Permanent virtual lectures make a mockery of students
When I attended my first university lecture in 2015, I remember being jittery with nerves walking across campus into the large lecture halls filled with other students. I was excited to learn, but also to meet new people. I looked around as everyone took their seats, trying to get a good look.
As a fresher, the excitement for lectures quickly became eclipsed by the excitement of going out to clubs and flat parties, but I still attended most, if not all, of them.
Having gone from school classes of thirty to lecture halls containing hundreds of students, there were definitely some distractions (especially after having been at an all-girls school). But there was something unifying about learning with so many people, and the lecturers who managed to capture the attention of a room of hundreds of teenagers impressed me.
This week, the University of Manchester (UoM) told students that online learning is here to stay. In an interview with the student newspaper, The Tab, University of Manchester Vice President, April McMahon and Associate Vice President, Dan George, outlined plans for long term “blended learning”.
Blended learning involves virtual lectures accompanied by in-person seminars or workshops. When asked by The Tab if the reduction in face-to-face teaching meant a reduction in fees for the students, the Vice President said: “absolutely not”. Many other universities are said to be following in UoM’s footsteps.
As someone who has experienced both in-person lectures in my undergraduate degree and virtual learning (due to Covid) in my master’s degree, I find this decision completely delusional. Once again, we are letting our students down.
I studied English Literature and as a humanities student, my contact hours at university were around just six hours a week. Seminars were often held by PhD students, whereas lectures were given by professors whose charisma and passion for the subject was a huge motivation to the whole department. Afterwards, keen students would linger around with questions they had been too shy to ask in front of the whole hall or had thought of after the session ended. This off-the-cuff conversation with lecturers helped develop critical thinking skills and challenged the professors too. It seems likely these questions will go unanswered, either left knocking around in the brain of the student who decides it is not worth typing on the lecture chatroom or lost in the busy inbox of the professor. Are we really pretending that email discourse is equivalent to in-person conversation?
Is it not also the lecturer’s duty to connect with students, identify and support those who might be struggling and help challenge those who excel? While seminars still provide an opportunity to do this, the small group size changes the dynamic (and, as I said, they are often not held by the professors). To me, a sign of real academic progression was when I found the confidence to ask or answer a question in front of the whole lecture hall, something that became more commonplace as the years went on. The relationship between lecturer and student is not the same as teacher and student, either. It is more symbiotic. Lecturers should want the opportunity to be challenged on their views and be introduced to new perspectives by each yearly cohort. The absence of in-person lectures will no doubt be damaging to the intellectual progression of the professor too.
In the first year of university, in particular, I lived in halls accommodation with a group of people I didn’t really get on with. Going to lectures was a chance to socialise with different people. On a night out, you might put a name to a face you had seen in lectures and find yourself sitting together on a Monday morning, becoming firm friends. The prospect of only having face-to-face interaction in seminars for a couple of hours a week, with only a handful of people, would have sent me into a spiral of loneliness. According to ONS data, 63 per cent of students reported a worsening of their wellbeing and mental health since the start of the autumn term last year and found that students were disproportionately likely to have experienced loneliness during this period. Surely long-term plans for “blended learning” will only exacerbate this?
As an 18-year-old fresh out from school, lecturers also helped me structure my day, getting me out of my hangover lair of a flat and onto campus. It will be no surprise to anyone who has attended university that a significant number of lectures are skipped out of sheer laziness – imagine how many more will be missed when attending university is just watching a video.
The main argument for blended learning is that it makes higher education more accessible. In fact, the University of Manchester website outlines a major benefit to the learning style as enabling students to “tailor learning around your lifestyle and commitments, like employment or caring for a family.” But even six years ago when I started university, the lectures were filmed and uploaded immediately after for those who couldn’t attend. Making it accessible to everyone surely means providing the options to attend both virtually and in person, not one or the other.
Unsurprisingly, students responded to UoM angrily, with a petition asking the university to let students fully return to in-person teaching. At the time of writing, the petition has over 4,000 signatures. Comments on the petition include; “I’m not paying 9k a year for YouTube videos”, “Online teaching is horrible”, and one comment describes UoM as “using us as a cash cow”. Their anger is completely justified. The “Class of Covid-19” have had an appalling experience of higher education and missed out on some of the best years of their lives. Now the future of their educational experience is being decided for them, with the same old price tag of £9,250 a year.
As the authors of the petition put it, “We chose to come to a university campus to learn, and if we wanted an online degree we would have paid 1/3 of the price to go to the Open University.” It is time universities listened to what the students want, and stop treating them like children 99 per cent of the time and adults when the bill comes.