Another year online?

[Ellewoods20]

Despite the easing of restrictions in June, some universities have informed students that lectures will remain online in the next academic year. What’s the point? :(

Since my post, literally no-one has made any comment about academics, lazy or not, but @DelBocaVista and @IntoAir rush on to the thread to accuse PPs of calling them lazy. It’s very curious.

Quite a few years ago now and Cambridge university - Natural sciences. We had practicals too and supervisions in groups of up to 4. But yes a lot of time spent in lecture theatres. 6 days a week.

[quote IntoAir]@DelBocaVista brava for KOKO !

Everything you say is reasonable, rational, and pedagogically informed. Most universities were investigating aspects of remote/online teaching before the pandemic.

Anyway, I"m now off for one of my twice-weekly C-19 tests, so I can be OK'd to teach in person later this week.

But I'm just a lazy lying academic ...[/quote]
Thank you :)

Good luck! I'm desperate to get back to campus but I'm only teaching PG students at the moment and they unanimously voted to stay online so I'm still locked away in my bedroom!

It’s not changed that much but is actually only 12 lectures a week so 2 a day. www.natsci.tripos.cam.ac.uk/students/first My memory is not what it should be.

@crayyola

Since my post, literally no-one has made any comment about academics, lazy or not, but *@DelBocaVista and @IntoAir* rush on to the thread to accuse PPs of calling them lazy. It’s very curious.

There have been plenty over this last year believe me!! It wasn't a dig at anyone specifically but we have had a year of being told how lazy and incompetent we are on similar threads to this. It gets to you after a while.

we have had a year of being told how lazy and incompetent we are

I've not seen any of that - plenty about lazy teachers, but not uni academics.

Didn't sit with tutor group in lectures because that would have involved planning to arrive quite a lot earlier and to coordinate which door to arrive through! People tended to sit with people from the same hall (1st year) or housemates as they'd done the journey together. But we didn't chat in lectures - too busy taking frantic notes- and would compare notes later in the library. The library was much more important than lectures for 'social studying' as you could talk quietly which was not acceptable in lectures!

@SerenadeOfTheSchoolRun

Quite a few years ago now and Cambridge university - Natural sciences. We had practicals too and supervisions in groups of up to 4. But yes a lot of time spent in lecture theatres. 6 days a week.

The Oxbridge experience is not necessarily representative of the sector as a whole!

For example, one of the course I run has 12 teaching hours per week. Only 2 of them are what we'd consider traditional lectures so from September I will record these lectures in small chunks of 20 mins and share them with the students before the teaching days with some recommended reading. The students will then attend seminars on campus. These are 5 hours long and there are two per week. They're very interactive and will incorporate what was covering in the recorded lectures.
We will have the occasional online seminar as they allow us to use some really high profile speakers ( this was a real strong point of being online this year!) and when we are online we make full use of breakout rooms and they are still very interactive. I fail to see how this is poor quality or means the students are missing out.

I've not seen any of that - plenty about lazy teachers, but not uni academics.

There have been plenty. Some of which got pretty nasty. There was one in April which had a real impact on my mental health - I was pretty much at breaking point anyway and it really got to me. I have the lovely, supportive PMs form other academics in my inbox which is the only reason I didn't delete NM completely.

Even this thread has seen people suggest uni's are desperate to stay online because it means an easy life for academics!

Fair enough. It’s worth looking hard at what your course involves and how the university is going to deliver it before committing to starting in September. I feel so sorry for the current students who when into this in September 2019 and will be final year next year having missed out on so much.

@SerenadeOfTheSchoolRun

Fair enough. It’s worth looking hard at what your course involves and how the university is going to deliver it before committing to starting in September. I feel so sorry for the current students who when into this in September 2019 and will be final year next year having missed out on so much.

Applicants should absolutely do that.

It has been awful for some students but so much of it has been out of our control.

@crayyola

Since my post, literally no-one has made any comment about academics, lazy or not, but *@DelBocaVista and @IntoAir* rush on to the thread to accuse PPs of calling them lazy. It’s very curious.

Have you read the full thread? Plenty of posts previously about lazy academics hiding behind their sofas, so that's where it comes from

Curious whether anyone from last week wants to revise their certainty that everything will absolutely be back to normal on 21 June, given latest statements that it's too soon to tell due to the new variant

I completely agree that universities need to be honest about what their version of 'blended learning' looks like

Very few students had actual blended learning this past year -- we were not allowed to teach on campus so it was almost all online learning. Blended learning this coming year should be very different.

Students should absolutely press their departments for details about what blended learning will look like, and make their decisions accordingly. They can ask questions like, how do you define 'large' lectures to be put online? What percentage of my teaching hours is made up of large lectures? So if they are told that a large lecture is anything over 20 students and 90% of their teaching hours are large lectures, they may not want to go for that course.

[quote FHOJfinf18]@Stirmecrazy and unis know that. Not all RG are the same e.g. my best mate works in the lowest-ranked RG and they have always been a lot more focused on students/f2f teaching and bringing people back. I work in one of the top ones and we are less scared of losing students as our numbers are up (in fact too many students want to come). Also our student demographic is very international and they will simply won't go to a non-RG uni.

Covid is nothing new - different unis will adapt differently to circumstances and their student body. Students will as always have a choice of where to go. Sadly, am assuming that a degree from our uni will still count for a lot more than a post-92 in most subjects because of our rep.

