More contact hours - what to do with them?

I often read on TSR that students don't have the contact hours with staff that they expect, be that for lectures, revision, one-to-one support etc. I've been working in a uni for a few months now and I'm wondering what is expected from an increase in these hours?

Lecturers at my uni have recently been complaining that they've held revision sessions for the summer exams and only a handful of students turned up - sometimes none. I've been sharing an office with five members of teaching staff since the start of the year. The same dozen students are regular visitors. Apart from that we rarely see the rest of the cohort, despite all staff having set hours each week for student one-to-ones, and most accepting random drop-in chats whenever possible.

Students on TSR - and at my uni - are complaining that they're not getting enough contact time. But when offered it at my uni, most don't seem inclined to use it - and yet will still complain in surveys that they don't get enough of it.

I'm interested in what people actually want from their contact time with staff. Is it a different type of communication or teaching? If so, what? How can unis make this better? Unis clearly need to change, but at the moment, mine can't get a clear steer from the students as to what it is they need, because the students don't seem to know and can only give vague answers about more contact time and better value for money. What would that be for you? What would you want?

I often read on TSR that students don't have the contact hours with staff that they expect, be that for lectures, revision, one-to-one support etc. I've been working in a uni for a few months now and I'm wondering what is expected from an increase in these hours?

Lecturers at my uni have recently been complaining that they've held revision sessions for the summer exams and only a handful of students turned up - sometimes none. I've been sharing an office with five members of teaching staff since the start of the year. The same dozen students are regular visitors. Apart from that we rarely see the rest of the cohort, despite all staff having set hours each week for student one-to-ones, and most accepting random drop-in chats whenever possible.

Students on TSR - and at my uni - are complaining that they're not getting enough contact time. But when offered it at my uni, most don't seem inclined to use it - and yet will still complain in surveys that they don't get enough of it.

I'm interested in what people actually want from their contact time with staff. Is it a different type of communication or teaching? If so, what? How can unis make this better? Unis clearly need to change, but at the moment, mine can't get a clear steer from the students as to what it is they need, because the students don't seem to know and can only give vague answers about more contact time and better value for money. What would that be for you? What would you want?

I'm a history student at the University of Warwick, and I would love for a 1 hour and a half seminar instead of one hour, I feel sometimes it goes too quick (sometimes starts a tad late and we could benefit from a longer duration)- in 3rd year seminars are 2 hours long, why not apply 1 hour and a half to 2nd year?

I often read on TSR that students don't have the contact hours with staff that they expect, be that for lectures, revision, one-to-one support etc. I've been working in a uni for a few months now and I'm wondering what is expected from an increase in these hours?

Lecturers at my uni have recently been complaining that they've held revision sessions for the summer exams and only a handful of students turned up - sometimes none.
I've been sharing an office with five members of teaching staff since the start of the year. The same dozen students are regular visitors. Apart from that we rarely see the rest of the cohort,despite all staff having set hours each week for student one-to-ones, and most accepting random drop-in chats whenever possible.

Students on TSR - and at my uni - are complaining that they're not getting enough contact time. But when offered it at my uni, most don't seem inclined to use it - and yet will still complain in surveys that they don't get enough of it.

I'm interested in what people actually want from their contact time with staff. Is it a different type of communication or teaching? If so, what? How can unis make this better? Unis clearly need to change, but at the moment, mine can't get a clear steer from the students as to what it is they need, because the students don't seem to know and can only give vague answers about more contact time and better value for money. What would that be for you? What would you want?

I often read on TSR that students don't have the contact hours with staff that they expect, be that for lectures, revision, one-to-one support etc. I've been working in a uni for a few months now and I'm wondering what is expected from an increase in these hours?

Lecturers at my uni have recently been complaining that they've held revision sessions for the summer exams and only a handful of students turned up - sometimes none. I've been sharing an office with five members of teaching staff since the start of the year. The same dozen students are regular visitors. Apart from that we rarely see the rest of the cohort, despite all staff having set hours each week for student one-to-ones, and most accepting random drop-in chats whenever possible.

