27th March 2017
What do you do in lectures? Sleep? Watch Youtube? Catch up with social media? Maybe you listen? Make notes? Talk?
I have put the latter in because for the first time, students have been complaining about the conduct of other students in lectures – and in particular talking. It is annoying for us as lecturers too. More generally it is very easy to see what people are doing – even in triple E (building 32 room 1015) our largest lecture theatre. I wish I had a pound for every text or whatsapp message sent from my lectures – and putting the phone on your lap while texting doesn’t hide much!
We can also tell when someone is making notes on a laptop and doing other things – such as email or even other coursework. My favourite example of this is a student – many years ago and not in our Faculty – who was doing a maths assignment on the front row desk right in front of me. Unfortunately for the student, I was able to deal with that by showing where he was going wrong in that assignment in front of 200 plus students. He was suitably embarrassed and I like to hope never did it again.
But this raises the point of what we as lecturers should do? We assume that everyone attending is being professional – what would Lord Sugar or the Chairman of HSBC say if you did that in a meeting? How would you respond if the lecturer was marking exam scripts for another module in your lecture?
If there is an issue; such as you can’t hear or understand what the lecturer is saying, make sure you speak to your course rep who can find out how many students feel the same and whether it can be raised with the lecturer in a polite way. Too often we receive last minute messages from students trying to decipher their notes when they should have said something in a more timely way!
So make sure you attend remaining lectures and classes, if you’re still with us next academic year, start term with the intention of going to everything – and when in lectures behave professionally and ensure that you engage with the module effectively.
Thanks for reading,
Dr Roy Edwards, Lecturer in Accounting and Finance