If I was advising an 18-year-old where to go and pay the 60k - I wouldn't put them off Oxbridge just because their teaching has always been crap for humanities/social sciences. A degree is a form of currency - for now if you pay the same amount - certain degrees are still seen as being more valuable than others. It's not because of the teaching you get (top RGs have always been crap) but the overall reputation and more importantly, because many employers use universities as their sorting office i.e. we do all the selection etc so that employers can quickly pick who is smart who is, who is hard-working who isn't.[/quote]
@FHOJfinf18A as a dedicated, hard-working lecturer at a RG uni, I must take issue with this statement about the quality of teaching at top universities. Where is your evidence for this sweeping allegation?

Unfortunately the word 'blended' last September turned out to mean 2 hours of f2f for an entire year. When people hear the same word they think it will be the same experience.

Online seminars struggled for bandwidth when people had mics and cameras on (Blackboard was a particular culprit). Libraries and study spaces were shut (or shut to 1st years) and students were forced to spend many hours a day in cramped study bedrooms staring at screens.

Some interesting comments here from NUS.

@KingscoteStaff

Unfortunately the word 'blended' last September turned out to mean 2 hours of f2f for an entire year. When people hear the same word they think it will be the same experience.

Online seminars struggled for bandwidth when people had mics and cameras on (Blackboard was a particular culprit). Libraries and study spaces were shut (or shut to 1st years) and students were forced to spend many hours a day in cramped study bedrooms staring at screens.

Some interesting comments here from NUS.

The NUS offer a balanced view which support what many of us have said but the comments on the article are horrendous - I had to stop at 'underworked and overpaid' - absolutely bloody clueless.

But it's not what they want. And if it's such a good idea why was it not done ore COVID ?

They want, or you want?

If you read back through this thread you will see that it was on the cards. Before covid I had approval to move to blended this year anyway. Unfortunately, lockdown meant I had to switch to online only.

It's not because of the teaching you get (top RGs have always been crap)

Thanks.

The level of teaching at Oxford and Cambridge (and possibly other collegiate unis but no direct experience) was light years ahead of my experience at a red brick. My Oxbridge friends had supervisions in a group of no more than 3 every week in every single subject with marked essays most weeks. In contrast I started my degree with 5 per supervision, each subject had a supervision every 3 weeks or so and we had one marked assignment (excluding coursework) per subject per semester (so 1 per 10 credits). In my final year (dropped a year through doing a year abroad) "small group" teaching was in groups of 20 and there were even fewer marked but non counting assignments. From talking with younger graduates this was standard for most RGs from then on.

The people doing the teaching were all good but there was a lot less time available for them to teach us compared with the situation at Oxbridge.

@DelBocaVista

If you read the statement from Leeds they have stated that seminars, tutorials and practicals will all be on campus. It's only the large lectures which will be online and these are generally a relatively small part of the learning experience because in pedagogical terms they're the least effective. It sounds like students at Leeds will be getting a significant amount of on campus teaching which is supplemented by online/recorded lectures.

This approach is actually very effective.

Agreed (and with pretty much everything else you have said on this thread!) This is happening at the University I work at as well. We are having to consider how we could change an incredibly complex timetable at the last minute if there is a 3rd wave/new variant in autumn.

It is nowhere near as simple as 'everything will be back to normal in September' as some people seem to think. How does anyone know that right now?

The decision has been made to put large lectures online as they are the most likely to be at risk from government intervention, and the most risky in terms of virus spread. And yes, online lectures were on the horizon pre COVID, when we didn't have the IT infrastructure. And yes, there has been positive feedback from students and staff and attendance has improved.

We are then considering how to best plan for smaller groups in a way that ensures that f2f teaching can continue in some way if we suddenly have to go back to 2m SD. Where classrooms can only suddenly take 7 or 8 students, our lecture theatres can take 25-30 with social distancing so they are a vital resource in ensuring that face to face teaching can continue in some way for students in the worst case scenario.

Universities are having to think about every possibility right now and make hard decisions without a crystal ball. It simply isn't possible to redo a complicated timetable, or a rewrite a practical (labs etc) course, at the drop of a hat if restrictions come back in in September/October. So we have to find a way of future proofing the planning that we do. I know students and parents have their own challenges and I really feel for students and have done all along. But I do feel sad when I read comments that university are making decisions due to greed/laziness/not caring about students when at my University it is exactly the opposite.

@captainpantbeard but some Unis are telling students exams and lectures will be on line for the rest of the course. So 2/3 more years ? How is that explained ?

And how are the US planning it ? Surely once everyone is vaccinated there will be no need to socially distance. When does it end for Unis ? When there is zero covid / because that's never happening.

@mumsneedwine

I assume the online exam thing is a move from testing ability to memorise information to testing the ability to access information, which in a digital world is a much more useful skill.

How does having instant recall of the many equations needed in a Physics exam make you better at a career, or exact drug doses (assuming you know ballparks well enough to pick up order or arithmetical errors) when you will have access to this information at your fingertips throughout your career?

Getting 300+ students into the same lecture theatre was on its way out as well, main concerns were technology and intellectual property issues but as they have now been effectively dealt with by the pandemic there's limited need to go back to the traditional lecture model. Online lectures are better for catching up if ill so would hopefully reduce the spread of flu, colds and Covid in the future too.

@randomsabreuse what shall I tell my DD to do about her eyesight and being told by the optician to keep off the screen ? She has 5 hours of lectures some days - what do you suggest she does for the next few years ? She is one of many in this position - on screen all day is not good.
And if exams are open book for some courses why not bring that in for GCSEs and A levels ? If recall is not important what is ? Why not just google the answers ?

Not sure how it can be made clearer. Students want to meet their cohort, this is done before and after lectures. No lectures, no chance to meet. Student bedrooms are tiny - if they live streamed into lecture theatres then that would work, so why can this not be done ?