University experience is awful at the moment

[Cupcakke]

DD moved into university on Saturday. The rules are very stringent, both campus bars are closed, the university library has very little capacity and the restaurant is take away only. There are virtually no freshers events in person.

Her flat mates are very shy and not very social and she is in a small flat.

Large gatherings keep occurring but the penalty for this is very severe so DD very cautious not to attend these.

She is essentially watching Netflix in her room. I fear for the loneliness. The online events she has attended are poorly attended and just very boring.

Teaching starts next week and her In person contact hours are just 4 hours a week.

Anyone else’s dc thinking this years university experience is non existent.

My child got their timetable online a couple of weeks ago. it specified what would be F2f, what would be watch online, what would be participate online.So we knew EXACTLY what to expect

The unknowns in this situation are- students getting corona, students having to self-isolate, staff getting corona, staff having to self-isolate, whole group having to self-isolate, any number of people getting stressed/going off sick with flu/something else.

We planned completely for blended learning, exactly how much ftf. The levels have changed since the timetable came out, so now universities are not allowed to have more than a certain amount on campus at any one time (SAGE advisors said 40/50%) We also have more corona on campus/in student population than we thought we would.

I hate to tell you this, but just like with schools, you cannot bullet-proof the delivery of face to face this year. It might happen, it might not and part of that is beyond the control of timetabling.

Popping
So far the Uni I was talking about are doing absolutely fine.
And the Freshers events are ticking along smoothly.
They started planning their COVID strategy for September back in May though.

So you do not need to worry yourself about something you have wrongly construed that does not concern you being as you know nothing about our circumstances whatsoever

You've been quite open on the Brexit thread about the challenges your DGD has faced so I was aware before I posted on here. Perhaps you should not lecture other parents who are concerned about the situation their DC find themselves in.

Dgds timetable missing one unit because tutor now gone off with Covid. At first Dgd began to panic but sent email off and was told situation and not to worry as unit work not due to second week in October and to concentrate on another unit while they try and reorganise a slot on everyone's timetable with another tutor. Nothing is permanent in an ever changing situation like Covid I'm afraid and as long as unis keep students informed about changes in good time there is not much else they can do about it really. Everyone is having to play it by ear atm.

:05DimityandDeNimes....I'm not lecturing anyone on here and am listening to all. You wanna argue then take it out of thread elsewhere. I'm not arguing. Xx

Glad to hear that Sos because I'm not arguing, I'm chatting on a forum.

Can someone explain to me why the unis can't accommodate students from the same course in the same halls of residence - thus having one bubble for both. I've always wondered why they don't do this to a certain extent anyway as dd suffered massively when she started uni as there was no-one on her course in her flat.

Also why lectures/seminars can't be run with say 10% of students attending f2f and the rest online? With the 10% on a rotation. And each of the 10% heading up eg a WhatsApp group where the online students can post questions to ask the lecturer.

What makes unis so insecure that they can't allow any students in and isolate them to a bubble of sometimes 2 whereas a school or tertiary college has a bubble of 200 or more?

My child got their timetable online a couple of weeks ago it specified what would be F2f, what would be watch online, what would be participate online. So we knew EXACTLY what to expect.

I completely agree that idiotic statements such as the above are a major part of the problem.

There is no certainty in any face-to-face delivery at the moment. The situation is changing by the day as record numbers of coronavirus cases are being reported.

Can someone explain to me why the unis can't accommodate students from the same course in the same halls of residence - thus having one bubble for both. I've always wondered why they don't do this to a certain extent anyway as dd suffered massively when she started uni as there was no-one on her course in her flat.

I know that this was considered, but rejected. Course bubbles wouldn’t necessarily work because students take a lot of optional modules and are in four or five differently-constituted groups each term. Also, accommodation has to be allocated by preference as there is significant variation in pricing. And lots of students (a majority at some universities) do not live on campus anyway.

Also why lectures/seminars can't be run with say 10% of students attending f2f and the rest online? With the 10% on a rotation. And each of the 10% heading up eg a WhatsApp group where the online students can post questions to ask the lecturer.

