University Fees for on-line Lectures

[Kastanien]

Latest this morning(sorry if it is already on here, I checked and could not see a thread)
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52506283

Just wondering how those of you with DC due to start (or return to Uni) in the Autumn feel about full tuition fees for on-line learning?
I feel there should be a reduction as the teaching is not the same on-line as face to face.

Which is why most of us are still offering these.. again so what?

Other depts and uni's have failed to do that. DS hasn't had that. It's irrelevant to DS what You are doing.

Of course those things matter. We're just not allowed to offer libraries etc right now, what with the lockdown and everything. We're still doing the lectures, the seminars, the feedback, the marking, the tutorials, all the stuff we always do, but in our houses, which we are not allowed out of.

Student suicides are on the up & judging by some of the attitudes by Uni staff on here, no surprise

What a disgraceful comment.

Then Brass as many people have said, your DS needs to complain to his university about his experience, and you need to stop talking as though this is a universal situation.

Or if you prefer it in simple but equally (according to you) polite terms: so what?

I've not noticed a nice academic on this thread 🤷

Which is why most of us are still offering these.. again so what?

Other depts and uni's have failed to do that. DS hasn't had that. It's irrelevant to DS what You are doing

Then what are you getting from this thread? Other than making those of us that are working hard feel like shit?

so what

So why the FUCK are you berating is with your DS’s experiences? We’re not your DS’s tutors, we’re not responsible for his experience and dissatisfaction. We’ve told you to complain, we’ve told you how to complain.

We’re not your whipping boys so wind your neck in.

I've not noticed a nice academic on this thread
What exactly have I said to give you the impression i'm not a nice academic?

We know that the context for submitting work is difficult and that's why every uni I know of has some form of safety net so that this term cannot bring a student's marks down (though they can still improve their average of course).

Yes, great. How are dissertations being marked? They aren't subject to the no detriment policy from what I've read.

How are the baseline grade being worked out? From my dds uni it is an average of marks achieved until March - big deal when most of that work has been done without input from academic staff due to strike action this academic year.

SueEllenMishke

It's great that you are providing all of this for your students but it's clear that the level of support is widely variable which makes it even more unfair to those students on the receiving end of poor provision.

Honestly, this is like me having a bad meal out and then posting as though that's in some way relevant to the whole hospitality industry.

I can't speak to how dissertations are being marked everywhere, but we're marking and second marking as usual, and they'll get the 'raw mark' but if it's lower than their benchmark it won't bring that down.

Brass, you have been told how to complain about that with your DS. You now know what he is receiving is poor even in the circumstances so why are you taking it out on the academics here?

We're still doing the lectures, the seminars, the feedback, the marking, the tutorials, all the stuff we always do

No, some universities and some academic staff are doing that but not all, not by a long shot.

And do you not think that access to libraries and to texts, journals etc is quite important, especially when writing dissertations or essays?

I've had students try to commit suicide during the time I was teaching them (fortunately it's only happened about 3 times in my career

It’s happened twice to me in the last six months alone. The last time was Friday. I’ve had to notify a range of people and I’m not trained for this. It’s not my job. It’s not any of our jobs.

And yes, it'd be their average until March.

No, some universities and some academic staff are doing that but not all, not by a long shot.

And do you not think that access to libraries and to texts, journals etc is quite important, especially when writing dissertations or essays?

Not by a long shot? How many universities and academics do you know of that aren’t running online tutorials and seminars? What proportion is that of the total number of academics in the country?

Like I said, my students haven’t turned up to the online sessions I’ve put on and that’s a common picture across my dept. It’s better at MA level but at UG the disengagement is striking.

And yes - access to research material is important. There is a huge amount of digitised material available, many university presses have made all their e books freely available, and library staff are working really hard to get electronic ILLs. Workarounds are possible.

And yes, it'd be their average until March.

Exactly. So their whole degree based on very poor provision and lack of support. There have been two strikes this academic year for a start, during which all lectures and academic support was withdrawn by striking staff. Do you not think that adversely affected the achievement of students? Yet now, their final mark is based on work produced following that disruption. How is that fair or equitable?

They aren't subject to the no detriment policy from what I've read.

Is it possible that you haven’t fully understood the no detriment policy at your DC’s university?

Like I said, my students haven’t turned up to the online sessions I’ve put on

Do you know why that is? Maybe they can't access them for a variety of reasons. Anyone thought to find out?

How many universities and academics do you know of that aren’t running online tutorials and seminars? What proportion is that of the total number of academics in the country?

I know personally of students at eight separate universities. No idea how that stacks up as a percentage of all universities but I didn't go out to find only students have a crappy experience. These are just friends and family and their experience.

Is it possible that you haven’t fully understood the no detriment policy at your DC’s university?

No. No detriment being applied to essays and exams, not dissertations.

There are no easy answers to any of this, unfortunately. It sounds as though some of the students' situations described here are really unacceptable. All the academics here are able talk about is their own experience and, on the whole, it seems that we are providing a better experience, or trying to provide one, than what some students are having. All we can do is sympathise and advise these students to continue complaining. It is frustrating to hear these terrible stories because they don't give a true impression of universities as a whole, but they are the stories which will have the biggest and most lasting impact on prospective parents and students. But of course they do give a true impression on those individual students' experience, and that shouldn't be diminished.

Unfortunately what is true across most if not all universities is a level of disengagement from students, who often do not attend classes, and do not keep up with the work of a course, preferring to binge watch recorded lectures in the revision period and cram. I think that the redesign of courses going on now, to deliver courses in both online and on-campus formats will potentially be a partial solution to this, because the moves made to engage students who are forced to study online, problem based learning, flipped classrooms, will also bring the reluctant attenders into the "classroom" regularly and hopefully promote deeper learning. I have high hopes that, as a PP said, the standard of education will be raised by this experience in the long term. That is not to say that some of my colleagues are going to find a situation where they can't just pop in to a lecture theatre, drone for an hour on a lecture they've been giving for a decade to a handful of students and dish out a problem sheet quite challenging, which will be fun to watch. It is likely that not everything that we try in the coming year will work, but what I have been struck by in my discussions especially with my younger colleagues is a level of excitement and enthusiasm for teaching which I haven't seen in a long time.

For background, I'm the digital learning manager in a medium size university. This is my area.

We actually charge far more for our online courses than we do for face to face teaching. This is because there is a massive overhead in designing and creating courses for online delivery and the student interaction component is carefully handled over a much longer period. Online teachers can't just advertise 2 open office hours a week and handle all their student queries that way. They have to spend a log time carefully crafting written responses. This and running online hours and virtual classroom sessions.

Most universities are now frantically developing frameworks to convert face to face teaching to online. In many cases the result is a far better designed course with clear scaffolding and highly curated online reading lists. It's a lot of work but the end result is a much,much better designed learning experience.

Yes, it sucks that first year students won;t have that social experience in the first term. My own DD is in that cohort. But they'll get a better experience than students the year before. We're already seeing an improvement in student engagement with online learning. The research shows that for many students (the shy, the intimidated, girls in male dominated classes, students with dyslexia etc) the online environment provides a far better learning experience.

This all costs money. Form a student perspective it represents value for money.