
Empty classrooms and frustrated lecturers
Why won’t students come back?
Almost a thousand students had registered for the course on civil law. The law faculty rented a theatre at Pathé in order to fit them all in. In the end, only around twenty people showed up.
Seventy-five students said they’d physically attend the legal aspects of business course. They did so because a total of six hundred students are registered for the course. But during the first lecture, there were only twenty-five people in the room. By the second one, there were only thirteen left.
Physical connection
For two years, student representatives on faculty councils and student unions kept saying that students wanted to go back to class. The lack of personal connections was causing mental problems, and the quality of education suffered. They demanded a rebate on their tuition fees, which they got, because this wasn’t what they’d signed up for.
Students say one thing but do another
But while seminars and lectures are back on campus, students haven’t returned. Lecturers, thoroughly sick of teaching online, remain frustrated. The whole thing is stressful for them, as well. They also miss the connection with students, who often don’t even turn on their camera, leaving lecturers to look at nothing but a black screen.
‘It’s embarrassing’, says lecturer Winand Grooten, who teaches the business course. ‘Students say one thing but do another. There’s basically an echo when I’m teaching these days.’
Assistant professor of marketing Marijke Leliveld is also sick of teaching rows of empty chairs. ‘It’s frustrating that students are using Covid as an excuse to do other things. It’s not like us lecturers are happy about the situation.’
More efficient
So why haven’t students come back to class? Do they no longer want to? Or is it something else?
Psychology student Remo Blauw never goes to class. ‘It’s just a rehash of the material I already read in my textbook, with some added remarks here and there’, he says. ‘Where’s the added value in that?’
Besides, he says, online classes are much more efficient and quicker. ‘I can just stay where I am and continue studying.’
‘Online classes are just so convenient’, says business administration student Dyone Poppe. ‘If you’ve managed to snag a table at the university library, you might as well stay there and watch your class online.’ She does actually regularly attend class, but only to score bonus points.
Far away
‘Students simply don’t want to go to the trouble of coming to campus if they can watch a class online’, says student assessor Didi Ubels with the Faculty of Science and Engineering. She’s basing her assessment on a survey that life sciences study association GLV Idun held among first-year students. ‘Some students live far away and don’t want to come to class because of that.’
Classes are just a rehash of the material in textbooks
On top of that, there is now an entire generation of students that has never known what it’s like to attend normal, on-campus classes. They’ve never even met any of their fellow students. ‘That also impacts their motivation to come back to class’, says Ubels.
‘When I was a student, you’d just get sucked up in the rigamarole of it, which created structure’, says Leliveld. But today’s students have simply never known the benefits of coming to class.
Attendance
There is more to it, though. The way education is organised makes it easier for students to stay away. Many courses did away with mandatory attendance due to the pandemic. After all, you can’t punish students because the government is telling them to quarantine.
But now, students are abusing the privilege, refusing to show up to class because they’re hungover, don’t want to bike through the rain, have something else to do, or simply don’t want to. Their lecturers are frustrated: ‘Not coming to class because you’ve got something else going on is just not okay by me’, says Leliveld.
Then there’s the fact that there are no consequences for students who decide to watch class online. But Derk-Jan Heslinga, lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Business, has a point to make: ‘We shouldn’t think that students aren’t doing anything just because they’re not coming to class.’
Feedback Fruits
Heslinga is part of the programme Feedback Fruits, where he publishes recorded fragments of lectures. It enables students to quickly find specific recordings they need. The programme also tracks how many students do so. ‘The number is higher than you might think’, he says.
I’m often still in bed when I’m watching a class online
During the first week, almost 68 percent of registered students watched the class online. And even though this number declined in the weeks after, it was still at 44 percent by the third week.
He sees this as a good thing. ‘We should incorporate the recording into the learning process. It’s not like students aren’t willing to learn anymore.’
But that doesn’t mean that everything’s fine and dandy. ‘I’m often still in bed when I’m watching a class online and I don’t always catch everything that’s being said’, Poppe admits.
