Online lectures - still

[BerfyTigot]

My child is doing a natural sciences course at Leeds Uni, so does 3 subjects a year.

One of them is biochemistry which has been entirely delivered online! This has put her off this topic completely, whereas before it had been something she was quite interested in.

This is our first experience of uni - does anyone know whether we can claim a refund in fees, or whether it's likely to go on into next year. ( I'm really hoping that someone on here might be something senior at Leeds Uni ). Thanks

At our non RG place we have to get permission from one of the VC's senior team to deliver any online lectures ! Teaching online post Covid is thought to be very bad form. I guess that's because partly because we are in a more precarious position in terms of applicants than the RGs - so need to boost the idea of a definite on campus experience

I am so sorry for your DD, OP.

Ever since my (RG) uni made Lecture Capture mandatory, Y1-Y3 lecture attendance has fallen dramatically and I understand this is true most places.

The advantages PPs cite are true and real, but it takes a very mature student to use recorded lectures properly. We can track when students access recorded lectures (overall, not by name) and the majority do not begin to do do until they need the material for an assessment.

Aside from simply staying caught up through attending, there are many advantages, some listed by PPs, to live lectures. One not mentioned is the precious minutes before and after lecture when even moderately complex questions can be cleared up. Another is that live engagement is generally more interesting.

When even the best lecturers are routinely faced with attendance of 25% or less I suppose Leeds Biochemistry just said ‘Enough’. I am not defending this but I understand it. I sadly think the best answer is to restrict access to Lecture Capture. Students with questions about the lecture could try the novel idea of bringing them to office hours or Learning Labs.

I say that with regret and with the caveat that support should continue to be available to those with disabilities. Also we need to do more for student parents generally.

At our non RG place we have to get permission from one of the VC's senior team to deliver any online lectures ! Teaching online post Covid is thought to be very bad form.

There are some very mixed messages about this, though. We are told a minimum of 80% contact time has to be face-to-face but timetabling and room availability make this impossible unless you severely cut the total amount of contact time, which I think is the university's intention.

Absolutely agree with this

"Can we do online because we have no teaching rooms available?"
"No"
"What would you like us to do then?"
"Don't teach online" etc

What I did was move more F2F to term three which is traditionally light on teaching so has much better room availability.

@poetryandwine great post and i agree with most of it, but Leeds biochemistry is a central course there not just for biochem, but for microbiology, genetics etc etc. when i did it a million years ago ( student numbers much much smaller) there were still 300 students who did year 1 bichem module, (and nearly that who did year 2 - lectures were 3x week at 9 am followed by a whole day of pracs, but so many students that a third did the pracs on eg Tuesday, a third Thursday etc)
so even if only 25% rock up these days to lectures that is still a load of kids ( and lecture attendance has always been an issue, 40 years ago I preferred shagging my bf at 9 am rather than going to lectures) but that should never be a reason not to offer them. Going to write to leeds about this tbh, my dniece has also not had her degree marked and currently i give them ( as does dh) a fairly large fuckton of money every month to help the current undergrads

Hi, @JaffavsCookie I didn’t know about the multifunctionality of Leeds biochem. That’s very interesting and makes it even more serious. (I wasn’t defending them). Thanks for teaching me something

At some point I think a lecture audience could become so small as to feel weird, but if a module has 300+ students I agree that should never happen. (Specialist modules with very low enrolment have a completely different dynamic and are generally much easier to teach, anyway)