These days that isn't necessarily easily done and other variables are of course at work: UCU data indicates women from Profs down to ALs are usually rated lower than men.

University lecturers today are also expected to have QTS. Ironically, that's probably exactly where most of this 'interactive' stuff is coming from - as well as management directives to keep teaching as cheap as possible. They then invariably hold lecturers responsible when this invariably looks like what it often is: an attempt to shove square pegs into round holes. And students are not fools. They know, and can spot a cheap compromise for exactly what it is.

To add to our woes, hybrid online/on campus teaching is almost certainly coming as a standard model. I abhor the very idea.

We’ve tried doing this on the course I teach on and I’ve come to the conclusion that students will never be satisfied, at least not the whole cohort.

so the first year we taught a module quite traditionally, mainly PowerPoint lectures broken up with some videos, quizes, case studies, etc. the students said they were fed up with the PowerPoints and they could read a PowerPoint at home.

so the next year we did a flipped classroom with the new cohort and they hated it. They got the PowerPoints to read before the session at home, they a scenario and case study based classroom session. Lots of complaints about how they were teaching themselves the content, they didn’t understand it, etc.

It’s so difficult. Nothing seems right.

Hm it's tough managing the weight and impact of socio-cultural factors students arrive with about what learning looks like and how it happens. I think it needs more of a place in preparing students.

Work in HE with disabled students, on a high content hours course with a lot of didactic delivery of teaching. On balance, neurodivergent students mostly (it’s not uniform), dislike traditionally delivered lectures. However, this is often around sensory issues of being in crowds, the noise of other students and auditory processing issues.

However, let’s not romanticise didactic lectures. They have been poorly attended on he for decades and if you stand at the back of them now, lots of students are browsing and internet shopping.

You really need a mix of methods for leaning and understanding.

@SerafinasGoose

Much too sweeping.

I didn’t say all lecturers I said the lecturers on my course

Schools have finally accepted that, actually, it's helpful just to TELL people things sometimes and direct instruction is all the rage. Unfortunately at university level, pedagogy is about twenty years behind so they expect lecturers to do all the interactive stuff. It's silly -- both types of teaching are valid but too much of any one method isn't great. Ideally there would be a balance between lecturing and interaction IMO.

We'd be slated in adult ed for just talking... !

@totallyteutonic makes a great point. I'm a lecturer and I get great feedback on my teaching (whether lectures or more interactive seminars) but I used to be a secondary school teacher so I have the natural inclination for teaching as well as the training. Some of my colleagues have had barely any training and actively dislike the teaching requirement part of their roles.

This thread is so interesting.

I'm a lecturer at a Russell Group Uni. We had to do the equiv of some kind of 'teacher training' for lecturing but at much less intensity.

In this we are explicitly told multiple times that

1/ didactic teaching (eg talking directly for an hour or two) is not good teaching, that students don't like it and it doesn't help learning
2/ that all teaching should be interactive especially lectures
3/ that lectures are not an effective way for students to learn (insert references to evidence here)

I do get your frustration OP and others. But, lecturers are being explicitly told to do this and that lectures in their pure form are not 'good' teaching.

Do feedback (gently!) it is useful to know and certainly given me food for thought about my lectures.

I'm long past schools/university etc. But a requirement of my professional body (as it's common) is many hours of yearly CPD. Luckily, these days being self employed, I can choose my own. I am never a repeat customer of any training provider firms who indulge in the time wasting "gimmicks"- I want pretty formal talks/lectures and the training providers who do that will get my repeat custom. Funny thing is, the firms who provide what others would probably call "boring" seem to be the ones who have more attendees and last longer. The ones using trendy/modern methods don't seem to last long and seem to have fewer customers! Then again, I'm in the traditionally boring profession of accountancy!

