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.

Its the way we're expected to teach now. It's actually what most students want. They want less content, more consolidation, and unis are so student survey driven they do it. They want interactivity - mid lecture check ins, questions in groups, worked examples.

It's also to do with the change in assessment formats after covid. Now many places are favouring the longer open exams, so students have access to their notes, internet and AI. You can't ask factual recall questions anymore to assess learning. Its all application based - which is what those interactive activities are geared towards. Its bloody hard to ask questions they can't just ask AI to solve for them.

Has anyone else noticed that the phrase 'reading' a particular degree subject has mostly disappeared. Ie 'I'm reading literature' has become 'I'm studying literature'. That tells us everything we need to know, I think, and suggests universities have moved away from the function they were originally conceived to fulfil. The clue was in the title 'Academia'.

Work in the Humanities at degree level (less so physical sciences which have always had more contact time) has always been mostly independent. But lecturing staff are now having to justify every minute of contact time because students are paying handsomely for it.

In doing so we've moved further and further from what actual undergraduate study should deliver.

On my own syllabuses, gods forbid (according to my department) I overload them with subject-specific context (which as a PP above points out, they won't bother to read). Half my energy goes into study skills workshops that a robot could stand up there and teach. It's hardly taxing stuff. But this is what they demand (otherwise known as spoon-feeding). As a student, I got 12 weeks of content-heavy material and I far preferred this. All the other stuff was extraneous. I had to find out how to conduct research, find library materials, use referencing systems and polish up my writing and stucturing skills all by myself. It was simply assumed students would do this. And I valued this a lot more.

One small thing I can do is to ensure the contexts I teach are robustly challenging. And a lot of the students do appreciate it. They are smart young people who are capable of critical thinking and some still want (and deserve) to be pushed in their learning. But we're expected to employ differentiation, just as is any school teacher.

University teaching has changed beyond recognition. A lot more is demanded now, and we are still expected to be world class researchers. Something's got to give.

Sounds awfully like my nursing degree...! 😂
We spent an afternoon the other week constructing a swing for a golf ball in teams. We're 3rd years. We all feel like this it time we really could spend better with so much to do.

Ohhh that's the modules we are on! Actually leadership hasn't been too bad, but yes the golf ball swing was one of those sessions 😂.

I mean it might come handy in paediatrics, although in 20 years I haven't needed that particular skill. I can't see how it's relevant to nursing!

Actually I'm being harsh about my uni there. They try really hard to give us a good mix - some of the content is very heavy. We tend to do seminars and lectures, the lectures are fairly content heavy but involve a lot of discussion which can be very useful.

Ah@Toddlerteaplease unfortunately I'll be an adult nurse... 😂

A large chunk of the change in expectations of universities occurred when polytechnics became universities. Prior to that Universities were about research and ‘pure’ subjects. They were not expected to be applied, the research was that fundamental sort to establish principles underlining the subject. Polytechnics, on the other hand, trained for specific industries. Their courses were designed to meet industry demand, for technicians (in the broad sense), health services etc and what little research there was was applied.

Has anyone else noticed that the phrase 'reading' a particular degree subject has mostly disappeared

Tbf, I remember I lecturer having a rant about this in 1997.

I'm doing my second master's and very glad they're still doing actual lectures. What I don't get from lecturers I get from reading papers and books by other experts, not fellow students.

😂

The year tuition fees came in. I suspect that's not a coincidence.

Yep, that was the start of the demise, then came Blair's 50% and tuition fees! Enough said!

This sounds like the sort of thing that was ever so fashionable in UK secondary schools a decade ago.

We've since moved away from that because the evidence generally says it's not effective teaching.

I'm doing a postgraduate course at the moment, not in health but something more like law. On our course we have lectures, which are recorded so we can consume them in our own time during the week, and live in-person sessions which are more interactive. Some of the other students refer to these as "lectures", but I would call them "classes" or something like that (others might say "tutorials" but my own background leads me to think of a tutorial as involving no more than a small handful of students, and these involve about a dozen to a dozen-and-a-half).

So, I think the sessions you have an issue with have a place but agree they're not really "lectures", which would by definition involve less doing and more listening.