I only teach seminars. For those, every single room would need to be rigged up with microphones and cameras, a scenario that would not be attractive to students in the room who are often hesitant about talking anyway. It is very difficult to run hybrid events, they need a moderator, and it’s not on to ask a student in the room to do this when they should be concentrating on their own learning. I am still running all of my seminars anyway, so it’s possible to do this without that complexity. If students are self-isolating or studying remotely, I have to run an additional online seminar for them. We’re not allowed to run hybrid teaching as it’s deemed a poor experience for everyone.

What makes unis so insecure that they can't allow any students in and isolate them to a bubble of sometimes 2 whereas a school or tertiary college has a bubble of 200 or more?

I don’t understand what you mean. How on earth would it be possible to isolate students to a bubble of 2? Most halls are completely full. There are no free rooms on my campus and the virus is spreading already before term has even started. The students will be moving between their halls and course modules, where they will sit in rooms without windows. Further spread is inevitable. I am being issued with instructions to pressure students to come to seminars at the point when (as we know from experience back in March), they will be too scared to come. That is the reality of persisting with f2f teaching. By that point some modules will no longer be running anyway because staff will be sick, and if it’s a module that’s particularly specialised no one will be able to take it over. I have no idea what will happen then.

It seems to me that there are two different and important arguments being made on this thread.

Firstly, many students have been brought onto campus unwisely and their treatment is now of a type that other high risk groups are not subject to. Personally, I think online lectures and even seminars are fine. Maybe better. Students still need socially rooting though and I am not sure how lab work and practicals will play out.
Even for those who did know what their timetable compromised in advance, there is the issue of social capital, trust in revered institution and chronic fear of fomo in a year that has trashed so many of their expectations (naive to trust universities with the current funding model fo HE perhaps but they are allowed to be naive at 18, no?)

Second point is that the blame doesn't lie at the staff or departmental level. Academic and non academic staff are working very hard and often bearing the brunt of a very stressful situation.
One point isnt more or less important than the other, although I personally am horrified by some of the tales of individual students and the way their treatment by high handed security staff and regulations going far beyond even the rule of law we now have in this regard.
My eye is firmly on the mental health of all involved and a need to show compassion for vulnerable people who are more that conduits for covid.

Have we had any comment or intervention from Government? If so, I've missed it

One law firm has offered free services to the 1700 possibly illegally imprisoned at Manchester Met which might help spur the authorities on to being more reasonable, paying for more tests, letting them out to be tested, getting more food in to them etc.

Also why lectures/seminars can't be run with say 10% of students attending f2f and the rest online? With the 10% on a rotation. And each of the 10% heading up eg a WhatsApp group where the online students can post questions to ask the lecturer.

Are you saying we should 'live stream' lectures? That's different to teaching online. Apart from the technology investment it would require extra staff to moderate an event like that ( it wouldn't be fair to ask a student) and most universities made redundancies over the summer so we just don't have the people to do this.

Plus, how do you monitor student engagement? At least with a timetabled online session where we can see the students on screen means we can monitor and encourage engagement which would be impossible if we were live streaming.

And the 10% on a rota wouldn't work - apart from being a logistical nightmare, it really wouldn't be fair on the students. The should either have the opportunity to attend all sessions f2f if that's what is running ..... what happens if a student is really interested in the content on wk 4 but they're scheduled to come in on week 6? And what happens if a session is cancelled one week due to staff sickness or the weather? That group would miss out on one of their only f2f sessions....

What makes unis so insecure that they can't allow any students in and isolate them to a bubble of sometimes 2 whereas a school or tertiary college has a bubble of 200 or more?

I can only speak about my campus but a lot of work has gone into making it Covid secure but we still have limited space. If you mean accommodation, well again there simply isn't the space for such small bubbles. Plus we have students from halls mixing with commuter students in f2f sessions.

Bristol U where my twins have been for their whole 3 years had a record button the lecturer presses when they start just about every lecture so those who want to watched it later (i.e. have a hangover) or learn by listening again and again can do so. So presumably those lecturers could turn up and let students who have booked to attend in person up to a numbers cap or where the hall is big enough to distance them all can see it in person and the others can watch it all later as many of them do anyway and have for years. All the lecturer has to do is push one button called record. They also can use their notes from earlier years for those courses which do not change that much.

