calling academics - I know there are a few of you

[tallequineinafedora]

I have found myself wondering what measures universities put in place to monitor whether or not lecturers are any good. Obviously their academic credentials are measured largely through publishing and maybe oher work but what about their actual delivery of lectures? I'm doing a masters at a good university (paying them a fortune) and, not to put too fine a point on it, one of the lecturers is very poor. It's not just me that think so - my whole class agrees. There's something about his lectures that make them impossible to follow. classic example a couple of weeks ago - he stopped and said "so what does anyone think of those 2 principles?" no-one in the room knew which 2 principles he meant - and I promise its not cos we're thick or inattentive. and this is not exceptional - it's the same every week. short of getting his boss to come and listen I can't see how the university are even going to beome aware of this problem - let alone do anything about it. (sorry name changed coz of silly thread elsewhere - prize to anyone who knows who i am. shouldn;t be that hard )

We have extensive feedback from the students at the end of every module or whatever- they gave forms to fill in and rank everyone's performance, and space for free comments. It's hard to sack lecturers, but they are usually moved quietly away into more admin IME. They certainly don't leave people teaching Medicine who get poor feedback. For the module I run I get the feedback from the students and just don't ask people to lecture again if they get a really bad rating. You have to be careful not to fall foul of personal vendettas, of course, but that's rare. Do you really not get asked for feedback?

have forms, not gave.

Is this lecturer the course leader or could you/your classmates approach the lecturers' manager with your concerns?
Dh did a similar thing when he was at uni (admittedly, some time ago now) and the guy moved on/was sacked.
I'm at uni too, and paying a fortune, and we do have feedback forms. However, I would go to the lecturers line manager to make them realise it's not just one person who thinks this about him.

Do you have course reps? I'm a course rep for the MSc I'm doing and before th meetings (held twice a year) I email everyone asking for any comments.

St Andrews University asks students to evaulate all aspects of the course. The lecturers, the tutorials , practical classes, feed back and marking etc.

tbh I think it's too late to do anything that will benefit me, iyswim. The university in question teaches all the course simultaneously - so lectures run through both autumn and spring term - only 2 more weeks to go. I hope taht they seek feedback and maybe do somtheing re next year's students. I just feel a bit let down, so many of the students are self-funded. I raised some concerns about the reading list to someone who is his senior and these have apparently been dealt with - ie he has handed some stuff out 6 weeks too late and accuracy re references is tough shit. There's not really anything I can do now - and one of the problem's is that he's a lovely guy. I suppose at least it's reassuring that feedback forms are standard practice - I wait with baited breath.

We have feedback form but they have caused a lot of problems- the Lecturer took offence at some of the isues raised and got rather angry, nothing though compared to how the angry the student rep became!

We specifically struggle with a technical aspect (by we I do mean the entire class.

I am not sure what they could do next year, but clearly this system is not working at all.