HappyMarriage · Yesterday 12:20

Ugh I hate this kind of thing where the majority of the ‘content’ from the expert is just them asking the class to share their thoughts/ideas/experiences. No I don’t want to hear a bunch of random people share their thoughts I want to hear what you the so called experienced expert has to say about this topic which is why I’ve signed up to this training in the first place

Totally agree. Gosh, this thread has depressed me - I'm a retired teacher and definitely Team Traditional Lecture. I would be bored out of my mind by 'games' group activities, role play and writing rubbish on post-it notes.

It's all rooted in the Post-modern de-bunking of authority/expert figures, including authors and academics. We are all supposed to be 'experts' now. Yawn.

It's pervaded museum culture too (I worked in museum education for many years). I visited a well-loved museum after a huge renovation project to find the informative labels in the art galleries replaced by 'reactions and comments from the public'. Things like 'I like this painting because it reminds me of my Gran's house. She always cooks a cake for us and it all looks so cosy' (genuine label!). Like HappyMarriage, I'm afraid I have zero interest in the thoughts of random visitors - I can do that bit for myself, thanks. I want to know about the history and context of the painting from someone who's made a life study of the subject. I find the new approach utterly alienating and alarming in its devaluing of the expert.

Perhaps university education isn't for everyone??? Isn't this the real answer, as many people have been saying since Blair's reforms. It's a special kind of intellectual challenge and used to put the emphasis on Socratic discussion and a lot of personal research/reading etc, and the ability to think and construct arguments effectively.

Sure, there are subjects/vocations which need a different approach but what on earth is happening to standards if this kind of dumbing down is going on in universities??

Also - I remember when working in a very pressured teaching job we were informed that, instead of our weekly mid-week staff meeting, the Head had booked us all to attend a special presentation by some kind of inspirational speaker 35 miles up a busy motorway at rush-hour. It was a vile wet and windy evening - I will never forget how angry I felt!

We got there to find a huge hall full of teachers, and the speaker started his performance with a demonstration of his juggling skills. And it went on like that. He was a cross between a children's entertainer and an evangelical American preacher. I was expecting to take notes but came away with practically nothing to show for this utter waste of time, money and energy.

Surely any intelligent person feels insulted and patronised by this kind of approach? I cannot for the life of me remember anything he said or even the theme or point of his presentation.

Online degrees are even worse: recently withdrew from York because they expected me to pay £10,000 so a lecturer could paraphase a text book for 10s. The UK is so behind in education it’s unreal.

Sounds like junior school. I'd feel well and truly patronised!

Has anyone else noticed that the phrase 'reading' a particular degree subject has mostly disappeared. Ie 'I'm reading literature' has become 'I'm studying literature'. That tells us everything we need to know, I think, and suggests universities have moved away from the function they were originally conceived to fulfil. The clue was in the title 'Academia'.

😁. I was teaching academic skills to 1st years yesterday and my first slide is “you are reading for a degree “. With the emphasis on reading

This video came up in my fyp tonight. Students playing video games in lectures while pretending to listen. Lots of comments moaning about ppt lectures. People saying they could just read the ppt themselves.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJToMJbX/

Surely PowerPoints slides just contain the headings or pertinent graphs etc not all the detail of the lecture?

@SaffronSpice we are told we have to ensure that the content is accessible to those who can't attend lectures. So. no, we can't just put headings or graphs.

Genuinely, for those with issues, raise them at senior management / VC level - not individual staff. Who will be being explicitly told they have to do the engagement non chalk/talk route.

It's a fucking nightmare for many neurodiverse students. I know because I'm one of them.

If you put information on slides then the audience will read the slides rather than listen to whoever is talking. I can’t see that being any different in lectures.

We used to print out copies of the lectures in advance and annotate them. A decent speaker would just use them as a prompt. We also didn't have longer than an hour per topic and questions at the end were expected.

Seminars were smaller groups, properly facilitated in smaller rooms. I think if we'd tried to do group work in a big lecture theatre I'd have just stayed quiet, I'm not good at shouting to be heard over a lot of background noise and you'd need more than one lecturer to oversee such a format. Strikes me as a cheaper, poorer quality seminar to be honest.