"Nice" end of year email from lecturer (not)

[Badbadbunny]

DS has just forwarded me an email from one of his lecturers. When he saw the sender/subject he thought it was going to be "happy holidays" kind of email as they officially finish the year this week end and are all packing to go home.

What a shock when he opened it as it's a real old rant.

"Us lecturers have been working flat out all year....."

"I've started marking the end of year exams and am appalled at the standard of answers....."

"We've already lengthened the exam times to allow for technical problems...."

"We've already reduced the pass marks required...."

"You're all going to have to pull your socks up next year if you hope to get a degree....."

This is on the back of none of his lecturers actually being on campus all year, he's had no face to face teaching, seminars, etc all year. Many of the "live" lectures were actually recordings of the previous year with just a "live" introduction for a few minutes at the start from the lecturer. A few pieces of work he submitted before Easter still havn't been marked. Even work that this lecturer has marked hasn't included any feedback, just a "raw" mark with no comments, no suggestions, etc.

He's absolutely gobsmacked that a lecturer has sent that email and him, and lots of others in the groupchats have already complained to the Uni. It's not just this email they're complaining about, it's sparked them to complain about the other aspects too.

What a lovely ending to a truly miserable year for them!

I know. It's the same in DCs unis. They want online lectures. But they don;t know what they are missing.

My students have experienced traditional lectures. They know what they are not missing.

Why don't all Unis do an on line open and honest poll. Would you like in person lectures (sure answer would be yes). Would you like them recorded on line (sure the answer would be yes / they always have been). One Uni has claimed because no one complained then it shows how happy the students are. No, the students realised there is a pandemic and put up with it this year, but didn't expect it to be permanent.
I will now be told I'm damaging the mental health of Uni staff. But it is v weird that the poor results apparently are not due at all to the lack of in person teaching. It's hard to teach yourself in a small bedroom from recorded material. It's why people GO to Unis.

No, the students realised there is a pandemic and put up with it this year, but didn't expect it to be permanent.

This. We put up with the final bit of the previous year being muddled through and winging it because it was a crazy time and we were ALL just muddling through and winging it.

We got a bit more annoyed when lectures were being whacked up an hour before the seminar discussing the lecture content throughout this year when people were no longer winging it... but there was still a HELL of a lot of goodwill and respect for the staff for doing what they could in a crazy set of circumstances.

If the same stuff carries on for another year - I'll be calling bullshit, and having been through this last year of it - I don't want to do another year like that - I'd rather defer the year.

@Kazzyhoward not sure where you are getting “average” of £45k graduate income from?? This is most certainly not the case for my eldest- good RG graduate, professional job, or his similarly placed cohort. They are pretty much all earning less than £30k (some a lot less) save for a few outliers in the best grad schemes / law firms

These are early 20 somethings, graduated pre pandemic

Oh @CoffeeWithCheese if you think Blackboard is bad, don't ever try Canvas. I wish we still had blackboard.

I was one of the admin staff trying to create timetables and finally releasing them the day before. If your uni is anything like the one where I work, there were 30 versions of those timetables for every single module on every single course. Every time we finished timetabling, they looked at the room requirements and realised there weren't enough rooms so they issued a new rule and we did it again. We went from 80% face to face to about 30%. I have no idea how they managed to make it so difficult but it didn't help that it took them until August to even start looking!

[quote VanCleefArpels]@Kazzyhoward not sure where you are getting “average” of £45k graduate income from?? This is most certainly not the case for my eldest- good RG graduate, professional job, or his similarly placed cohort. They are pretty much all earning less than £30k (some a lot less) save for a few outliers in the best grad schemes / law firms[/quote]
£45K is at the very high end of estimates for average yearly earnings over the course of someone's working life.

The latest available HMRC tax data shows the median graduate salary one year after graduation to be around £21K and it increases by about £1K per year for the first 10 years of graduates' careers. This is a bit lower than HESA's estimate of just over £24K for the mean graduate starting salary.

If we assume the same rate of growth up to the age when earnings peak (around 42) and then a plateau thereafter, this puts the average mean salary across a graduate's career at around £32K. This is pretty consistent with DfE's statistics that put the figure at £34K.

Over the course if their working lives, the average graduate can expect to earn £321,000 more than a matched age non-graduate.

It is this official data that is used to set the repayment cut off.

Why don't all Unis do an on line open and honest poll. Would you like in person lectures (sure answer would be yes).

We've done this. The answer is most definitely not yes.

Students want everything else in-person, but not lectures.

if you think Blackboard is bad, don't ever try Canvas. I wish we still had blackboard.

