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

Before anyone says, why are you still planning restrictions when everything is opening 19 July, my understanding is that the government will be issuing guidance specific to universities in August, so we still don't know for sure what we will be required to do.

We have social distancing and non-social distancing plans and really hoping we can use the latter.

Just finished my degree. Year 1 was in person until the pandemic.

I attended 50% of the lectures, depending if I had tutorials that day (I live miles off campus) . I did enjoy most of them but the number of students who chatted all the way through or set in front of me and watched distracting YouTube videos was large. Watching online eliminates all that thank goodness.

@Needmoresleep

My dyslexic DS finds online lectures far harder to follow that RL ones.

I am surprised. My dyslexic DD finds on-line lectures a life saver.

She is rubbish at copying from a board, or taking notes. Her processing speeds are just too slow. One of the successful strategies her school used was to encourage the girl with the neatest handwriting to photocopy her notes and give them to DD, with a clear message that this was supporting, not cheating. DD learns by listening not reading, so attending the lecture, and being able to concentrate rather than attempt to take notes, is great, and then she watches the lecture again, pausing where necessary, to ensure she has taken it all in.

DD is also easily distracted by noise, and again being able to set her working environment, rather than be in a busy crowned lecture room, is good.

We've had no word at all from my uni about the format teaching is going to take in the new year. Nothing at all apart from pointless fluff weekly mass mailings about shite.

I'm dyslexic and I find online much bloody harder going to take information in. Plus my DSA assessment was done based upon a face-to-face lecture model, so things like my recording software which syncs with the notes doesn't work online either. I need to discuss things and talk them through with peers to get them into my head - we have a lot of mutual support people getting together to work through stuff as a general rule - none of which has really gone on in anywhere near the same way last year.

It's been miserable. I'm considering suspending for the year.

The comments of international students are particularly interesting in that petition .

CoffeewithCream, that sounds grim.

I assume that most DSA students choose courses that suit their learning style best, and so a change to the approach is unfortunate.

Socially last year was a complete write off, but DD was lucky that academically it worked out for her.

@dreamingbohemian

Before anyone says, why are you still planning restrictions when everything is opening 19 July, my understanding is that the government will be issuing guidance specific to universities in August, so we still don't know for sure what we will be required to do.

We have social distancing and non-social distancing plans and really hoping we can use the latter.

This.

Statement from UoM and link to some Q&A sessions in next week which may be of interest to current and prospective students

studentnews.manchester.ac.uk/2021/07/05/blended-flexible-learning-what-it-means-for-you/

I'm a (very) mature student and have just completed a foundation year for a eng/phil degree at a RG uni. Personally, the online format worked really well. Course content was a mixture of slides with audio, slides without audio and things like links to YouTube etc. Seminars were in groups of 12 to 15 and a mix of break out groups and lecturer led discussions.

I found it worked well and as I don't live on campus, I saved hours of travel time. We had 2 f2f seminars in total, and I found the online seminars much more useful tbh. We've not heard anything yet re next year but am hopeful that lectures will be online with 1 day maybe actually in uni for seminars.

[quote CityDweller]@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.[/quote]
Indeed.

But MN never misses an opportunity to slag off teachers, so why should it give us lecturers a pass?

We're just lazy arses who can't be bothered to turn up to work and don't give a toss about our students. We haven't been in any way affected by the last 18 months, in fact we've sat twiddling our thumbs since last March. I definitely haven't worked 50+ hours a week and I don't know anyone else in my profession who has either.

Plus, we get a fucking PENSION!!!!

We really should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.

I suspect it's the students that are in favour of this so they can watch 9am lectures in bed or at their convenience.

I'm not being flippant either ...

@MaudBaileysGreenTurban

I haven't seen any comments on this thread criticising lecturers or suggesting lecturers are lazy

It is clearly management who are driving this move

I haven't seen any comments on this thread criticising lecturers or suggesting lecturers are lazy

The comments towards lecturers on MN this last year have been awful....truly awful. I know of one person who deleted her account due to the impact on her mental health ( I reached out privately to offer support)

@ninja

I suspect it's the students that are in favour of this so they can watch 9am lectures in bed or at their convenience.

I'm not being flippant either ...

I did a couple of live online lectures at 9.00am last year and can confirm that the students were indeed in bed. They didn’t have their cameras on, thank goodness but some of them did tell me that they liked the lectures being online because they could watch from bed. 9.00am lectures have never been very well-attended.

