Expect The Worst/Best/Whatever.

An interesting article today on university expectations for first-timers.

It is quite correct to say that new students believe they will be getting more teaching hours than at school. I cannot count the number of times I have been told – by students – that they do not get enough hours in class. Every time I have to explain that at university students are expected to take charge of their learning as part of of, um, the learning process.

This suggestion usually causes consternation to appear on their faces as they try to reconcile the fact they are paying for having just a few hours of contact time. Usually the complete the interaction cycle by saying, ‘well, we need more hours’.

Well, this coming year they will be getting more hours, at least at my university. The powers that be have wanted to head off complaints, possibly so they can increase fees later in the year. It will be interesting to come back to this topic this time next year to see if indeed expectations have improved.

Nevertheless, more contact hours for students will have an impact, and not in the way they envisaged. As students will be gaining extra hours on their timetables, they will need to be accommodated for longer on campus. Given that most students now have jobs with long hours, they will have to give up some of those paying hours to be sat in a classroom. This will cause problems, particularly for those with children as the teaching day stretches out to 6pm.

There will also be problems in terms of keeping them in a subject group for longer. You might think that a two hour session now stretched to three hours would occur at different times. Not so; it will be a block of time. That means being faced by one person for three hours, even if there is now time to have say, two lectures split by a practical session. The average attention span of a student is 15 minutes these days, so that is going to be a problem for all concerned.

Another issue is commensurate with the paid work of students. If we are to allow them to still take up gainful employment, we will need to timetable their ‘longer’ classes for a few days to allow them to do full days work – the preference for our students. This naturally means that the days they are in campus they will be sat in classrooms for most of the day.

I for one have one day where I get a single hour free during a 9am to 5pm period. That means any comfort breaks must be taken on the run. You might consider that I will at least be able to eat lunch. However, you need to remember that students who have to spend all day on campus are also those who need tutorial help while they are no campus.

And so, I do not envisage being able to eat lunch that often. It is another action I shall have to carry out on the run; perhaps eating and toileting together in order to save time? As long as I remember which hand I am using, I should be OK.

Someone/institution with foresight would have made school visits in order to explain how university works; but who am I to suggest this? All I do is stand in front of classes for seven or eight hours a day.