Manchester University - permanent move to ‘blended learning’??

[BramStoker]

The article below implies that lectures will no longer be face to face unless there is an interactive element

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jul/05/manchester-university-sparks-backlash-with-plan-to-keep-lectures-online

Very worrying for current students at Manchester and those hoping to go there in September (my DD)

There is no official statement on the University website or social media

It would be good to link that courses which are heavy on lectures will move the balance towards seminars/tutorials but I think this is unlikely . Most humanities courses are heavily lecture based , say 21 lectures and 7 tutorials . In effect a monthly tutorial may be your only contact for that course.

I definitely think the pedagogical value of lectures is overstated but particularly in first year they are very important from a structural and study skills point of view. Exchanges of information between students are very important at this stage as well. Even in my MA course I often got useful tips from the person sitting next to me in the lecture theatre,especially in tangential ways such as referencing software , articles or talks going on etc

The online petition would suggest that students DO care

www.change.org/p/the-university-of-manchester-uom-let-students-fully-return-to-in-person-teaching

Yes I and my teens would fully agree with that petition

@HeddaGarbled

Manchester has been providing the opportunity to watch lectures online for at least 10 years. Some of the cohorts are massive and they don’t have lecture theatres big enough to fit all the students in.

But that's different - they're offering the "choice". Those that prefer online can watch them that way. Those that prefer face to face can attend lectures. I think the big problem here is that choice is being taken away and some Unis aren't being open/honest about it.

At the end of the day, a lot of Unis NEED students on campus because they're heavily committed to Uni owned campus accommodation. They're going to have to give students some damn good reasons to want to attend and rent the thousands of flats on campus.

Last Autumn, some Unis changed their websites almost immediately after deadlines for course confirmation and accommodation commitment. So basically, they lied and conned students into committing whilst offering face to face teaching, but then changed their websites once committed. Unis should never have been allowed to get away with that.

I just completed my 2nd year of my Maths degree all online. I'd happily never watch another online lecture in my lifetime. I suspect a lot of people advocating for online lectures haven't had to endure them.

Our lectures were always recorded and uploaded after the lecture to our Blackboard service which was great for revision or going over any bits that were tricky.

We have a small cohort and excellent attendance in person (first year) and our lecturers really went above and beyond delivering those lectures in person, happy to explain in further detail if there were confused faces and always staying back to answer questions. Our class would often get together between lectures to discuss the subject material and work through things we were struggling with and whilst we've continued to do this on teams, we all feel disconnected and less productive.

Maybe it's different when it's a cohort of 100 students but the experience and learning from an online lecture has been poor in my experience, despite lecturers really trying their best to deliver the material.

I'll be very disappointed if we continue this model into next year.

I am a lecturer and am changing unis this year. I've been told that my lectures - recorded for Covid last year - may be reused next year even though I've gone. So while recorded can be good for rewatching, then discussing in seminars, I'm

Argh- butter fingers - I don't like this idea of using lectures when the lecturer isn't there for questions / seminars.

Very cheap for the unis!

@Anonadviceinapickle I would imagine if you have a small cohort and small class sizes, you will continue having in person lectures. It's mostly the very large lectures that are moving online.

Even Manchester have said, online learning this year will not be like it was this past year. I think most unis will try to keep smaller classes in person.

OP - This move to online lectures was suggested at one of the unis I work at and there has been such push back from staff and students that it will not be happening. We are going back to face to face teaching (lectures included) and will also make recordings available for students to use for revision purposes. (Obviously, that means some won't turn up but it was always like that and it does benefit students if they can't turn up.)

The in-person classes I took this year have been some of the best attended ever with the most engaged students. They missed meeting people when we were forced online.

tinselvestsparklepants, that sounds wrong. However this year one of DDs lecturers was on sabbatical and the person replacing them was relying quite heavily on notes from previous years. Recorded lectures would have been better.

Of course university is about the social experience! The word university comes from 'the whole', 'society', 'guild'.

Social experience doesn't mean getting drunk and partying. It means gathering together with a group of intelligent young people who are passionate about your subject. And it means being taught by an expert in your field face-to-face. A lecturer standing at the front of a audience is (or very much should) going to offer a totally different experience to a lecturer lecturing from a screen. Even TED talks are delivered to an audience before being put on youtube.