Netflix
The word ‘present’ has suddenly taken on new meaning. ‘It takes just a few mouse-clicks to be present for a class, but you’re really just fooling yourself’, says Leliveld.
Grooten tests his students sometimes, asking a random student marked as ‘present’ a specific question. ‘Guess what?’ he says. ‘I never get a response.’
And that’s the problem: making online classes available for whenever it suits students ‘turns the learning environment into Netflix’, he says. However, this isn’t in the best interest of students, who can easily fall behind. ‘They’ll just end up never watching their classes’, says Grooten.
I’m not going to campaign to get students to come to class
In the meantime, the university is trying to figure out how to get students to come back to class. Ubels and the study associations tried to lure them back with free coffee. That worked a little bit, and students said they appreciated the gesture, but it wasn’t a ground-breaking solution.
It’s hoped that campaigns like these will make students appreciate how important their physical attendance is, not just for their education, but also for their social life.
Consequences
Lecturers are also trying to convince their students that coming to class is important, warning them about the risks of staying away. ‘But I’m not going to campaign to get students to come to class’, says Grooten.
Heslinga thinks reinstating mandatory attendance would be a good strategy. ‘You need to encourage students. When there are consequences, people try harder.’
At various faculties, lecturers decided to no longer make their recorded classes permanently available. Students can only watch online classes live, and recordings won’t be made available until a week before exams start. ‘Recordings should be additional, a rerun’, says Grooten.
However, students don’t appreciate these measures. Several lecturers talk about the multitude of angry emails they received after taking actions that were in their students’ best interests.
And what about the students themselves? ‘I think both sides should give and take’, says Remo. ‘Next year, I do want to attend more classes in person. New year, new me.’
Where is there a poll? Students like myself who wanted to attend in person but had corona a total of three times. Was the pandemic non-existent all of a sudden? Why are the students at the University being infantilized? “Lazy or Netflix” out of how many students opinions did they select these negative reasons for not attending? What about the effects that it had on students who have families who were at risk of exposure of corona? The issue is that there wasn’t a standard to begin with to make sure students felt safe during the pandemic(which is obviously still going). First there were masks and then masks were on. Corona itself and catching it take a toll of you mentally and as a student having to power through catching it and recovering during a semester is extremely hard on someone’s well being and including if a family member catches it, then you had to go into quarantine as well. This article is immensely biased and I hope that the University has a formal discussion amongst students and faculty about what the options are for everyone…not a select few opinions and assumptions of students.
Instead of using a few instances as a reflection of larger problem, I think Ukrant should adopt a more scientific approach. Administer a university wide poll (online polling is easy to administer) involving both students and faculty. Poll should focus on whether online (or in campus) learning is effective and efficient and what motivates us to be on campus (or work online).
I am sure there would be substantial variation in responses. Also, faculty location, type of study, nationality of individuals, and the faculty ambience also could be an issue making campus attendance less (or more) attractive. For instance, I like to work from office even if I have no appointments because I can always go to the nearest foodcourt to grab a coffee, or knock on a colleague’s door to ask something, or work on a much larger display screen etc.
Not sure how it is in different faculty, in ours lecture and tutorials are held on different days of a week. Lecture attendance is usually low, while tutorial attendance is better (especially if there are points for participation). Why not have both lecture and tutorial on the same day? Less trips, better learning, aligned incentives to attend.
And quite frankly it’s quite rude to blame students AGAIN when all they did is adapt to the subpar situation that you created in the first place.
Sounds like it’s their problem for a renting a theatre. Actually it’s their problem for accepting a 1000 student in a course.
Anyway I don’t attend 9am lectures because a 9am once a week is simply inconsistent with my sleeping pattern.
