Asking staff to teach both online and face to face will tear them apart

Lecturers are being denied the flexibility they are compelled to offer students, despite being more vulnerable to the virus, says an anonymous academic

Published on
October 1, 2020
Last updated
October 1, 2020
Lecturer in classroom, half pixelated
Source: Getty (edited)
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Reader's comments (10)

#1 Submitted by k.s.... on October 1, 2020 - 12:21am
Well instead of ranting about your workload why not get on with doing your job ! Also some of your exagerration does not help your case: "In addition, we have to create online introductory videos for each week and offer extra resources for students who might miss a week, requiring months of extra work." Surley you should have enough material or knowledge to do some interesting material for students without it requiring extra months of work. I manage to produce interesting new material with relatively little extra work and so shuld most academics. So stop moaning and whinging and try to give the students the best possible experience.
#2 Submitted by D.dunn-... on October 1, 2020 - 8:21am
Being kind to our colleagues and students takes very little effort and can have a huge effect in supporting the sector through the pandemic.
#3 Submitted by phelanc... on October 1, 2020 - 8:50am
Maverick2, I am going to assume that you are the line manager of this anonymous author. Get the job done at all costs is your mantra.
#4 Submitted by drraug on October 1, 2020 - 9:34am
Experienced professors write textbooks over a course of several years, sometimes decades. It's is of course nice to hear you can create some materials in a couple of hours. But it is for your students to decide how helpful and interesting these materials really are. All academics I ever worked with agree that creating teaching materials is a major time investment. Creating video recordings may be particularly time consuming since many academics were never doing anything like this before, and don't instantly know which equipment and software to use. Finally consider that most of us are not lucky enough to have a spare room in a house to convert it as office and studio room. University administration expects us to travel between our home offices and university premises to deliver both online and face to face sessions, sometimes several times back and forth each day. Excellent teaching is delivered by frontline academic staff, and our wellbeing is absolutely critical to excellent learning experience of our students.
#5 Submitted by inuk on October 1, 2020 - 9:35am
Your comment suggest that you are not an academic. Perhaps you are also very stressed. I cannot find other possible explanations for your very unkind comment.
#6 Submitted by Erica Sheen on October 1, 2020 - 2:30pm
An extraordinarily illiterate comment. 'Relatively little extra work' speaks volumes here.
#7 Submitted by fss1@... on October 1, 2020 - 4:51pm
Maverick2, I am an experienced Academic (since 1980) and the arguments given in this article are all sound. This is not a rant and yes, the Academics are being asked to do (much) more with less. Research does suffer and teaching quality too. It is simply not possible to have face-to-face using University rooms and maintaining the 2m distance unless we give the same lecture 4 or 5 times to 1/4 or 1/5th of the cohort. Preparing good synchronous and asynchronous lectures does take considerably more time than simply showing up in a Lecture Theatre with 200+ students and delivering a lecture. To add insult to injury, due to several factiors (including the disastrous handling of the A-level results) several UK Universities accepted more students than their capacity. That means more money in fees, of course (so University administrators are happy), but someone has to teach these inflated classrooms and, I repeat, unless Universities buy, rent or build Lecture Theatres that are 4-5 times bigger, we will have to deliver the same lecture several times to smaller cohorts to respect the 2m distance. Put yourself in the shoes of lecturers and think.
#8 Submitted by beach dog on October 2, 2020 - 6:19pm
A number of senior academic administrators have a simple response to the complexities of teaching in this pandemic: "You don't have to work here".
#9 Submitted by connie_nolan53_googlemail_com on October 4, 2020 - 7:41pm
Senior management are stressed because most universities face financial problems yet dealing with the pandemic requires more cash input- extra cleaning, signage, etc. They’re passing the stress down the line. What we need is openness and honesty with students- they’re not going to get a university experience. Universities have overheads that online providers don’t have so demanding refunds isn’t tenable.Make most courses online and don’t offer face to face teaching.
#10 Submitted by DrNuts on October 5, 2020 - 9:04am
It's all about the money. Now the students have paid their tuition and hall fees, senior management seem a little more relaxed. Sadly, they simply don't care about the wellbeing of teaching staff. It's a disaster waiting to happen in terms of long term health implication for older lecturers (like myself, 63).

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