This is a deeply depressing development and Universities will end up killing themselves (or at least their humanities departments) if they continue with this.

As a lecturer at another University- this will be sector wide. We used to do 2 h live lectures and they will now be 1h recorded content and a 1h seminar.

Some of the cohorts are massive and they don’t have lecture theatres big enough to fit all the students in.

Interesting.

I thought (from a response on an earlier, similar thread) that one of the reasons universities couldn't plan to have a lecture delivered as normal to the lecture theatre's socially distanced maximum number of attendees, with it being accessed digitally by the rest, was that it was totally unacceptable no to offer exactly the same to every student?

@cunningplan101

Of course university is about the social experience! The word university comes from 'the whole', 'society', 'guild'.

Social experience doesn't mean getting drunk and partying. It means gathering together with a group of intelligent young people who are passionate about your subject. And it means being taught by an expert in your field face-to-face. A lecturer standing at the front of a audience is (or very much should) going to offer a totally different experience to a lecturer lecturing from a screen. Even TED talks are delivered to an audience before being put on youtube.

This is a deeply depressing development and Universities will end up killing themselves (or at least their humanities departments) if they continue with this.

Not just humanities either. My DS is doing a Maths degree which the Uni decided wasn't "essential" to have face to face, in person, teaching during the Covid year. I know some other unis regarded Maths (along with other STEM subjects) as "essential" requiring F2F and provided in person teaching. The complete absence of face to face problem solving sessions etc has proved disastrous for him - he's had to do them online in small groups and none have been successful in any way at all. It really doesn't look good for the future when Unis didn't do the face to face/in person sessions they were actually allowed to do! Obviously, they couldn't do what they were legally banned from doing, but some went much further and didn't do lots of things that they could! In my son's case, the staff weren't even on campus all year, so they could never have done in-person teaching. I've been on campus many times and the whole place was like a graveyard - entire blocks locked, staff car parks empty, etc.

If Unis and their staff believe that students "want" online only and that it's better for the student, then how about they do proper consultations, with full openess and transparency. As it is, it looks as if Unis are trying to impose their will by the back door on the back of Covid rather than having proper consultations and negotiations with all affected parties.

This is a deeply depressing development and Universities will end up killing themselves (or at least their humanities departments) if they continue with this.

I teach a humanities subject. I've just gone through our timetable for next year, and only 5% of our provision consists of lectures. The remaining 95% is seminar-teaching, in groups of 12 or less. The lecture is of limited use in the humanities, in my view, and is often only programmed because it's more efficient to put fifty people in a room for an hour than it is to teach them in four seminar groups. I'd be wary of a humanities department that was offering a high number of lectures as a % of its contact time.

@user1497207191 agreed. My son has spent most of the year in his room in a tower block. He has not met one person from his course in person and has had zero face to face despite doing a lab based science subject. His flat were mostly international students most of whom were unable to return after Christmas. The most worrying thing for me is he has no friendship group to live with next year and no accommodation sorted (London based). He is basically now on Facebook groups desperately trying to find a space in a house with basically strangers. The pastoral care from his uni has been basically non existent.

@MarchingFrogs

Some of the cohorts are massive and they don’t have lecture theatres big enough to fit all the students in.

Interesting.

I thought (from a response on an earlier, similar thread) that one of the reasons universities couldn't plan to have a lecture delivered as normal to the lecture theatre's socially distanced maximum number of attendees, with it being accessed digitally by the rest, was that it was totally unacceptable no to offer exactly the same to every student?

Yes, Uni's and lecturers make up their own justifications/excuses to suit. Have a look at some of the long running threads in the HE board on MN.

Some were saying that they couldn't do face to face at all because some overseas students hadn't been able to get into the UK, so it was unfair to them if they got a different "experience" to students able to attend campus.

That just doesn't stack up when other lecturers say their in person lectures have low attendances, but it's fine because they can watch the recording later.

So much of the last year simply doesn't pass scrutiny if you scratch the surface.

@GCAcademic

This is a deeply depressing development and Universities will end up killing themselves (or at least their humanities departments) if they continue with this.