I'm very tired of learning technologists telling us that a new virtual learning environment (VLE) will allow us to do things better than the existing one. They refuse to listen to the argument that the existing one isn't useful because nobody is properly trained in how to use it, and that nobody will be properly trained in how to use the new one, either, so replacing it will just cause unnecessary upheaval for no gain.

That email is completely unprofessional. If you feel students need to step up, be constructive. If you don't know how, you shouldn't be teaching.

However hard academic staff have had it this year, students have had it harder. I think a lot of people forget that.

That’s just not an acceptable email, ever. If we sent something like that to our students I imagine the penalty would be pretty severe and rightly so. Everyone in higher education has had a tough year, as have most of the rest of the world, absolutely nothing justifies an email like that. I would suggest your son contacts the Student Union (who will be appalled and take action) as well as complaining to the Programme Leader and Head of Division/Department. Check the complaints policy and if he doesn’t get a response within the prescribed time, or if the response is unsatisfactory, then he should escalate it.

[quote VanCleefArpels]@Kazzyhoward not sure where you are getting “average” of £45k graduate income from?? This is most certainly not the case for my eldest- good RG graduate, professional job, or his similarly placed cohort. They are pretty much all earning less than £30k (some a lot less) save for a few outliers in the best grad schemes / law firms[/quote]
I'm talking about an average of the 30 years of working life paying it back, not entry level graduate started salaries.

@NoNotHimTheOtherOne

Why don't all Unis do an on line open and honest poll. Would you like in person lectures (sure answer would be yes).

We've done this. The answer is most definitely not yes.

Students want everything else in-person, but not lectures.

I'd love to see the wording of the question and the answer options.

I'm sure most students want recordings of lectures for watching again at a later date. That doesn't mean they don't want the option of live in person lectures too. I think we already had the best of both Worlds as most Uni lectures were recorded in the few years pre covid.

If Unis are so sure that students don't want "live" lectures, then why aren't they honest about that on their websites etc. I.e. make it clear to prospective students that lectures will be online only. Then students can consider that when choosing their university. As it stands, Uni's aren't very honest and open about it.

I get the impression that our students would prefer a mix of online and face to face. They enjoy the odd lazy start at home but it's really hard to self-motivate every single day. In a lecture room they wouldn't dream of taking a phone call or answering the group chat but when you're at home it's easy to get distracted for half the lecture when there's nobody there to see you.

@NoNotHimTheOtherOne

if you think Blackboard is bad, don't ever try Canvas. I wish we still had blackboard.

I'm very tired of learning technologists telling us that a new virtual learning environment (VLE) will allow us to do things better than the existing one. They refuse to listen to the argument that the existing one isn't useful because nobody is properly trained in how to use it, and that nobody will be properly trained in how to use the new one, either, so replacing it will just cause unnecessary upheaval for no gain.

Blackboard in general is tolerable... the collaborate bit of it is fucking terrible.

Our Blackboard shells vary in usefulness - there are ones that are impeccably organised and ones that resemble the contents of a particularly disorganised handbag (but we love that lecturer so tend to forgive her!)

Thankfully at least next year they've officially binned off Collaborate and are moving to Teams at least (half our sessions moved there anyway when it wasn't working).

Timetabling is a sore point for those of us with childcare to sort out as we just end up having to book after school sessions we don't end up needing for a term in advance or scrabbling around praying spaces aren't full.

I get the impression that our students would prefer a mix of online and face to face. They enjoy the odd lazy start at home but it's really hard to self-motivate every single day

I feel the same about work!

Last year, I made videos to replace my lectures (for each 1 hour lecture, I made around 4 videos each about 10 minutes long or less, with a task/question at the end of each for students to complete before moving onto the next video - to try to keep students engaged).
Students could watch these by themselves whenever they wanted BUT I also had an (online - no other option) hour slot each week where I showed the videos, and students could do the tasks together and ask me questions etc. Watching the videos and doing the tasks was required, but coming to the session where we could do it together/interact was optional. Guess what percentage of students chose to come to these sessions?

If Unis are so sure that students don't want "live" lectures, then why aren't they honest about that on their websites etc. I.e. make it clear to prospective students that lectures will be online only.

I don’t know which websites you have looked at, but it is pretty clear on my institution’s website that the mix of online and face-to-face teaching will continue for 21/22.

@badger2005

Last year, I made videos to replace my lectures (for each 1 hour lecture, I made around 4 videos each about 10 minutes long or less, with a task/question at the end of each for students to complete before moving onto the next video - to try to keep students engaged). Students could watch these by themselves whenever they wanted BUT I also had an (online - no other option) hour slot each week where I showed the videos, and students could do the tasks together and ask me questions etc. Watching the videos and doing the tasks was required, but coming to the session where we could do it together/interact was optional. Guess what percentage of students chose to come to these sessions?

