The Student Room Group

Opinion: University teaching is **** poor

Poll

What is your opinion on University teaching?

Finished first year maths at a Russell group uni

Before I begin, yeah, this is dependent on course and the specific Uni.


For my own experience:

Good amount lectures= wtf.

Literally, 50 minutes of some of them rambling as if there were trying to answer what the meaning of life is, beat around the bush, completely confusing the audience about what the topic was in the first place

e.g, During an ''explanation'' of the image of a set X is f(X), which is a subset of the codomain Y etc etc nearly everyone I spoke to afterwards thought the lecturer was speaking about some new, advanced, never taught before math topic.

When in fact, it was something we have known since school in bloody year 7 and ever so slightly expanded on (mapping elements from the domain to the codomain)

Atm, I am revising vector spaces.

*Looks at notes*

Repsonse: wtf.

*Looks at a youtube video based on the topic which is only 5 minutes*

Response: *light bulb above head is on*

etc



Anyway, I found that school teaching was a lot better. In fact, I have spoken to sixth form teachers who could teach university maths better than the uni itself. Of course, just my own experience.

So question is, how do you find University teaching and how is it for your subject compared to school/sixth form?
Yeah I'm doing my AS levels at the moment and having attended around 3 taster days for various subjects and listening to lecturers giving talks on their specialised subject, school teaching is far superior. I think its because schools have much more inspections and teachers aren't allowed to be bad whereas at uni the lecturers can more easily get away with just reading out a powerpoint jam-packed with text.
Reply 2
I had some poor lessons at uni. The problem is that the lecturers are there because they're experts in their subject and not because they're trained as teachers.
I've certainly had a couple of turkeys who just read their power points word for word. There was also a lecturer who appeared to be drunk or under the influence of sleeping tablets. Thankfully we only had two lectures from him.

But on the whole, my lecturers are engaging and able at what they do.

Incidentally one of my lectures taught me during my access course. He was one of the most able and affable teachers I've ever come across, yet his style of lecturing is very different to how he teaches. Lecturing to a room of 200 people is very different to teaching a group of 10.
Reply 4
They're concerned about getting the basic of the raw data across to a faceless mass of people (regardless of whether that mass is 3 or 300 people). Whether they do with that some humour or whether they show any concern for any particular individuals is voluntary for them.

It can be quite scary to see how different they can be from the pleasant secondary school teacher you might have had.

On the other hand, you might feel that you looking at a genius. And that will also scare you because their genius at that one subject has ended up commanding the attention of generations of students with little wide acclaim outside of that. Whereas your genius at playing Super Mario Sunshine might get a few You Tube comments. And if your genius of a tutor also happens to know about Super Mario Sunshine you will feel even smaller!

You just have to remember that you are an UNDERgraduate.

You're a male model on the side? So what- you're an UNDERgraduate.

Your family fought in world wars and your father is an entrepreneur? So what - you're an UNDERgraduate.

At university you are given a certain amount of freedom in the way that a jammy person who doesn't necessarily deserve to be in the presence of some of these teachers might.

It's not the 60s any more. At least 50% of people now go to university. That's business, that's income by numbers, it's giving a taste of the elite to the mass.

You have to earn your right to be at university by both passing in as good a way as you can and by being interesting in extra-cirricular ways that no-one will force you to do because it might be up to you to come up with new clubs yourself. If you don't want to feel quite so small next to your collosus of a teacher that is. Their presentation is a bit 70s? Well they might seem quaint rather than out of date in a decade or 2. If their knowledge is still revelant they might still be there. So don't necessarily expect universities to be places of innovation in terms of the arts. That's what teenagers in their bedrooms on guitars do like The Beatles. And the universities don't take them seriously enough. That's life. British universities are specific about what they respect. Dead long time academics often. That fan worship is not for everyone even if you happen to like dead long time academics a lot. If you want an education that's a bit less narrow try abroad or your own self teaching.
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 5
So far i haven't had any horrible experiences with lectures. Almost all of our lecturers are good, don't read off the slide and are understandable. Some are enjoyable and most of our regular lecturers try to crack some sort of joke. We have had a few bad guest lecturers but we have a system whereby we rate our guest lecturers and if they aren't rated good they don't come back. St Andrews really lives up to its high student satisfaction in this regard.
I had a few bad lecturers and two **** tutorial tutors. Other than that, I felt I got my money's worth :yep:
Tutorials can be hit and miss since they're run by students in my uni, but apart from the the standard is much better than it was at school.
Reply 8
The quality of teaching is a lot worse, but that said, there's an emphasis placed on individual study. You can see it from lecturers' point of view - they aren't here to spoon-feed. They view you as adults on the same wavelength as themselves.
Original post by Mackay
The quality of teaching is a lot worse, but that said, there's an emphasis placed on individual study. You can see it from lecturers' point of view - they aren't here to spoon-feed. They view you as adults on the same wavelength as themselves.


That argument is hokum; it is just an excuse for poor quality teaching and reducing costs.

I can see it from the universities point of view, they want to apply the minimum amount of effort and cost, while you still pass and they, most importantly, get your money.
You need to understand that Russel Group lecturers are researchers and not teachers.
It's a mixed bag for sure. I had a lecturer for vector calculus, who was.. insane. I sat in his lectures, and he carefully explained every detail, and it was boring as hell as everything he said was so obvious and his arguments were sometimes so simple I thought I could have figured half the course out for myself. Then I went home and tried some problem sheets, realised I knew nothing, and also saw he did similar examples in the lectures. Then the light went on - this guy was boring as hell to listen to, but he was such a good teacher that it felt like he was telling me things I already knew due to his clarity and piecing everything together. Really interested me as he was a damn genius, and I'm sure the way he thinks is reflected in how he teaches.
Although my degree is largely independent, I have found the teaching standard to be half and half.
I think that the junior lecturers are fantastic at my University, they actually seem to give a damn about the students. I've actually learnt more from a PhD student from Kent rather than most of my senior lecturers whom are mostly esteemed academics educated at Oxford or Cambridge. Mind you, that doesn't mean they can teach for ****.
My main issue with the teaching here is the dissertation supervision, mine has been so terrible, I can't even begin to describe the issues surrounding it.
uni teaching is unbelievably crap
if you have questions, they'll either not answer it or they'll give a 1 sentence answer in an email
the quality is astoundingly poor - £9000 a year for this ****?
They're better than most at my uni. Still of course high school teachers were better.

I think it's not very fair unis get £9000 a year from each student but get away with poor teaching. The thousands of students come here to learn and get a good degree. They couldn't give a toss about research. Even the facilities, all most students need is lectures via powerpoint, and a library (and even then a lot of libraries are online giving you the option to view the book online).

I think universities should be more focused on training and teaching individuals rather than research. I'm sure most of the big research/discoveries are done by private firms anyway, not by universities. What people are paying for sadly isn't teaching quality, it's the reputation of the uni as they know this will affect job prospects.
Reply 15
I think I'm lucky in this respect, there are only 80-100 people on my degree program so lecturers can interact with you on a more personal level and make the lectures more engaging with things like Case Studies and Videos.

But I suppose if you're on a bigger course, it's more difficult for lecturers to make them more personal.
Reply 16
Original post by AlevelMaths16
Sooooooooo…………what are you trying to say because I don’t think you understood the questions because dammmnn you rambled a lot.


:hello: can you see the date of the thread in the top right-hand corner of the comment box? this thread is almost 8 years old and the OP hasn't been around in 3 years so probably not getting back to you. please only respond to recent threads :wink:

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