I teach a humanities subject. I've just gone through our timetable for next year, and only 5% of our provision consists of lectures. The remaining 95% is seminar-teaching, in groups of 12 or less. The lecture is of limited use in the humanities, in my view, and is often only programmed because it's more efficient to put fifty people in a room for an hour than it is to teach them in four seminar groups. I'd be wary of a humanities department that was offering a high number of lectures as a % of its contact time.

Is that 95% in seminars, actually in-person face to face, i.e. in classrooms, or is some of that still being done online?

Just want to clarify as another poster on an HE thread said that "live" online seminars/tutorials still counted as face to face and that they didn't need to be physically in the same room to be included in the official statistics as FCF, with "face to face" counting if it was live via Teams or similar.

@MarchingFrogs you know that the lecturers don’t get to make the decisions about how teaching is delivered, right? Those decisions are made by senior management.

I’m a lecturer and I really resent the implication that we’re somehow out to shaft students out of a decent education. I’ve had to work harder on teaching this past year than I ever have. It is incredibly time consuming to deliver blended learning and requires masses more preparation and planning than just pitching up to deliver a lecture.

Lecturers do what they do because they love their subject and love knowledge and learning and love sharing it with their students. We’ve been just as shafted by this situation as the students have.

Sorry - my response was to @user1497207191 not @MarchingFrogs!

Online lectures doesn't mean no in person, on campus teaching. It just means a small part of the teaching and learning experience will be delivered online- typically the bit which isn't interactive.

From a pedagogical perspective it's actually good practice.

Most universities were moving towards a blended approach anyway ( I know I was!) and the last year has just accelerated this.

I don't think a reduction in face to face learning is bad in principle, I can see the advantages of being able to rewind and rewatch, and take better notes with a dictation app etc - whether you're got a learning disability or not.

I think the main issue in the academic year just gone was that students were told to stay in their rooms and weren't allowed to socialise/play sport/join in university or other societies for a good portion of the year.

On its own, losing 4 hours of lectures a week isn't a big issue. But if we get restrictions reimposed later this year, that's where things will start to become very unfunny, especially if you could easily stay at home but are being charged for accommodation again that you don't need.

I know universities can't predict renewed restrictions, but they do know what they can offer on the premise that the restrictions are relaxed after 19th July.

you know that the lecturers don’t get to make the decisions about how teaching is delivered, right? Those decisions are made by senior management.

I’m a lecturer and I really resent the implication that we’re somehow out to shaft students out of a decent education. I’ve had to work harder on teaching this past year than I ever have. It is incredibly time consuming to deliver blended learning and requires masses more preparation and planning than just pitching up to deliver a lecture.

Lecturers do what they do because they love their subject and love knowledge and learning and love sharing it with their students. We’ve been just as shafted by this situation as the students have.

ALL of this!!

Is that 95% in seminars, actually in-person face to face, i.e. in classrooms, or is some of that still being done online?

Just want to clarify as another poster on an HE thread said that "live" online seminars/tutorials still counted as face to face and that they didn't need to be physically in the same room to be included in the official statistics as FCF, with "face to face" counting if it was live via Teams or similar.

Yes, face-to-face. Sort of. We are still planning for social distancing in classrooms, so students will be 1.5 meters apart (a reduction from 2 meters last year) in much larger classrooms than usual to allow for distancing, and at the moment the plan is that everyone will continue to wear masks. In my experience of having done this last year and then taught online after the government locked us down, this is a worse experience pedagogically than live delivery on Zoom because audibility is severely compromised which makes discussion (vital in a humanities subject) very difficult and precludes things like group work, which can be done on Zoom. We were told last summer by our Learning Development people that we would need to consider how to deliver these sessions without students being able to have discussions or hear each other. So face-to-face (or mask-to-mask) teaching in a pandemic is not exactly the premium experience that many on here seem to think it is. The lack of discussion was very evident when we came to mark their assessments (the (live) online cohort did a lot better). My university considers that it will be necessary to retain social distancing because we will have around 10,000 students arriving from overseas, many of whom will not have been vaccinated and, while they have plans to offer vaccinations, this will take the best part of the autumn term to deliver.