I get the lecturers, I do! I just realize during all this time of online-studying that I am far more effective watching recorded lectures. I can speed it up if I want to and go back when there is something I haven’t quite understood yet. I can rewatch them whenever I want to and I am not bound to a place. Online-university has made it possible for me to do an internship in a completely different city and I really really like the concept. It gives us flexibility and the ability to get more out of the lectures. I remember times where I would rush from one part of the city to another just to sit there and realize that I cannot quite concentrate at the moment… Now I can choose to really focus when I feel like I have the energy for it. Regarding on-campus teaching, I still agree that we all missed interaction and the teaching is a lot more effective in person, BUT not when it comes to lectures as they were never really interactive. Instead, I’m talking about study groups, tutoring, seminars… I am glad that those are back and I would attend even without them being mandatory. For lectures, however, I simply do not see the point. And that comes from a student who DOES watch them all.
I find it very offensive when soms lecturers like the ones being interviewed in this article, think that all or most students do not attend their classes due to hangover or laziness. I have a weak immune system and I have been staying at home to protect myself from COVID for the past two years, no party no going out no flying home for holiday. As a non-EU student, mind you, I did not get nearly as much tuition fee rebate as local Dutch students, while I’m already paying much more and getting much less. If the University can make sure the learning environment is COVID free and safe, students like myself would be able to return to class without being fearful of catching this virus. The fact is you cannot even be certain that all students and teachers are vaccinated. Please stop treating COVID like a cold or flu, people are still dying because of this, like in Hong Kong where I’m from originally.
For the teachers who need a big audience in person in order to feel validated or motivated to do their jobs, just because the students are sitting in front of you with their laptops does not automatically mean they are engaged. A lot of them are browsing other stuff online or chatting on WhatsApp or even watching Netflix or YouTube with subtitles on, you just don’t see it.
I agree there should be a balance and both sides should take responsibilities. However, I also believe if the lectures are interesting and the teachers are great, students who are eager to learn will show up, whether in person or live online. Those who don’t, what does it matter anyway? Even before the pandemic, students did not show up one week or another.
For ukrant, perhaps next time you can interview more teachers and students to get a more objective angle? Quoting just a handful of people does not reflect a very complex situation in my opinion.
Oh and how about building a big enough campus to guarantee housing for students at least for a year like in the USA or UK so that they can literally walk to classes within 5 mins in order to eliminate any ‘excuses’?
I pick up on your last remark: I used to teach in UK for a looooong while and rightly as you say, campuses have students facilities in them, and dormitories to host up to 40-50% of the student population. So technically that should eliminate excuses, you say. Unfortunately the attendance to classes follows similar trends: people come to the first lectures (just like here at RUG), then quickly forget about classes and a lecturer ends up with 15 students in a course of 200.
I am against vast generalizations (“students are lazy” or “lecturers need validation”): the one thing that I KNOW for sure is that, when students make an effort to come to lectures, and lecturers can deliver to their audience in full (well, nearly), a rapport is built, real communication starts and learning really happens quickly
yeah i agree. tbh i find that ukrant features really one sided articles sometimes, especially concerning covid. you would expect a bit more nuance from a uni newspaper but idk
This is the equivalent of reading The Sun. Such a ridiculous article painting students as lazy, hungover, and not putting in effort just because classes can be accessible online.
We still attend, but online. Most students seem to think lectures *are* necessary to learn. Get an actual campus then instead of making us bike all over the city and forcing us to be in class with people who have corona. Of course we have seen now that it is more convenient, this can be said for work as well. Where are the students you talked about who “all want to return to class”? Perhaps our mental health improves from being able to manage our time better. Those who want to attend, still will . Just because the government got of restrictions doesn’t mean anything: the infection rate has increased. More people I know are infected than not infected.
The lecturers who are forcing people into classes just for an audience aren’t effective whatsoever. This won’t lead to higher material retention.
Uni students are adults, so let them make their own mistakes. The ones who don’t come to class due to hangovers or thinking lectures aren’t needed can learn from failure. I thought uni was supposed to be independent but taking away our choice to not attend is basically parenting.