Perhaps the ideal blend of blended learning is morning classes online, face to face classes in the afternoon?

Universities will also need to plan for some students not being able to return to the UK. In some Universities international students make up a high proportion of the total. Not least, recorded lectures help both with remote learning and helps overcome the problem with time zones.

And yes, binge watching is a thing. Better than Netflix presumably!

Fair enough @thedevils I wasn't aware of this so can understand that lecturers are feeling sensitive about the subject but majority on this thread have not suggested that the drive to move teaching away from F2F is the choice of lecturers

I think it is reasonable that those concerned about undergraduate teaching should be able to debate this without it being seen as lecturer bashing

@TheDevils

I haven't seen any comments on this thread criticising lecturers or suggesting lecturers are lazy

The comments towards lecturers on MN this last year have been awful....truly awful. I know of one person who deleted her account due to the impact on her mental health ( I reached out privately to offer support)

I think we all realise this is management's doing but the comments minimising the effect on students are irritating at best.

[quote freelions]@MaudBaileysGreenTurban

I haven't seen any comments on this thread criticising lecturers or suggesting lecturers are lazy

It is clearly management who are driving this move[/quote]
I agree. My comments have been consistenty aimed at the Uni management/leadership, not the individual lecturers.

@Needmoresleep

Universities will also need to plan for some students not being able to return to the UK. In some Universities international students make up a high proportion of the total. Not least, recorded lectures help both with remote learning and helps overcome the problem with time zones.

And yes, binge watching is a thing. Better than Netflix presumably!

But some lecturers have suggested that because "some" overseas students can't get to campus, then "all" students on those courses can't benefit from face to face teaching, seminars, tutorials, etc., as it would be unfair to the overseas students. I think it's completely wrong for that to be the case. Overseas students need to either defer/suspend for a year or be streamed into a separate channel where all teaching is remote/online.

Who is saying no face to face at all?

It is worth remembering that overseas students pay so much more and bring so much to the table.

And that is before you start thinking about the fact that overseas students make up 70% or more of the student population of some of our leading Universities. Who would pay for suspending a large part of the student body?

No one knows what the pandemic will look like in September. I assume there is a certain amount of hope for the best, plan for the worst, going on.

The comments towards lecturers on MN this last year have been awful....truly awful. I know of one person who deleted her account due to the impact on her mental health ( I reached out privately to offer support)

I agree and I really should do the same. Should know better than to get sucked in to these threads.

Everyone I work with is already on their knees and dreading the new term, frankly. There is no decision here that will please everyone and we'll be the ones in the firing line, yet again.

I think it is reasonable that those concerned about undergraduate teaching should be able to debate this without it being seen as lecturer bashing
I agree but I have lost count of the insults and abuse I've received for explaining why things are happening the way they are...I've also been called a liar and lazy and been told I don't care about my students because I'm desperate to stay home hiding behind my sofa.
None of which are true!

I think we all realise this is management's doing but the comments minimising the effect on students are irritating at best.

But most of us agree that it has been a terrible year. However, we also know our students and our universities.
My course will continue as a blended learning course because that is what the students want - but every time i say that i get accused of lying!! Believe me, the hoops I've had to jump though in order to get my course validated to run this way really wouldn't be worth it unless i could justify it....and it certainly wouldn't be approved just because I want to continue teaching at home ( which i don't!!)

I agree and I really should do the same. Should know better than to get sucked in to these threads.
Me too....

Everyone I work with is already on their knees and dreading the new term, frankly. There is no decision here that will please everyone and we'll be the ones in the firing line, yet again.

Yep. I'm completely and utterly broken just like everyone else. We're all trying our best, have no influence on the decisions yet we'll still get blamed!

I did maths at Manchester. Missed approximately 75% of lectures, just photocopied the notes. I did go to the tutorials though which is where the value add is.

Lots of my lectures had 200 people in the lecture hall, so it wasn't like there was much of an opportunity for a q&a.

@GCAcademic
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.

I would just like to endorse this (as another university teacher). Small-group teaching in a real classroom with distancing, facemasks and a ban on interaction between students is a depressing experience. A well-run (and possibly even a badly-run) online session, with breakout groups, collaborative tasks, student presentations and proper interaction, is far superior.