Warwick Uni (less face to face than last year!)

[Daisysway]

For those students applying in 2022. Really think twice about applying to Warwick University for any of the Bioscience Courses.

My dd just going into year 2 and she's got less f2f teaching than last year! Only 50 percent of her tutorials are f2f this term, all lectures are online and she only has 6 LABS all year.

There apparent excuse is they have a larger in take this year so more tutorials.

Shocking behaviour from a top 10 University.

Wow @Daisysway that department is behaving shamefully , well done for taking such a positive stand against it. Just ridiculous.
Dd just started a biology type masters at sussex. She had wanted to do a phd straight after graduation but having had no lab time, thanks Covid, wanted to make sure she enjoyed it before committing to a three year course.
Choice was London uni or Sussex, by pure luck she choose Sussex on basis that she could commute from home so if it turned out to be online at least it would be cheaper. In fact turns out Sussex is one of the few unis committed to full on f2f.
Just crazy, you can go to the cinema for a two hour plus James Bond film but not sit in a lecture hall !
Hope you get a result .

Well done @Daisysway
A lot of students will be grateful for this.

Other than a fairly shitty experience spending 3 years learning from her bedroom imagine she got to graduation and had not developed the practical skills required to progress in her career!

I don't think the outcome will be good in terms of Warwick (Life Sciences) have already over enrolled to the point they are diluting the education of the present and future students. Warwick admissions are generally slow they had every opportunity to offer deferred places so they could continue offering a decent level of blended education but I'm guessing the ££££ signs were ringing.. The accommodation on campus is not cheap, International places have fallen... I was singing their praises last year on how well they had coped.. Little did I know they would try and take advantage of students coping in a situation where they had no
choice to actually diluting education even further where students should have choices which has resulted in losing yet more face to face education.

@Daisysway

Just a quick update, I've had a response from the RSB who will take matters up and arrange a meeting with Life Sciences at Warwick University.

Im incredibly sad that I've ended up taking this action (as a parent), but I just felt that my daughter could not move this forward without repercussions and there seemed to be ongoing plans to completely remove f2f lectures. I do understand that some students don't attend lectures and not all students wish to attend every lecture. I'm not against blended learning but what Warwick were doing was unacceptable and significant changes should have been discussed with students.

Brilliant well done

In the least arsey way possible, isn't your daughter old enough to complain for herself?

Honestly, I don't mean that rudely at all. I'm just incredulous at the idea of a parent being this involved. It definitely wasn't like that when I was at uni!

@xmash - I was thinking the same thing. I know that we all want the best for our young people but when did we start knowing so much about how their courses are delivered. Also since when did universities start talking to parents? Also trying not to be rude and I certainly do not condone 100% online teaching.

@PaulGallico...I have not talked to the university... I sent an email to the person responsible for Undergraduate studies...not asking for a reply (neither did I receive one). I did however raise issues with the professional body that accredited the course which I did receive a reply too.

We are in very strange times our young people are under a huge amount of pressure and in situations they have never encountered or are unlikely to hopefully ever encounter again and some universities are adding extra pressure.

My daughters just 19 years old... She's got a lot of life skills to learn... I'm sure you would intervene if you felt that a universities action's have a massive adverse detrimental impact on your DCs future.. Although there again may be you would just accept the situation if your DC did not want to rock the boat.

@xmash @PaulGallico Our children are barely adults, have missed eighteen months of development and it feels like they are being exploited tbh. They are often not equipped to deal with it.

I agree with both of you that things have changed and it shouldn't have to be like this but it's incredibly hard to watch them pay £9k a year for a course they applied for in 2019, started with the promise of blended learning in 2020 and then haven't had a single face to face experience yet in 2021.

I've left my kids to fight their own battles in the workplace and other areas but £27k in fees is a different ballpark.

I don't know the answer or how involved we should be but I totally understand why someone would want to stand up for and protect their barely adult child.

@bevelino

I am assuming universities have to run online classes due to the huge numbers of international students who cannot come to the UK. If universities offer online lectures they can still collect the fees from international students. I don’t mind being told that is not the case.

Manchester have a huge number of international students and they are managing f2f.

Birmingham University are effectively running two streams, one fully f2f and then separate on-line content for those not able to be there. Dyslexic DS has the bonus of being able to access either or both!

I don’t underestimate the workload required to plan and provide this at short notice and with increased numbers.

@Daisysway I have a DS at university. You are understandably angry at the poor response from Warwick. However I stand by my post. By emailing the university and the awarding body you are not teaching your daughter lifeskills. You need to support your daughter to do this herself. Your daughter is 19 - this is her future, her course, her debt. She must be unhappy about the lack of face to face - help her to do something about it.

You know @paulgallico... I'm 61 years old, quite astute but I don't think I have the life skills to deal with the situation the Life Sciences students are in. I think as collective they are doing all they can but to be fair I can't see how things will change... Despite lots of issues in recent times at Warwick not a lot has changed.