Students on TSR - and at my uni - are complaining that they're not getting enough contact time. But when offered it at my uni, most don't seem inclined to use it - and yet will still complain in surveys that they don't get enough of it.

I'm interested in what people actually want from their contact time with staff. Is it a different type of communication or teaching? If so, what? How can unis make this better? Unis clearly need to change, but at the moment, mine can't get a clear steer from the students as to what it is they need, because the students don't seem to know and can only give vague answers about more contact time and better value for money. What would that be for you? What would you want?

I'm interested in what people actually want from their contact time with staff. Is it a different type of communication or teaching? If so, what? How can unis make this better? Unis clearly need to change, but at the moment, mine can't get a clear steer from the students as to what it is they need, because the students don't seem to know and can only give vague answers about more contact time and better value for money. What would that be for you? What would you want?

I can only echo your points above.

In my experience as a lecturer, the vast majority will not come to seminars or office hours or do the formative tests I set. And then they complain about not getting enough contact time and feedback!

I suspect what they would like is lots of small group teaching with set questions that count every few weeks (and no exam at the end). So basically like school with modular exams. I don't think that's good at university level though.

But I would also love to hear students articulate what they would like.

I think some of the issues with office hours are that a fair few of the lecturers I went to see just didnt seem to want to spend the time explaining the problem to me (I always email my specific issue ahead and explain I have tried to use the recommended textbook already so they know what my issue is a 1-2 days before the office hour)

Smaller tutorial groups would be great (like at oxbridge I guess) as I found it first year its allowed me to not only understand individual concepts and bits of maths but how they link to other areas of physics (which I found improved my understanding even more)

Likewise having examples of marked work at different levels from previous years available so that students are clearer about what a first *looks* like. I know some universities and some lecturers do this but it'd be good if it was recognised as best practice and encouraged.

So much this. What lecturers are looking for in a first class essay is often kind of mysterious difficult to pin down. When we started our dissertations our dissertation supervisor sat down and handed out five or six example dissertations then asked us to guess what grade each one got. That was a really helpful exercise.

when I was at university I found I learned the most in small group revision sessions a group of us organised ourselves.

We sat down for half an hour to go through the module spec and past papers to identify which topics were likely to be on the exams, dished those topics up between us and then went away for a week to pull together the notes, papers, references etc on those topics and write an "ideal" essay answer (refining 4 pages of A4 down to 2 (or 1 in note form)) for that topic (in a way that was broad enough to cover a lot of different questions on the same topic with a bit of tweaking).

Then we got back together and *taught* each other the ideal essay we'd put together (including any mnemonics for remembering key points or structure or logical flow). The rest of the group would listen, ask questions and add in comments/improvements to end up with a bunch of perfect revision materials - 1/4 of which you'd know absolutely inside out and the other 3/4 were presented in a way that was easy to work from and remember.

It meant that we were revising by talking about our subjects, and by listening to other people, and by writing and by reading...which was much more effective for me than just reading.

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Just generally I think what seems lacking from a lot of university work is the opportunity to get feedback on coursework while it is in progress. There's a tendency to send students off to produce a piece of work in isolation, submit and then get feedback after the fact. Having an interim stage for all coursework to have a draft marked/read through in office hours would be brilliant for helping people who are struggling to move up to the next level.

Even if that was just peer support/feedback with supervision from the academic staff that would be a real boost (although there's a risk it would give an extra opportunity for plagiarism so it might need to be managed somehow with drafts submitted in some way) but then learning how to work collaboratively without cheating is something that should be developed at university IMO - it's certainly important in the real world.

Likewise having examples of marked work at different levels from previous years available so that students are clearer about what a first *looks* like. I know some universities and some lecturers do this but it'd be good if it was recognised as best practice and encouraged.