Who's at fault - student or lecturer?

melancholly

3plus1 wrote: »

I do not think that it's fair to throw blame on lecturers when you haven't worked hard, and you need a scapegoat, but where they have been truly shocking and you've tried your best to take official action but been thwarted by the powers that be, yes, I think you have a damn good case to be unhappy!

that's entirely true - i don't think anyone would disagree. what gets really really really annoying is listening to people whinge on and on about poor lecturing standards after they get a poor mark. if a lecturer is really poor, then complaints have to be made through the proper channels. when students don't do this, but then want to compain afterwards, it's very difficult to take seriously!

melancholly

studentphil wrote: »

It seems crazy to me that the university professor/ lecturer should be the only job in the world where quality is not important. If you give a lecture and no one understands it then I can not see any other way to put it than the quality is sub standard and failing in its objective.

at all universities that go into annual teaching assessments (i.e. pretty much all of them!), you should geta form at the end of every lecture series where you give feedback. this information forms part of the national league tables of universities. you can give feedback there, anonymously, that has to be listened to.

these feedback procedures serve as a very important quality control mechanism, but lots of students don't bother to return them or fill them out properly.

there are mechanisms, but far too often, students choose not to follow them and then complain after the fact.

studentphil

melancholly wrote: »

that's entirely true - i don't think anyone would disagree. what gets really really really annoying is listening to people whinge on and on about poor lecturing standards after they get a poor mark. if a lecturer is really poor, then complaints have to be made through the proper channels. when students don't do this, but then want to compain afterwards, it's very difficult to take seriously!

When you become a lecturer as long as you really help people and don't pass the buck and say it is not your job to help people then you will do fine and have no worries.

Tetsuko

Voyager2002 wrote: »

All posters above have made a common but fundamental error: they assume that it is the job of a lecturer to teach students. Wrong: the job of a lecturer is to do research. Students are responsible for their own learning, although lectures, library facilities etc may be provided in order to assist them. The task of giving lectures is a minor part of a lecturer's job: giving lectures well does not lead to promotion, and giving poor lectures is unlikely to injure a lectuer's career. It is about time that students grasped this fact, and accepted responsibility for their own learning.

Do I get a refund for my uni tuition fees then

melancholly

studentphil wrote: »

But you forget Britain is new to the university game. Most of Europe, however, has had many universities for many 100s of years and they were places of teaching first and foremost up until about 150 years ago.

so now we're meant to take what happened in germany/holland/spain etc 400 years ago as a guideline for how british universities should work now?
it's well thought out arguements like this that will have led to your degree mark!

studentphil

melancholly wrote: »

at all universities that go into annual teaching assessments (i.e. pretty much all of them!), you should geta form at the end of every lecture series where you give feedback. this information forms part of the national league tables of universities. you can give feedback there, anonymously, that has to be listened to.

these feedback procedures serve as a very important quality control mechanism, but lots of students don't bother to return them or fill them out properly.

there are mechanims, but far too often, students choose not to follow them and then complain after the fact.

They don't listen though, you get a thank you for bringing stuff to their attention and then next year things are just the same, it just shows they don't listen to students.

somethingaboutshopping

PixiePie wrote: »

EG - Lets take a marketing module of a business studies degree. At the start of the course, you get the course handbook. This says you will be doing unit 1010 Marketing Level 1, covering: SWOT analysis and The Marketing Mix (it's a very short course this one). In lectures the lecturer will go over what these are. But that's not the entire be and end all of the subject. You have to go read up, using the recommended texts for that unit, in more detail, and find real life working examples to gel in yuor head how they work. The assignment is then to do a SWOT and Marketing Mix for XYZ brand. So off you go and get all the relevant details of xyz brand from your own research and apply what you have been told in lecture and what you have further read and understood to the case in hand. If you have attended the lecture, gone and read further and tried to understand but do not, it is up to you to go to your tutor and ask for clarification of (for this example eg) what is the difference between the S and O of the SWOT - you think it is this, but not sure. It is not up to them to ram everything down your throat.

Hope that helps

Couldn't agree more! I'm at (apparently) one of the best business schools in the world and one of the top 3% in Europe... if you buy into all that.

Anyway, my personal experience is that I have achieved at the very worst high 2:1 marks in all but one class, which i struggled to pass. Spoke to both the lecturer and the advisor for the business school but didn't expect the method of delivery to be changed just for me.

Also, my uni attracts students from all over the world, particularly China. Chinese students, in my experience find the language an obvious barrier as well as the cultural norm that they would consider it rude to ask someone they perceive to be in a position of authority to go over something they have already covered. And yet the Chinese students I am friends with also get either high 2:1s or 1sts. I guess you just need to identify a weakness in your ability and work on it. Bring it to the attention of your faculty if need be, but I think, especially for interprative subjects like marketing that as Pixie says, you go off and truly live your subject. Bring it to life, and analyse it to death. As far as I know doing the basics also gets a pass, but to truly excel you have to take what you know and think; what is my opinion on this and what do I think futher contributes to it and where can a gap in the theoretical knowlegde be criticised.

Some lecturers are different to others, but I'm sure there's a thread running somewhere with lecturers discussing how some students are different to others...

studentphil

melancholly wrote: »

so now we're meant to take what happened in germany/holland/spain etc 400 years ago as a guideline for how british universities should work now?
it's well thought out arguements like this that will have led to your degree mark!

I am just saying that universities are historically set far more in teaching and now teaching is second best to the RAE, which seems a change for the worse as students are left confused, struggling and with little help.

melancholly

studentphil wrote: »

When you become a lecturer as long as you really help people and don't pass the buck and say it is not your job to help people then you will do fine and have no worries.

as long as the students come and ask for extra help in office hours, the lecturer has to help. if a lecturer isn't available in their designated office hours, students should complain to their student representative who can bring it up in an official meeting. then the individual complaining isn't named.

there are systems in place to help students - but you have to work with the system rather than complaining outside of it.

i think poor teaching is a bad thing. however, there is a difference between a lecturer whose style doesn't work for a few individuals and a lecturer who should not be allowed to teach.

it just saddens me that the default reaction seems to be 'if i didn't get it, i wasn't taught properly'. i spent my first two years at university stuggling with the subjects i chose. other people walked out of the lectures understanding everything - i walked out without a clue! so i went to the library and worked - asked lecturers for what references i should look at to help me. i could have sat and whinged that i didn't get it, and that it wasn't my fault, but i was genuinely too embarassed to let on that i was doing worse than most of people on my course. it seems that if i was at uni now, i'd be in the minority!

melancholly

studentphil wrote: »

They don't listen though, you get a thank you for bringing stuff to their attention and then next year things are just the same, it just shows they don't listen to students.

in the nicest possible way, you do seem to complain a lot, so perhaps they just don't listen to you?!
if an entire year rated a lecturer as bad, the university would act as it would really make them drop in the league tables. it might not be that they are acting for the 'right' reason - i.e. to keep teaching quality high - but they would still do something about it.