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.

Also agree with this.

I teach literature and you’d be amazed (or perhaps not) by how many students don’t read the set texts. They then turn up pointlessly to seminars having not touched the book and therefore can’t partake at all. They pay 9k a year and can’t even be arsed reading a book.

My DH is a senior lecturer and he hates this. It has been foisted on him from on high. He has nearly 30 years' experience of giving fun, engaging lectures, with overwhelming positive feedback and students regularly contacting him years later to thank him for inspiring them, but now his university has deemed that they have to use a completely different format, which he and the students find much less effective, and he has no choice in the matter.

I was last in full time education over 15 years ago, but this trend had already started then. So much of our time was spent in 'group work' or watching 'presentations' from our colleagues. Which is fine up to a point, but some of the academic staff were very well known experts in their field, and I'd have loved to hear more from them.

Old-fashioned lectures can still be a valuable learning tool. Problem is, they're "unfashionable". The current belief is that talking 'at' people is wrong, even when students are paying a lot of money for expertise. I don't think listening is a passive experience either. Taking notes, thinking about the material, maybe asking questions at the end, is very engaging. At least it is for me. I still remember lectures from my bacherlor's degree back in the mists of time!

We're in the same position. We are haemorrhaging staff. The department you describe above could very easily be mine.

Humanities are in serious trouble across the board. Very sad.

(No student will ever sit making posters in any seminar of mine).

I think it's really patronising to students. It's assuming that they're not capable of listening to an expert for 50 minutes or so unless they make posters or 'discuss in pairs'.

The same ideas are also present in the workplace. Instead of discussing important issues, you have to sit around writing your 'ideas' on coloured paper and chatting in groups. Complete waste of time.

I utterly agree with the poster about cpd. In my profession you have to do quite a lot each year and pay for it.
Typically a whole day will be three lecturers who will chalk and talk or a practical course with a mix of lectures and then putting what you've learned into action.
Everyone wants and is engaged in a fact packed lecture, but then we have been trained over decades to assimilate information in this way.
My personal opinion ,as someone who has been involved in post grad education for clinicians , is that we do not allow our young people to fail. I learned my study skills because I thought cleverness was enough to get me through exams. I cruised through until I got to first year uni when after failing an exam I finally got the message about hard work and study. Ultimately each of us has to learn how to learn. The problem is it is now unacceptable to fail at any stage in the education system because of targets and so people are not free to fail and learn from it in a positive way.

@Darhon

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

Yes, but not dumbing down so far as to spend what should be quality time on making posters! That kind of thing should have been left behind at primary school. It can't be a good use of lecturer time to sit around whilst the students fart around with making posters!

@Lollygaggle

My personal opinion ,as someone who has been involved in post grad education for clinicians , is that we do not allow our young people to fail. I learned my study skills because I thought cleverness was enough to get me through exams. I cruised through until I got to first year uni when after failing an exam I finally got the message about hard work and study. Ultimately each of us has to learn how to learn. The problem is it is now unacceptable to fail at any stage in the education system because of targets and so people are not free to fail and learn from it in a positive way.

I fully agree. But inevitable really with pushing more and more school leavers to go to Uni, as a large proportion of students aren't really up to it, hence why Unis have to fall over themselves to "help" weaker students. Made even worse with the price hike of tuition fees to £9k!

Personally, rather than converting the Polys into Unis, I think we should have kept and developed them as a more practical alternative form of higher education for the less academic students. We've now got a two tier system where degrees from different types of Uni and degrees in different subjects are claimed to be of equivalent standing, but it's like the Emperors new clothes, we all know they're not the same at all, not to mention the disastrous lack of training young people into the more practical trades and skills.

Research shows that adults' attention span is 20 mins max. The assumption that it's ineffective teaching to talk at a room of people for 1-2 hours is based research not on assumptions.

I did a health care degree in my 40's and it was all of this. I felt like a three year old at pre-school.
If I never see a flip chart again it will be too soon.

I'd be interested to see that 'research'.

How does anyone manage to sit through a 2 hour film without taking a break to make posters if that's true?

That will be average.

It doesn't take into account that lots of students will be more than capable of an attention span lasting more than 20 minutes!

Choice is needed so students can choose the type of course they want to do based upon prior knowledge of teaching styles etc.

If someone genuinely has an attention span of under 20 minutes, they're going to be pretty useless in a lot of workplaces!

can't compare a film with multiple characters talking, scene switching, action scenes etc with 1 person standing talking

And how does a train driver manage to be in control of his train for a couple of hours or more between station stops? Airline pilots? Lorry drivers?

In the workplace, people have to concentrate for hours at a time and can't indulge themselves in taking a bit of a break to draw a poster!

Perhaps having to sit through lectures and force themselves to pay attention etc would be a really good test of aptitude and good practice for the world of work!

Bit of goal post shifting going on!

Lots of films and TV programmes have pretty complex plots requiring focussed attention. Yet millions of people manage to sit through 2 hour films quite easily without the need for poster making breaks.

Exactly.