However, I would say we all know our own young adults, we know their strengths and we know their weaknesses... I'd like to think that dd was well prepared for University despite having low self esteem and occasional periods of darkness (separated parents since she was 3) . She has managed the anxiety issues well, took herself of to the GPs when she needed professional help etc (it's not easy when someone close takes their own life). She can deal with most things that life throws at her and is the current house mum..putting out oven fires etc... Cool, calm and collected...but sadly not confident yet!

Helping our kids develop life skills is incredibly important and we probably all do this in different ways.. Be it sink or swim, setting what we believe to be good examples or helping them develop thinking skills etc. I'd like to think that I was demonstrating to my daughter ways she could look at a situation in a different way. Although to be fair my first concern is my daughter's mental health and wellbeing.. Its not healthy being sat in front of a computer screen day in day out, its not healthy listening to lectures not understanding elements of them but feeling that the lecturer is unapproachable but you don't know any course mates well enough to reach out too... and its certainly demoralising to see your housemates going out to seminars and lectures and your sat alone in student digs...BUT fortunately she has joined the gym and she was wise enough to take her car with her this year so she can get out and about and she's a bloody good cook so she can stay healthy.

[quote PaulGallico]**@Daisysway I have a DS at university. You are understandably angry at the poor response from Warwick. However I stand by my post. By emailing the university and the awarding body you are not teaching your daughter lifeskills. You need to support your daughter to do this herself. Your daughter is 19 - this is her future, her course, her debt. She must be unhappy about the lack of face to face - help her to do something about it.[/quote]
That wasn't very helpful or supportive

I'm with @Daisysway on this. There is a point where the students haven't managed to achieve what they want and need, and it is not shameful to accept extra help.

I didn't intend to be unhelpful. However the university will not engage with parents in this way. Students are considered to be adults. The email needs to come from the student. Which is why OP will not receive a reply. The awarding body is likely to make recommendations to the university but will support them because it is all down to money in the end. I teach for a university (we are face to face), my DS and DD are at university and I support them totally, but in the background. Like the OP I am also 61 (a few posts back that seemed to matter). The pandemic has been difficult for us all but being so invested really does not help long term.

@PaulGallico...oddly enough I did receive a reply today!

I generally think students should try and sort things out themselves first. However it's noticeable that this age group have been neglected these last 18 months, probably because the government knows they can get away with it with fledgling adults who haven't quite worked out how to throw their weight around yet.

Very short sighted of Warwick, they are still tainted by their blokey, rapey reputation and they'll soon see applications dropping off.

I really can't see away that students throw their weight about... I'd actually go the other way and say they are taken advantage off... If you look at private accommodation issues they get resolved quickly.
Look at student accommodation issues and it appears that there is no rush..afterall they are students. How can this actually result in our students feeling they are treated like adults and are valued (it's a kind of me too situation). If they are adults as far as universities are concerned then they should be treated like any private tenants but so many times they are exploited. Yet so many parents think it's OK to see their DCs exploited because they need to develop life skills.

What do you mean by the Me Too reference? Are you comparing this situation to being the victim of sexual assault?
I think there is a lot of contradiction in your posts. You want universities to treat your dd as an adult and yet you are not allowing your Dd to act like an adult yourself.

@hdhdjejdj...there were issues at Warwick which were dealt with badly a few years ago and there was a campaign by students for womens safety last year. I am not sure what happened with the text but it should have read like how Warwick handled the kind of Me Too campaign.

I believe my dd is acting like an adult and doing everything she can (with the collective of other students). However, I think the students are not being listened to.. Let's just say part of the response I received yesterday was well we are providing Teams sessions between the lecturers and the students...

I agree that id love my daughter and her fellow students to be treated like adults and listened too... But that is not happening.

I remember the situation with the student texts at Warwick now.
It’s awful that she isn’t happy with how things are but I really think you need to let her deal with it. You can offer all the behind the scenes support needed but when it comes to communicated with the university in future it’s probably best to come from her.

Would be interesting to know if the university has now (6 months later) implemented these requests. You’d like to hope so!

Good news on all accounts. Dd had her first f2f late last week....although next f2f session is not till next week. Looks like Warwick have listened to the students and there will be more face to face next term. She's arranged to meet up with other students in the library today following the face to face session last week, student f2f interaction so important when so much of the course is online. Workload has massively changed so she's busy too.

That is good news, @Daisysway. I believe an email has been sent to all students saying that, after consultation, the university is 'reviewing' its self-imposed 1.5m social distancing (in teaching spaces) rule. Not sure if that means they're reducing it or scrapping it. Should allow for more f2f anyway, though apparently the email states that it will be up to individual departments to work out how to implement it.

I have to say DT2 hasn't been having a bad time of it in history - all seminars have been f2f and so is one of his lectures. I think they're less oversubscribed than some departments. It's still quite a lot of screen time, though, especially as a fair amount of their reading is online too. Obviously the latter is way more convenient than every student trying to track down certain books just to read one chapter; but it does mean that when you throw in 4 or 5 hours of online lectures too, that's a lot of time spent staring at a screen.