Has your DC met anyone on their course yet?

[Mumfordsson]

My DD is back in halls now but still having remote lectures/seminars. She has a great set of flatmates and they all plan to live together next year, but none of them are on her course.
When she has small seminars, no one turns their cameras on, so she has no idea what anyone looks like!
Spoke to her yesterday and she has a couple of hard essays to do over Easter, but no one to talk to about them!
Surely they should be put into small groups by tutors to allow some interaction? She feels completely alone on her course and is half way through the year! I feel so sad for her!
Are your DCs interacting with people on their courses?

@fiveoldteddies

dc1 (London) uni has already said lectures during first term will be online. Hoping turorlias will still be in small F2F groups asin September/October last year

How on Earth can they justify that when they don't know what restrictions (if any) there'll be so far in advance?

Plan A should be "normality"
Plan B should be online if restrictions are still in place

DS hasn’t had any f2f and hasn’t met anyone on his course. He’s only mixed with the other 7 in his flat. It’s all a bit shit.

This is such a sad thread. Poor kids. It's not what you go to university for at all.

No one seems to care. My sons also suffered strikes at university for 2 years and had no final term, no graduation and this year post grad 100% online. Parents are paying loads of rent eg £7k for me this year for a course that is 100% online and much else.

I was looking at my 1982 diaries today and my father could covenant money to me and get full tax relief on the sum to help pay my university rent (I got a minimum not a full grant). We get no tax relief as parents at all when we help children with rent. We have just as high taxes as then if not higher but so very much less back. We used to all be in it together - paying in and taking out and now from the middle class the state just takes takes takes.

I agree about it being worse for first years, and indeed new graduates looking for jobs. DD finds it weird and even weirder mixing with just her parents. But the course is well organised and she is enjoying that and hopes things will be more normal when she goes back to medical school. The peers who did not intercalate will have had 18 months of very fractured learning.

One of her best friends is working for a critical pharmaceutical company. Because of the need to keep the production line rolling the bosses require her to observe lockdown to the letter and she can even see her boyfriend. Thank goodness for Whatsapp. It has helped cement existing friendships.

Still not heard from Warwick. The last one of the universities. Anyone know about Law and Sociology is there is a high numbers that apply? Appreciate the help thanks,

My DS is at KCL he is having an awful time. He was very late getting a hall place and is an expensive hall which is mostly international students most of whom have not been able to return to the flat so he has made no friends in his flat and has been isolated on his own most of the time in a tiny room. All his course has been online, despite being a lab based science subject he has has had no lab time. He has met no one on his course and has basically made no friends. He suffers from social anxiety anyway and the university have been absolutely useless. He has no one to live with next year as he hasn’t met anyone! It’s shocking and I really wish he’d taken a year out before going. I am desperately worried about him and doing my best to support and make suggestions but it’s an awful situation

@fiveoldteddies which London uni is this?

FVfrogHm ask your DC to look at his uni's website....DC is lucky he is not in his first year

One problem is the inability to check progress against peers. DD was delighted yesterday as she got a really high mark on a piece of coursework, which presumably bodes well for the up coming exam. However she does not know if others on the course did equally well, or whether she was the exception. Equally if she is struggling, and it is quite a technical course, it would be easier if she knew that others were in the same position, and that they could work together to work things out (or go to the tutor together.)

The marking system for her course seems fiendishly complicated as it is based on lab elements, progress tests, exams and more. Third year students presumably understand it, and could help her prioritise the bit that carry most marks. But again she is not having a coffee and a chat with anyone. Just faces on a screen. One of her project group (the rest already know each other) commented that they found it weird that they had no idea how tall she is. She has this times 7.

She says their projects are being severely delayed because of shortage of lab time and time accessing parts. They waited two months for one component. Half of which was down to the University accounts department not being used to paying for stuff that had to be sent to a students home, so failed to pay the invoice. Another got lost because the post room misspelt the name of an overseas student when logging the parcel. Lab space is severely limited, and research and post grads are being prioritised. DD has no idea whether allowances will be made (and perhaps credit for their perseverance). I suspect she will end up with a different skill set than the one she expected to get from the course. But then perhaps experience of working remotely with colleagues from a diversity of backgrounds is a skill set for the future.

But again easier at 22 than 18.

At least sons' law course gives their individual groups (of about 40 students) the marks of everyone but with a number not a name so you can see your exact position in that group (and my twins and their school friend on the same course - so the 3 of them are in 3 different groups - can compare themselves with those other groups too).

I still think students even freshers who started last September did the right thing as we have no idea if next year will be better and.or they might not have got a place the following year and there is not much to do at home anyway, hardly any jobs and no travelling so university even stuck in a room at university or stuck at home but progressing through the degree is better than nothing.

Universities are preparing Plan A for a full return, which I’m sure everyone hopes is the case. They’re also planning scenarios B to Z for whatever the hell September might look like by the time we get there.

Yup, that's us! I think my Director of Education could the whole country a darn sight better than the current government.