@Xenia

One law firm has offered free services to the 1700 possibly illegally imprisoned at Manchester Met which might help spur the authorities on to being more reasonable, paying for more tests, letting them out to be tested, getting more food in to them etc.

MMU have now apparently backed down and said it’s optional! As also backed down on the posters.

Very badly handled!

DSs uni have put out a statement to say they will not use ‘internment’ in event of an outbreak.

@Xenia

Bristol U where my twins have been for their whole 3 years had a record button the lecturer presses when they start just about every lecture so those who want to watched it later (i.e. have a hangover) or learn by listening again and again can do so. So presumably those lecturers could turn up and let students who have booked to attend in person up to a numbers cap or where the hall is big enough to distance them all can see it in person and the others can watch it all later as many of them do anyway and have for years. All the lecturer has to do is push one button called record. They also can use their notes from earlier years for those courses which do not change that much.

This is standard practice across universities and is still happening for on campus f2f sessions. However there are two issues here, the first being space. The vast majority of teaching spaces on my campus have has the capacity reduced significantly meaning we're lucky if we can fit a third of our usual numbers in. So we either have to move large group online I'd teach multiple times which has an impact on timetables and staff workload.

Secondly, we are having to redesign most of our on campus f2f teaching because teaching in a socially distanced way while wearing masks is vastly different to teaching in more normal times. We've never taught this way before and there are no examples of best practice so we're learning what works as we go along.

Bristol U where my twins have been for their whole 3 years had a record button the lecturer presses when they start

As already said, this has been standard practice in many universities for years. There may be no need to push a record button as the session is scheduled to record automatically.

However, the quality of the recording varies. It rarely picks up questions or comments from students, for example, just the response from the lecturer. It is intended to complement f2f lectures, not replace them. The students attending generally get a much better experience than those watching at home, which is fine if all have the option to attend. It's their choice. If you have a cap on students, most will be forced to watch remotely whether they like it or not, and that isn't fair.

Are you saying we should 'live stream' lectures?

Yes exactly that. It was being done a few years back at my DD's university in exactly this way. Some students would attend in person (a small minority), others would access live online, others would watch a recording.
I can't see how it would be beyond most students to occasionally glance at their phone or laptop (most of them have their laptops out to make notes it seems) to see if any questions have come in from their group.

Lectures are not the problem
Labs and practicals CANNOT be live streamed

@MiddlesexGirl

Are you saying we should 'live stream' lectures?

Yes exactly that. It was being done a few years back at my DD's university in exactly this way. Some students would attend in person (a small minority), others would access live online, others would watch a recording.
I can't see how it would be beyond most students to occasionally glance at their phone or laptop (most of them have their laptops out to make notes it seems) to see if any questions have come in from their group.

It really wouldn't be fair to ask a student to do this - it would need additional staff. Staff we simply don't have. How do we monitor engagement from students and encourage and support the quieter students?

Recording lectures is standard practice but live streaming is a completely different issue and requires a different approach. It would be my least preferred option. Timetabled remote sessions would be far more effective.

And we're into induction week... and the learning platform is already having a "moment" and wanting a lie down in a darkened room! I was expecting it to last until about Tuesday of teaching week 1 so it's exceeded my expectations in how terribly it's running already! (I swear about Blackboard on a regular basis - I hate it)

So far I've found a few recordings that haven't embedded properly to be viewable I've emailed lecturers about to advise them over (there's a fiddly backdoor way to get into them so I've watched them but lots won't go to those lengths) and one has forgotten to set something he's referred to five times over to viewable by students (he's a bit scatterbrained so this is fairly normal)!

I'm struggling with how to structure my notes this year - normally I record and use notetaking software as I go - it doesn't work well for online stuff, so I'm still trying things out to get something that works for me (along with the fact I'm dyslexic as fuck in terms of reading it's going to be a fun year)

I wouldn't live-stream lectures, I can't see the advantage, too much room for poor tech on the uni side (there's 100's of rooms used every day, by the law of averages a couple don't work) and broadband issues on the student side.

