University Contact Hours

[kelby_lake]

Yes, it's true that English (and Arts for that matter) have less class time (lecture, seminar, tutorial &c.) than sciences - but profs (at least as far as I know) exist outside of class. Office hours is a widely adopted policies that students are too lazy to take advantage of. And when the face to face contact fails, email is something profs are heavily invested in.

Even though I only had 3 hours/week of class with one particular prof, I was very often at his office hours - talking about the book, or (one in awhile) seeking help for an essay.

The contact hours are never very long though. I think my lecturers have four a week (2x 2 hour sessions).

[kelby_lake]

I don't think that is a problem here in my school, I at least don't hear anyone complain. I just don't find spark notes more helpful than reading and analyzing a book on my own.

this first quote from the piece is bothering me:
'The other day I sat in a two-hour seminar on an 800-page novel and began to despair about studying English. The novel was a set text for an exam and that seminar was the only one we would have on it. I decided, yet again, I'd probably have to turn to SparkNotes.'

Is this person complaining about only getting a two hour seminar on one book? That not being enough, having to rely on sparknotes... If your getting a literature degree you should be able to read a book and analyze it well enough to take an exam.

I know I don't want more contact time. But I have other complains about school so I guess there are problems everywhere.

You should definitely have more than one seminar for an 800-page novel, particularly if it's a set text for the exam.

[Lokasenna]

An 800 page novel is rather a lot to cover in a tutorial, but then there was a module at my alma mater that had Clarissa as one of the novels on it, and which was to be discussed in a single tutorial. At around 1,600 pages, that seemed to me to be an exercise in stamina, if nothing else...

The other thing we get here, as well as students moaning about a lack of contact hours, is a few students moaning about having part-time teaching assistants rather than 'real' academics leading their tutorials. I think my students like me (I certainly get good feedback), but I know some of them get a little bit frustrated with some of the other TAs. I even heard of a group of students who had made a pact not to say anything in tutorials run by a TA as means of punishing them, and letting their displeasure show. Obviously, this is both a ridiculous and selfish course of action - but amazingly some (though only a very few) do take part in such daft things.

[YesNo]

Some TAs can be a pain. Some professors are even worse.

I wasn't a TA for long and that was long ago. From my limited perspective teaching business algebra to freshman, the best thing that could happen would be for the students to not say anything. However, I can see how this silent treatment could be annoying if you are trying to get a discussion going.

The main complaint that I heard was that too many TAs couldn't speak English well enough to do their jobs effectively.

[OrphanPip]

If a group of students decided to boycott a conference I was leading I'd quite happily give them failing grades for the conference. Although I haven't heard of anyone doing that kind of thing here, undergrads like to blame the TAs for their poor performance rather than their own laziness. The TA is often their go to scapegoat.

[kev67]

I was reading an article about contact hours in the Times Educational Supplement. The jist was that students could either have a small number of close contact hours with tutors, or a larger number of hours in classrooms or lectures. iirc the article pointed out:

• The Open University had the lowest number of contact hours (often none) but the highest satisfaction rating.
• That in many American higher education establishments, the ratio in hours per student spent in individual learning to hours taught was 0.7 ( I think. I might be 1.7).
• A student at Oxford University spent an average of eleven hours in individual learning for every hour spent with tutors.

I suppose at that level, students should be mostly self-teaching. Lecturers should be there to point them in the right direction, set assignments and exams, and mark them.

[Shevek]

An 800 page novel is rather a lot to cover in a tutorial, but then there was a module at my alma mater that had Clarissa as one of the novels on it, and which was to be discussed in a single tutorial. At around 1,600 pages, that seemed to me to be an exercise in stamina, if nothing else...

The other thing we get here, as well as students moaning about a lack of contact hours, is a few students moaning about having part-time teaching assistants rather than 'real' academics leading their tutorials. I think my students like me (I certainly get good feedback), but I know some of them get a little bit frustrated with some of the other TAs. I even heard of a group of students who had made a pact not to say anything in tutorials run by a TA as means of punishing them, and letting their displeasure show. Obviously, this is both a ridiculous and selfish course of action - but amazingly some (though only a very few) do take part in such daft things.

That's stupid - you're only hurting your own grade in that case if, like at my school, tutorials are graded for participation. I've only ever been on the student side of tutorials, but in my program TAs are there to facilitate discussions about the lectures and assigned readings rather than offer direct teaching (this should be obvious from their job title). I've had some unhelpful TAs, and excluding a particular one their poor performances were always the result of a poor professor who overworked them or didn't give enough guidance. The flustered looks on their faces and stress of not being able to answer a student's question made it quite obvious there was a communication breakdown between them and the professor. It also makes them an easy target for the usual undergrad complaints about not doing well enough on an assignment. Who's to blame for the bad grade: the stressed-out MA candidate or the arrogant professor who discusses his research and accomplishments in every lecture?