We'd love to be teaching in-person, but currently (with some exceptions) it's illegal.

DD's University in London is very research orientated, and they seem to be protecting their research functions by prioritising post grads for lab time. The need for social distancing means that the available space has been significantly reduced. Her supervisors lab is small and can now only take one person, rather than six or so, so pretty hopeless for group work anyway.

She won't be there so does not know the plans for next year, but it is quite possible that UG courses will stay on line through to Christmas.

Lets see how it affects the marks. Running their program would probably have taken minutes on the University computer took 11 hours on a lap top. Fortunately it threw out some reasonable results (and some odd ones). Other groups have not been so lucky.

This year we have prioritised our final year students, and the structure & timing of 1st and 2nd year modules has been adjusted to accommodate that. I can see why a department or a lab would prioritise certain activities over others, when social distancing etc is required. I taught online to free up space for teaching which needed to be done in person (when we were allowed to do it).

Nothing is perfect, but you know, we're all in a pandemic, with precious little government strategy. I'm sill baffled as to why student & parents seem to think that universities should be somehow immune from the precautions & laws re COVID? Remembering also, that universities are full of people in various vulnerable groups, and that 18 to 22 year olds are adults for the purposes of COVID spreading & illness.

MeltsAway, no complaints from DD. I was just listing some of the oddities. She is content that she is getting the best outcome available in a pandemic. Though it will be strange to have earned a degree without setting foot on campus.

We'd love to be teaching in-person, but currently (with some exceptions) it's illegal.

Could you not rebrand your degree as an MBA then?

@MeltsAway

Universities are preparing Plan A for a full return, which I’m sure everyone hopes is the case. They’re also planning scenarios B to Z for whatever the hell September might look like by the time we get there.

Yup, that's us! I think my Director of Education could the whole country a darn sight better than the current government.

We'd love to be teaching in-person, but currently (with some exceptions) it's illegal.

Trouble is that some Unis were doing very, very little "in person teaching" in Autumn when it wasn't illegal. It's not as if it stopped due the latest lockdown(s), it never even started in the first place.

My dd met a couple about twice in September when she first went. But then with lockdowns and no f2f lessons she's not seen them since.
She's been home since November working online, as she didn't bond with her flatmates and was getting very depressed.
She's now on Sertraline because of all of this and is preparing to go back after Easter.
I've got everything crossed it goes better this time as despite the problems she's doing really well with her course.

GReat posts MeltsAway

Hmmm... well, I had said that DD met a few people in her hall on the same course. Their little group went to a supposed meet up of may others on the course but the mood was unfriendly so they left early. I had included some details DD noticed that might have been relevant to why it was sharply unfriendly (she really couldn't explain, which is funny because DD is fearless about meeting new people), but my post seem to be deleted for that information. Or maybe i've posted something outrageous again now.

Trout . I was tempted to ask if you had misgendered them, and so crossed the MN line, but the issues around on line learning for young people ready to fly from the nest is real.

There are always cliques, but in a normal life with lots going on it is less of an issue. DD, who has essentially arrived for the third year of a science degree, has two project groups where she is the outsider and the rest of the group are friends. (Third year are sometimes allowed to choose what groups they are in.) One group is lovely and they are looking forward to finally meeting up. The other group a lot less so, to the extent that their supervisor has noticed and questioned how the group was put together. DD has come across it before and thinks it sad that some find it difficult to reach beyond their cultural comfort zone. But much easier to be sanguine if you are meeting lots of people, or if you are a bit older.

Trouble is that some Unis were doing very, very little "in person teaching" in Autumn when it wasn't illegal. It's not as if it stopped due the latest lockdown(s), it never even started in the first place

I could counter that by saying that in my department, any module which could safely be taught in-person, with staff who were not at risk from the potential for irresponsible student behaviour (I know: #notallstudents), and which needed to be taught in person (labs, practicals, workshops, visits etc) was taught in person.

But we prioritised where we needed to. In order to be COVID-secure, we had to drastically reduce class sizes and/or put normal size classes into spaces 3 times the usual size. There aren't many of those in a university, so large lectures, for example, were done on-line and asynchronously. Our teaching hours trebled, as we basically taught in-person classes of no more than 10 or 12, in rooms which previously accommodated 30. And so on.

The reality is that it's a pandemic. University staff shouldn't be forced to risk their health in doing their jobs, and neither should clinically vulnerable students.

We're back teaching whatever we're allowed to teach in person, but we are finding we are having to remind individual students regularly to book in for their twice weekly COVID tests. Once again, staff health is at risk from unthinking undergrads (yes #notallstudents but there are enough to make it a cause for concern for some staff).

There are many sides to this story, not just "uncaring universities."

I'm a 'mature' student and I met up with some of my course mates before Christmas. We are encouraged to have our cameras on and are put in smaller breakout rooms to discuss work with each other. I think this has helped as it's more laid back and the tutor just pops in to make sure everything is okay so we're able to talk without feeling like we're being observed. We also have a group chat and occasionally do zoom calls of an evening for a catch up but that just happened organically