why is the quality of Oxbridge lectures so bad

I watched lectures online and they were so boring they damn near put me to sleep. Why do the lecturers suck? It's like they were pulled from the grave to teach.

I have to study it myself afterwards, and I don't really learn that well from any lecture process anyway (despite learning via sound mostly, damn unpredictable memorizing patterns!). The subjects I don't like learning on my own correlate very well to the ones with bad lecturers.

I really don't see what's so unbelievable about someone watching lectures online when they're increasingly accessible. That, or given how much students seem to love bitching, that someone would find the lectures they saw boring (even though I bet they weren't).

Exactly. To this day, I'm still pissed off by the fact that I'm a bit weak on certain topics because of poor teaching style/teaching attitude/lack of consultation time and most of the time, I ended up self-studying it 100% on my own in the cafe - and that's really effective isn't it?

Unfortunately I do a subject (medicine) requiring self-memorization in all subjects, and lectures really just delivering material, so ALL my lectures require that self-study :P But I agree that bad teaching is not a good start to motivation.

So who were these boring online lectures taught by, and on what subjects?

Links please, partly because I doubt you watched any, and partly because I would like to if you truly had.

Then way pay them if they can't teach properly? Why assess the lecturer if the Uni thinks that they are not aiming for better quality in education but more for research? Here's the thing; you'd be utterly naive if you think most UG students will benefit from the lecturers' research. UG students are there to learn fundamental things from their degree; not something brand new that's out of this world. Therefore, if these educators can't even deliver basic content, then the question becomes, why pay them in the first place if all you do is study it yourself? Moreover, if you actually read research papers in education, universities basically provide a service - just like your nearest shopping mall. You pay these Unis to teach you something; and if you don't like it, or think it's utterly pitiful, then you have the right to ask for a better service, hence a better educator. That's why they have the quality assurance board.

There are various academic papers out there that are trying to improve education in University; even for the Sciences. Your reasoning is based on high school or your peers dogma where ;"I'm at Uni, doesn't matter if the lecturer is bad or not, I should learn by my own - 110%" - ineffective and basically you've been ripped-off.

I think you'd be one of those people that would read slides or just skim through it if you were to be an educator in Uni. Better skip your class.

They are there to teach students. Not only to do research. You can complain if you don't like the lecturer(s) way of teaching.

I think the bolded text is often overlooked by people - lectures often have an over important view of their own research, and almost always these are too specific and just unimportant to providing the wide overview required for an undergraduate degree.

For introductory modules in a degree I can see why having teaching-only lectures might be useful. However anything above that requires more in-depth mastery of a specific topic. Which is why active researchers in that field are used - they are up to date, and equipped to answer student's questions, and misconceptions that a general teacher could not.

Then why pay them if they can't teach properly? Why assess the lecturer if the Uni thinks that they are not aiming for better quality in education but more for research? Here's the thing; you'd be utterly naive if you think most UG students will benefit from the lecturers' research. UG students are there to learn fundamental things from their degree; not something brand new that's out of this world. Therefore, if these educators can't even deliver basic content, then the question becomes, why pay them in the first place if all you do is study it yourself? Moreover, if you actually read research papers in education, universities basically provide a service - just like your nearest shopping mall. You pay these Unis to teach you something; and if you don't like it, or think it's utterly pitiful, then you have the right to ask for a better service, hence a better educator. That's why they have the quality assurance board.

Your attitude is right, but it's an attitude that people at Oxbridge, at least, are in many cases only just coming round to. There was an article this week in the Cambridge Student asking why we never question the quality of our lectures and suggesting that there ought to be a separate qualification they need in order to lecture and teach. Unfortunately, though, at present the lecturers' ability to lecture just isn't seen as that important. Hence why you end up with a crazy genius in a room lecturing to two people because no one else bothers to turn up. The majority of an academic's work, particularly here where the holidays are so long and the contact time isn't huge (though it's very high quality), is research, so they are hired on research. Universities are about research more than they are about teaching, or at least that's what most academics I've spoken to have thought. Teaching is indirect research... it's to nurture future researchers... to do research. The above poster who mentioned Oxford is right about Cambridge, too. The lectures in arts subjects aren't a large part of the course for a lot of people. Some people go to them all, I've been to about 4 this year, because I don't find them as efficient as reading on my own (partly because I drift off...). The real learning here in arts subjects is done on your own or in supervisions.

I have to disagree about the benefit of research to undergraduates, though. In some subjects where there's more of a cumulative learning style this might be true (you can't get at cutting edge maths research until you understand all the rest of it... I think someone told me they're up to about the 80s by 4th year maths at Cambridge, but I may be wrong, and he was slightly joking), but I do philosophy and I've definitely benefited from the research of my supervisors. A lot of my work is based on papers which have come out in the last few years, and on unpublished work which I've discussed with supervisors. I don't feel like we're here to learn 'basic content' at all. You learn basic content on your own from books, you speak to academics to learn the cool stuff...

Though we did used to have a ridiculously pointless lecture series on logic in first year that was all basic stuff... the guy just read out his book, so it was way more useful just to read the book in half the time. (Said lecturer no longer teaches for *cough* legal reasons.)

I do PPE. Most lectures are intended to be a brief overview of the topic and for this the Politics and Philosophy lectures are excellent. It's possible to get the gist of all of first year politics just from the lectures. Philosophy was too slow for my taste; an hour's lecture wouldn't cover much in depth or breadth. Economics is far worse though. Asides from 'Micro overlord' Ian Crawford, the lectures are terrible. In second year we had lectures on basic differentiation and integration, I kid you not!

How terrible is terrible mind me asking?

Nope, it honestly does sound you're fishing for negs, otherwise you'd have phrased the question in a much less confrontational and obviously superlative manner. e.g.:



And to answer: yes, some of the lectures I have attended have been dire, as in literally not worth going to. And some of them have been excellent, riveting and truly insightful. Most are in between somewhere. And like previous posters, I do agree that lecturers are generally hired on the basis of research instead of teaching skill, and TA-type positions are rare.

We accept as a matter of course some lectures are going to be ****, but the supervision system really does provide an excellent second layer of teaching that helps cover any deficiencies in lectures.

Of course, it actually does depend on the content of the lecture itself. I actually have fallen asleep in some 9AM Maths ones before.

The lectures were ridiculously disappointing. It's not as though I was expecting to leap out of my seat with joy at the end, but they show no passion for the topic. Look at harvard cs50 or the justice series. They bring you into the lesson. The oxbridge lectures look horrible for those within the room and for those watching online.

The lectures were ridiculously disappointing. It's not as though I was expecting to leap out of my seat with joy at the end, but they show no passion for the topic. Look at harvard cs50 or the justice series. They bring you into the lesson. The oxbridge lectures look horrible for those within the room and for those watching online.