Perhaps some/many of the students weren't on campus or close enough to travel for just one session for that day. Perhaps they wouldn't have time to travel to attend for the one session AND be home for online sessions immediately before and/or after?

At my son's Uni, a lot of students went home for the November lockdown and simply never went back. There are still halloween decorations in some flat windows even now!

You really can't look at what's happened over this last year and think that the student side of things is in any way normal and that because some students didn't attend a rare lecture, that it meant they wouldn't have attended it in normal times.

In a "normal" year, students would be travelling to campus every day (or living on campus). If they're already on campus for seminars, tutorials, meetings, library, clubs/societies/sports, then they're more likely to attend lectures.

@Etulosba

If Unis are so sure that students don't want "live" lectures, then why aren't they honest about that on their websites etc. I.e. make it clear to prospective students that lectures will be online only.

I don’t know which websites you have looked at, but it is pretty clear on my institution’s website that the mix of online and face-to-face teaching will continue for 21/22.

But does it give any detail or is it the usual meaningless "blended learning" narrative? As we've seen over the past year, some Unis/courses have done plenty of F2F, whilst others have done virtually none. It's time the Unis were honest about what "blended learning" actually means for their courses so students can make in informed decision.

@ user1497207191 - @badger2005 said it was online. If it's anything like my cohort then the weekly 'live' Q&As in addition to our pre-recorded lectures were attended by 15 students out of 120. That's right -10%. So to those who say that students wanted 'live' online lectures and an opportunity to ask questions this past year - they really didn't or at least not in my experience. My colleagues all said the same thing. It was frankly a waste of our time running them

My uni has extensively surveyed our students and they all preferred online lectures to classroom ones. I appreciate that individual students had different experiences but that is not the overarching experience in my workplace.

user1497207191 the sessions were online, so in general students would not have had to travel to attend them.

I totally agree that there are numerous benefits to students attending things in person, and I would much prefer to teach in person, and fully intend to lecture in person again as soon as it is allowed.

But at my uni at least, it's really not the case that during the pandemic students were looking for chances to interact and ask questions etc, and lecturers were denying them that! It honestly felt more like we were doing all we could to keep the standard of teaching high, remain available to students, and help keep the community alive.

cross post fhbn2025! Yes, it was about 20%. I also asked the students who did attend if they would prefer to watch the videos independently so that we could devote the whole hour to interactive activities and Q&A, and they all didn't want to because it would have added to their workload.

I really don’t think we should descend into a bipartisan lecturers v students slanting match. The long and the short of it is that it has been very difficult from both sides .

As a parent I am very aware that my children are not saints , I am sure they skip lectures, sleep in , get hungover, pull all night essay crises and all the rest , just as I did . But I have been surprised at how hard they have found the adjustment to online learning .

It’s not doing the work , it’s the constant failures of tech, the strain of staring at a screen , the lack of peer to peer interaction and the fear, particularly where you don’t know the other participants and often can’t even see their faces, of speaking up online ( there’s no way you can assess from body language etc the reaction of others) and looking a fool.

My youngest hated online learning and yet he is academically very able and engaged , the sort who answers/asks questions at open days etc . He hated the prospect so much he deferred, he is more mature this year and has got his head around it but the academic part of university that he was looking forward to was the interaction and conversation and exchange of ideas and he simply doesn’t feel able to do this online.

One of his friends has developed a serious eye problem from too much screen time. All of his friends report little or no email contact with their academic lecturers., they are remarkably sanguine and understanding about these problems and very sympathetic to lecturers but all report knowing people dropping out. All have found the online exams experience confusing and perplexing, few of these dc had ever done an open book exam let alone an online open book 24 hour exam, and resources on the new exam techniques seem patchy at best. Several have reported having to take turns because their accommodation cannot cope with everyone doing exams simultaneously.

Despite all of this they mostly remain positive and optimistically. Emails like this don’t help the overall situation, they really don’t.

I would reply with a detailed response to each point.

We had sporadic learning with higher learning this year, some tutors were amazing, some seemed to disappear into the abyss. They also made some brilliant teachers redundant at a time when students were feeling vulnerable already and replaced said teachers with already overworked ones who weren't coping.

When they came to us at the end of the year asking for reviews, they got very detailed ones and I hope they read them and take heed.
Our wonderful English teacher was replaced by the head of year after being made redundant and whilst they seemed like a nice person to converse with they had no idea how to use Teams and had such a huge number of students they couldn't mark and give feedback, in the end we they uploaded several practice exam papers and left us too it. My high grade I was predicted is now likely to be a middling grade.

Anyway, I would call this out 100% it's one thing being given constructive criticism but another to email a rant about how students are failing when the whole country has gone to shit.