It's nothing new for me. I hated the "group work" type of lessons way back in my school days. I always did better in the lessons where the teacher did the teaching, and the classroom was set out in rows rather than clusters. My end of year test marks proved the point. I always dropped grades when in "trendy" classes with teachers do let the class "discover" things for themselves rather than teach them!

I think we have to accept that different people have different preferences as to how they learn. And, yes, the providers, whether teachers, lecturers or whoever need to lose the arrogance that they know best, and give students the choice, the choice to choose the uni, subject, module according to their personal learning preferences.

At least with private CPD providing firms, the person buying the course has the choice of their learning style, but for some reason, universtities don't want to give that informed choice to their students.

I think complaints are often just from those who are disgruntled with their marks and have little to do with quality of teaching.
I am a teacher and I really believe it's a craft, there is no one size fits all. Neither for students or for teachers. At university the onus is or should be on the students to learn.

I would absolutely hate this

😆
I was trying to work out if this was some sort of comment on the "woolly" or "warm and fuzzy" style of teaching!

Apologies, I misread.

To reply ad hoc to a couple of other points made upthread: some students complain if students perceive their 'lectures' are being read directly from PowerPoint slides (whether or not that perception is accurate). We see a lot of complaints to that tune in our various modules in MMR and MEQs.

I deliberately design my slides as 'cue cards' so they're a mere skeleton of what I intend to say, with 'pauses' to account for in-built tasks (we just use another slide as a 'whiteboard' for exercises so students can consult them afterwards). The idea here is that they know a PPTX deck is no substitute for the 'live' experience so will be more likely to attend. Now I'm being told to record every session with talk-based content, so the strategy is moot anyway!

As to students complaining no matter what we do: they are continually subject to surveys NSS, MEQ on every module as it's mandatory, 'You said, we did' (a particular bugbear of mine). When you invite people to complain (and surveys are invariably negatively worded in a way that encourages this), they often will.

Still on the point of complaints, a perennial one from my students, no matter how much assessment guidance they get, is that it's never enough. They get so much stuff I never received: inbuilt library research sessions, a pause in the schedule so they can complete formative work building up to their assessed submission, a template of what kind of evidence they could include (talk about spoon-feeding, I never got that!) and for the non-standard assessment tasks they get a piece of work structured to every text, every single weekly seminar, which feeds into that task. They also get a screencast on the VLE that walks them through every step of the work.

I still get complaints that they don't get enough guidance. Invariably, these complaints are coming from serial non-attendees. I don't see what more I can do short of writing the thing for them.

On a further (related) point, universities seem to be losing the aim of turning out autonomous, independent learners. They are reading for a degree - the onus is on them to do the work - with a few contact points each week. On my degree this was typically six hours. Our students demand more time from us, as they want their money's worth. We allot it - they then don't turn up. So here's another obstacle, what students are telling us what they want isn't actually what they do want as things work out.

There's also the stuff on employability: a big deal in the national organisations working in my individual subject group. We are not employment training factories, but we are expected to deliver this as well.

No wonder quality is going down - and I'm not under any illusion that it's not. Somewhere along the way, universities (or those governing them) have forgotten what they're actually for.

To be fair, you could manoeuvre yourself into a no-lose situation that way.

Student complains about teaching style.

A. Student has poor grades. Obviously disgruntled with marks and looking for excuses. Ignore.

B. Student has good grades. Well, the teaching style obviously didn't affect them that badly, then — sounds like they only thought they learnt worse with it, when they actually learnt better. Ignore.

Also a lecturer and I can confirm this. I lecture within humanities and our department was entirely depleted over summer (thanks Tories) so now we’re down to 5 lecturers from 12. Our workload effectively doubled so now we all have to teach extra modules we never touched before. On top of this they’re trying to encourage us to take a more interactive approach with students and get them to partake in weird activities like making posters as you mentioned.

I don’t like it, it isn’t my style. I prefer just sitting discussing literature with my students and bouncing off each other. Universities are changing rapidly, you can thank our wonderful government for that.