Surgeons have to stay focussed in operations sometimes lasting 5 hours or more. If attention spans were as short as this 'research' supposedly shows, who'd risk having an operation?

I did an art course many years ago and looking back the course had been padded out . It could have been condensed down to two years .

To be blunt, I think the vast majority of Uni courses are padded out and could be done in two years. Obviously not the ones that require a lot of technical, lab work, etc., or medical degrees with extensive work placements etc.

When we went around open days, we went on a tour of the Physics labs and the guy taking us around, who was a lecturer, explained that those doing a full Physics degree would have a couple of modules in year 1 which were lab based doing practicals, which they'd set out in the lab we were shown - they appeared to be mostly the practicals that DS had already done for his A level physics. The lecturer then said that those doing split degrees (i.e. Physics with Maths etc) wouldn't have the practical modules as they'd be doing their other subject modules instead so wouldn't set foot in the labs in the first year. So, basically, they weren't actually necessary! Probably one of those "nice to have, but not essential" kinds of thing. Sounded more like it was just a matter of "padding" in the first year. Not disputing they'd probably have been useful for students to do (in most cases, again), but clearly not essential.

I think a lot of the first year is like that really, in the name of getting all students up to the same standard to move into year 2. Surely there are better ways, especially for those who've done things before and don't need to go over the same material a second time.

A bit like, say, economics, where someone who's done A level economics could probably go straight into year 2 at Uni as year 1 seems to be mostly very similar to A level content, because it's one of those subjects that doesn't require prior knowledge!

After all, for most courses, the marks in year 1 don't count towards the final degree classification, you just need to "pass" the modules and exams, so for many, won't have really been of any use.

So you are saying because someone doing joint honours does less of one subject there is no need for those doing single honours to do so much if that subject either?

We are not employment training factories

Maybe they should be if the reason the majority of students attend is as a career gateway.

Depends on what it is, obviously. But it does seem as if some single degrees do unnecessary stuff just to pad out the year. In my Physics example, if the first years' lab experiments were essential to the degree and for years 2 & 3, then they'd have to be done by the joint subject students too!

I just believe that the "one size fits all" fixed term 3 year degrees isn't necessary and that some courses could be condensed into 2 years, subject to the course. By the same token, I can't help thinking that some of the more intense subjects may benefit from being longer.

Just think how much money would be saved by having an accelerated 2 year course where possible. Students only borrowing 2 years of tuition fees and student accommodation for a start. Students into the workplace sooner, thus earning money and paying taxes etc.

I just think things need to be more flexible when possible and where not detrimental.

That's a straw man argument. There are more ways to refocus attention than "poster making breaks" anyway.

The very best thing about uni was sitting in a lecture hall and being led through a body of work at breakneck speed and watching all the threads of the required reading being pulled together with the skill of somebody who knows more than they teach.

Posters? 🤮

That's not what a degree does. There are postgradate training schemes and courses for precisely that reason. As to the employability model currently being embedded across the Humanities (universities all across the sector, inlcuding some Russell Group) - students usually detest project modules designed to enhance employability elements. They will say: 'but I wanted to do a degree in literature/history/film!' And that's where the compromises come in. Square pegs, round holes: literature somehow being 'bent' to fit a corporate context and vice versa. The expectation that they'll produce some work (usually a half-patched together blog) for an external partner. Students can see those compromises for exactly what they are.

English students are already eminently employable. The Humanties teach us something about the human condition, hence the name. They are taught independent thinking and to be autonomous workers and learners; they are taught sharp critical thinking skills and learn to be thorough and analytical. They're also drilled in the rudiments of good research and writing. They're already suited for all kinds of occupations: teaching, the cultural and creative industries, publishing and printing, museum curatorship, archival work, and, more generally, public-facing roles.

This is what happens when you tell a generation of young people the humanities are worthless and STEM are the only subjects worth studying.

As to the post-92 sector, these institutions are already well on their way back to the original tech-college model. My anticipation is the humanities will all-but die out at places like this, unless they can be dressed up as an integral part of media, digital or AI/tech degrees. If the Tories stay in power this is all but a given; if they don't, it's probably inevitable anyway.

It's very sad to see academia as we knew it distilled in this way. When Blair brought in the tuition fees it was obvious this was going nowhere good, but even I couldn't have ancitipated the degree and extent to which the whole system would disintegrate, and I certainly never suspected degrees like English would be the areas to suffer. Sociology, Gender Studies etc., yes, but not English and History. Weirdly enough Media Studies/Gender Studies were the degrees non-grata 20 years or so ago; now that's shifted to all Humanities subjects (which is where Labour tried to direct the bums onto seats in their drive to increase the numbers going through university). Widening participation turns into mass participation when students are attending university when there's no discernible benefit to them. There have been a lot of these.

On my degree which I admit is a few years ago we had 1h lectures with 50m of prof talking and 10m for questions and switch over
Workshops in groups of 30 which were 2h and what you described would fall into this category.
Tutorials groups of 4-5 and 1h. We had work to do in advance for this