It's much better to use either a pre-record from a previous year (which my uni has) or to record at home, going fairly slowly, with the slides showing as well.

Interactive sessions need to be interactive- so that's face to face, or online seminars, it's fine if someone uses the chat function when you are online and others will see their answers/questions too which works pretty well.

Mixture lecture/seminar hybrids are not in fashion at the moment, I used to run them for a couple of hours with a lot of interaction but that's just not possible right now. I think some students will miss that and others will enjoy the quieter but perhaps more democratic turn-taking of the Zoom seminar, as face to face discussions are often dominated by a few people unless you structure it carefully.

It's a learning curve for all of us, but so far my students seem motivated and keen!

The one thing I was fully prepared to challenge was if we were just going to be sentenced to pre-recorded stuff from other years with chit chat about assignment deadlines irrelevant to us, chatter, rustling of bags and everything else! We lived with it for the period of the immediate shutdown when everything was a bit bodged together and cope with it - but long term I'd have been pissed off paying for that. One of our lecturers in particular is so softly spoken and likes to wander around the room - so you can never ever rely on being able to replay any of her content at the best of times - especially when most of my departmental stuff is in a towerblock right on the city centre ring road near the hospital so it's sirens going off lots and endless car horns from pissed off taxi drivers (I swear in Leicester they drive with the accelerator and car horn only).

The one thing I was fully prepared to challenge was if we were just going to be sentenced to pre-recorded stuff from other years with chit chat about assignment deadlines irrelevant to us, chatter, rustling of bags and everything else!

I've found out how to edit out the irrelevant stuff at the beginning, and I also recorded everything onto audio a couple of years ago which is very clear and a good speed. It doesn't make sense, to me at least, if you have a good quality pre-record, to spend several hours remaking that exact material. I'm spending it on updating the newer info on essay questions for this year, and doing videos relevant to that. It's harder work than trotting out the same stuff, and doing two five min videos has taken me most of the morning (as internet broken up in two of the videos). It's very tiring producing a large amount of online content a week, hats off to the YouTubers who make it look slick!

I just wish universities were doing a bit more right not to help their first years out a bit, especially those not living on campus in first year only type university accommodation.

Dd is a first year and due to the governments mess up lost her first choice university and accommodation - so she is in a shared private flat with strangers. She moved in yesterday. Two post grad students live there / neither have left their room yet so Dd hasn't seen them. She met one once when we took some stuff over a fortnight ago. She's never met the other. The second year student hasn't yet arrived.

She's met three people from a different flat in the block but they're in local lockdown so not supposed to visit other flats. She did go for drinks with them yesterday evening after we left though. She said they were really nice so I am hoping she can get to know these more.

She's been for her first f2f induction seminar today in a group of 16. Every desk is spaced out and they can't leave their seats. Some students are in the same flat so know one another a day, rest don't. There's no real chance to get to know one another and just chat. The tutor today also didn't encourage them to do so. So Dd (and the rest if them) has to sit alone not knowing anyone and no chance to sit in a shared table chatting as would be normal.

She's just walked home to a quiet flat to eat her tea alone whilst watching a film. One of the post grad students is in but still in her room, Dd thinks she's on FaceTime.

Dd is an only child so used to time on her own but she's also naturally sociable and loves company. I really hope something improves because it's making me feel dreadful knowing she's over there in her own, at a time when she should be out and having fun meeting new friends. She seemed fine when I chatted to her when she was walking home but I hate to think of her sat lonely in her flat.

Hopefully as it's only day 1 then it's the Normal awkwardness of the start of the course and not how things will remain..:

@Aragog in no way is that ok. It's not what any of them signed up for and it's simply not fair.
I'd definitely encourage the friendship with the neighbouring flat - one benefit of not being in university accommodation. And I'd be tempted to ask her department how they were going to facilitate links with course mates. Educational events are not limited to 6 and don't need an adult present. I'd keep asking until I liked the answer. And perhaps cc in student welfare.