A video by a professor for only their class is akin to the single-copy, handwritten book disseminated to just one room of people, says David KellermannMarch 8, 2021David Kellermann
Suddenly academics became video editors – mostly bad ones – and our students turned to YouTube, because on YouTube you can get a better explanation of the same thing (for free I might add). Universities turned from communities of learning and collaboration into B-grade content providers. This is the death march of higher education. Universities are not content providers. Somewhere along this unplanned journey we lost our way.
(quote from linked article – see URL above)
An interesting article being shared by my colleagues working in Education. There is a lot of frustration in different university contexts, relating to institutional demands and expectations relating to teaching academics using technology for teaching, recording and thereby creating a resource, owned by the university, for which the producer, the teacher/academic, is not in control of. Another consequence is that as a sessional/casual/contract staff member, our work (or our performance) is not rewarded beyond our per hour of ‘teaching’ wage, and the fear is, that we will no longer be required and hence, no longer earn an income from our work.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/dead-professors-course-alerts-faculty-covid-era-rights
I have colleagues who are forced to record their seminars, raising the question of who then ‘owns the content & IP’ (the corporation), which is not negotiated or remunerated, At the moment, working with UniMelb, we do not record our seminars and there is an 80% hurdle attendance requirement. This would seem very harsh to my last two HE employers – we need to be ‘flexible’, students need to be able to access lectures/seminars in their own time, we couldn’t possibly ‘force’ them to attend when it suits us. I’m sure there are studies out there, but in my humble experience, as soon as that expectation is removed, not only does attendance drop, but even ‘views’, engagement with materials and any kind of useful discussion all drop. And not only that, this is recorded by the Technology systems now in place. (Very interested if anyone can recommend any research in this area).
As a case in point (which I’m sure is familiar to others), I taught in a core unit for an education subject in 2015, at a particular university in Melbourne, with over 300 students enrolled. I had a weekly one hour lecture which was recorded and made available to students doing the course. I never had more than 20 people in the lecture theatre, which dropped to around 4 – one of whom was a note taker for a student with a disability. I thought that was ok until I found out how to check how many students had watched the lecture on line. The numbers consistently dropped week by week. Worse than that, it became clear that students did not even view the full hour. (This is from memory, I think I’m still in shock and humiliation…)
Yes, there were take-away messages from this experience, and I might have improved my ‘style’ since then, but this seemed to be foreboding for the future of university learning, effort and engagement. I know that my planning was good, multi modes, engaging content, opportunities for discussion … but what could I do to get students to attend? ‘Good’ students passed their assignments because they knew how to respond appropriately, and not so good students struggled, but few failed. What did the content of the lectures even have to do with passing the subject, which was the main consideration of most students?
I may have crossed over a few topic areas here, but here in 2021, working with UniMelb (atm), all online zoom seminars, the students I’ve been working with have been overwhelmingly grateful, enthusiastic, engaged and collaborative . It is still online (not recorded) but I’m hopeful and no longer having to feel the kind of humiliation I did in my memory above. I’m looking forward to considering more about what students want, and what we as teacher academics, are willing and able to provide. And developing my competence at facilitating learning through online platforms.