Background Context (for those who don’t know me)
As of writing, I currently teach undergraduate mathematics at the University of Melbourne, spanning subjects from all of 1st year to 3rd year.
I write this a year after my state’s two-year-long lockdowns have ended so I’ve now taught for one summer intensive semester (2023 Jan-Feb) as well as two regular semesters throughout all of 2023.
Observations of Students
I suppose, let’s start with the students, although addressing the 100s of individuals I’ve taught throughout the years as a single collective (especially since some of my past students may be reading this!) seems rather demeaning. Apologies!
Decreased Attendance
Very generally there’s been an overall lower average attendance in the tutorial classes I teach, although this past semester (Semester 2, 2023) one of my subject’s lecturers (of a 3rd year subject) mentioned on an assignment question that only 3 students turned up to one of his lectures (worth pointing out the subject has at least 100 students). As someone who faced a similar situation while lecturing at Deakin pre-pandemic, it’s an incredibly depressing feeling turning up to and teaching to a mostly empty lecture theatre.
Availability of Lecture Recordings
With the lockdowns and remote learning becoming (temporarily) commonplace, and with accessibility/equity considerations in place, having lecture recordings is now an automated process.
However this has the drawback that for lectures which are primarily expository, most students see very little purpose to attending these lectures in person. Traditional maths lectures tend to be this way, where for some, the working-out for lecture examples is purposely omitted from the provided lecture slides to coerce students to turn up so that they also copy down the working as they go. One other justification I’m aware of is that writing down the working themselves also assists in memory retention (in general I’ve seen this sentiment expressed by students who recommend writing out your own notes by hand).
I don’t think the majority of students are to blame here, there are indeed reasons I’d consider legitimate (e.g. >1 hour travel, timetable clashes/inconveniences, balancing study with work and life commitments). Granted, those less forgiving might assume such students to be lazy and/or unmotivated.
Two general improvements I can think of:
- Make lectures more interactive.
Expository lectures have the benefit of delivering a large amount of information at once, but at the cost of interactivity between lecturer and students. It makes sense that with lecture recordings and such being available, there needs to be other (non-coercive) reasons that students can and should benefit from turning up to lectures in person.
For maths lectures specifically this can be in the form of having simple multiple-choice questions and/or short in-lecture exercises where students work on an example similar to one presented in a lecture – I’ve seen such lectures be dubbed “lectorials” (i.e. lecture + tutorial).
A flipped learning model also works well here, where students are provided sufficient material and then come to said lectures with questions/clarifications. However, good flipped learning implementations are rare and needs several semesters of iteration, assume that students are self-sufficient enough to do the required preparation, and also requires lecturers to be familiar with and willing to adopt such a model. - Lectures should still have a concurrent interactive online option, like a Twitch/Youtube stream!
What I found hilarious about lectures given over Zoom in lockdown was just how unprepared the majority of lecturers were for giving lectures over Zoom where students could actually ‘talk’ loudly in the chat at the same time.
Livestreaming isn’t a new concept and was initially limited to the gaming sphere, but now has exploded into mainstream culture where it’s very typical for people to hop on Twitch.TV, browse channels and watch people even streaming things they do in real life. While the audience has reduced interaction with the streamer/broadcaster there’s still ‘just enough’ interaction within a chat (and this can be enhanced by using polls and other interactive tools/games) such that people feel involved. Y’know the trope of the old grandpa yelling at the TV? Imagine if the people on TV was also interacting with their viewers!
The main drawback? Let’s just be aware that the youngest academics/lecturers would be just a tad younger than me (i.e. late 20s) who have probably spent so long specialising in their thing such that learning how to ‘be’ a streamer would be completely out of their wheelhouse. The thing about streaming that seems to be cognitively demanding on a lot of people my age and older is being able to read text at the same time while lecturing, without lots of regular practise.
Tutorials
Maths tutorials where I teach tend to mostly be held in specialised tutorial rooms where there is ample whiteboards all around the room for students to work on the assigned tutorial questions, mostly in groups. I then usually float around and give them feedback but also ask them questions to clarify.
So putting aside the students who do have legitimate-enough reasons for not attending tutorials, there’s also a bunch that also don’t see the benefit in having a regularly scheduled session where an expert is available so that they can regularly do said practise and get feedback on. They may prefer to have the flexibility of being able to do the tutorial questions whenever they desire, especially given that it’s very easy to fall behind on study throughout the semester.
You might ask “Why not just trust the students and give them both questions + worked solutions so they can do the working out on their own and check their own answers?” Here’s the dirty secret: the majority don’t, to their detriment. Any maths tertiary educator will tell you there’s a very strong positive correlation between the number of tutorials that students turn up to, and how well they do in a subject.
And now that I’m seeing decreased attendance at tutorials, very obviously I’m seeing these students do worse on the assignments. And they’re so painful to mark.
As much as I’m generally against coercive measures (e.g. only supplying tutorial solutions at in person tutorials), this is one of those things where from experience I can tell you that the majority of students are not responsible enough for their own learning such that some wool needs to be pulled over their eyes. Much like when parents make decisions for their children.
It’s worth clarifying here that there were exceptions granted to people who really did have legitimate reasons – I had one mature-age student whose work was liable to emergencies, and thus could not guarantee regular tutorial attendance, so I was more than happy to email him the tutorial questions and solutions. Other students had also emailed me with similar requests but I purposely gatekept the solutions until they had sent through working of the tutorial questions, because in the end it’s about doing the work that matters.
Compounding Effects from Impacted Years
Maths is a subject that (unfortunately) builds upon itself all the way from birth. This means if at any point a student’s learning is disrupted or slowed down in any way, it impacts on their ability to learn additional concepts and build atop that knowledge in later years. Additionally if one goes without a period of learning or regularly practicing at some given intensity, then there’ll be some catch up required for one to get back up to speed (this is not exclusive to maths, goes for any regular physical activity/exercise).
So for students who had their lockdown years in high school, now enter university, they’re in for not just the usual first-year cultural shock, but also the shock of having to commit back to in-person classes and stricter scheduling.
And in general I’ve noticed overall weaker mathematical ability and inability to retain/recall concepts from pre-requisite subjects. One significant one that’s been bugging me this year is integration, where in first-year students are taught a variety of integration techniques. However those who hadn’t practised them sufficiently fall very flat in second-year multivariable calculus and differential equations, of which relies heavily on integration techniques.
Final Thoughts
Honestly, it’s been pretty depressing, and the burnout I’ve experienced this semester has been much more extreme than in past semesters. It’s likely that I’m experiencing the same thing that’s causing many primary/high school teachers to leave their jobs: a peak of medium/long-term additional stress that is past a tipping point.
I sincerely wish there could have been something done for affected students but beyond extra work/tutoring to catch up on lost time and effort, it seems that any return to “normalcy” (on top of the aforementioned improvements) is basically “Well we’ll just wait it out for a few years until the next generation of students.”
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