Anger and Angst

My sympathy goes out to a group of students today who through no fault of their own have done a significant amount of work for what appears on the surface to be little reward. To cut a long story short, there were problems with one of the Universitys computer systems recently, and a knock on effect of this means that the assignment these students submitted has now been changed from a summative assessment to a formative one. Additionally it seems likely that some of the assessments yet to come will be re-weighted to account for the weighting lost due to the change of status from summative to formative. A fair result for those who couldn’t submit the assignment, less of a happy conclusion for some of those who did manage to get their assignment in.

Some words to these students before I go any further - No matter what the final outcome of this you haven’t lost as much as it seems you might have at the moment. You have studied the material and learned form it, you have the assignment and answers so you can study further if you need to, make use of these as you would have done had the whole thing worked as expected. Regarding the change of weighting for the rest of the assessments – They will spread 5.5% over another 4 assessments. Nothing will change in the questions you will get, nothing will change in the marking criteria, and whatever you would have scored in that assignment at the old weighting is what you will score under the new. You got a good score for this assessment and you aren’t sure you will do as well over the next 4? – Well the truth is you won’t if you let this episode impact on your learning, put your anger and emotion into a complaint to the university and then move on with your studies. You don’t have very good health and you’re concerned that you may not be as well for the next assessments as you were for this one? – letting this matter impact on you won’t help your health, if your health suffers your learning will suffer, put your anger and emotion into a complaint to the university and then move on with your studies, if you feel by the end of the course that your performance has been affected by this then fill in a PT39 and say so. And I can hear you there muttering because you don’t want the calm voice of reason, you want action, apologies, heads to role, your score back, any or all of the aforementioned – yes I know, and I can imagine were I in your situation I would feel the same. We give a lot of ourselves to our studies and for many of us it isn’t just brain power, knowledge and time that goes into any assignment it’s nerves and tension, angst and anxiety – to go through all that and then find you can’t submit, or your submission won’t count towards your final score must be a real blow for some, quite devastating for a few, rage inducing I imagine for others, I should think between you, you cover a vast range of negative emotions. I’m not trying to give you platitudes, or giving you a lecture about how you should get over it, I’m telling you as a fairly experienced student that if you don’t manage this it will spoil the course for you and may even affect it significantly – get all that negativity into a letter of complaint and then go back to your course, let the mechanisms of the university take over to resolve the situation, and just as importantly to prevent it happening again.

Complain

I love this university; I wouldn’t study any other way or with anyone else. I’ve been an O U student on and off since 1991/2 and in all that time they have never once let me down or given me cause for complaint. I’ve met other students who have had problems, but for me any problems have been either of my own making or the ‘life happens’ stuff.

My current position within the Students Association has given me in insight into more of the problems students face than I had before, and it has given me a certain insight into the systems and procedures in place within the University.

I firmly believe that the relevant departments are doing everything they can to provide an equitable solution for the students I’ve talked about in the section above. I don’t doubt that they will look to put systems and procedures in place to prevent such a thing happening again. I’m positive they are sorry this happened.

I’m less sure of a couple of things.

I’m not sure the University always appreciate how many people are upset/annoyed/de-motivated when problems occur. I know that they have figures about numbers on courses, so in the course I was talking about they know how many students were affected - but that doesn’t tell them how those students were affected as individuals. They rarely get to know stuff like that because we don’t tell them - we sound off in our course forums, we have a moan to fellow students at the next tutorial, we might say something to our tutor, some might even come to the Students Association to voice their anger, frustration, concerns – but we don’t often make an official complaint to record our dissatisfaction and advise them of the impact the event has had on us. If we have a valid reason to then we should complain, we should say how we feel, we should make them aware of the full impact the situation as had on us as a student.

I’m not sure the University appreciate the value of its complaints department. An organisation can learn more about itself from its complaints department that it can from any number of customer satisfaction questionnaires. Satisfaction questionnaires and unhappy events rarely coincide, so even if dissatisfaction is recorded on them it is often softened by the distance of time. Complaints generally occur fairly close in time to the event, they record not only the event itself and what the complainant thinks, they often include either a direct explanation of how the event made the complainant feel, or give a sense of that from the tone, language, etc. A sensible organisation not only analyses the hard data of the complaints it takes on board the softer more qualitative data. A clever organisation makes improvements to itself and retains its customers based on data which includes that available from its complaints department. A really smart organisation actively promotes its complaints department and encourages its customers to use it should they feel a need.

Thinking out loud

I’ve long been a fan of the Internet and for many years now have used it not only as my primary method of communication but as my preferred medium for study, however over the New Year period my wonderful World Wide Web came crashing down around my ears when I lost my connection for nearly the whole month of January. As it happened I was between courses (though I did have some prep work it would have been useful to have access for) so the impact on my education was not as significant as it could have been, but it did make me stop and think. What if I had been mid course? I mean I’m not talking a couple days or even a couple of weeks without access here, but nearly four whole weeks. What if I had actually been on that web applications course that I’d thought of doing over the winter? Four weeks out of a twelve week course is a long time and the chances of being able to catch up are slim to none, even with a full 60 point course losing a month from it can have serious repercussions. And much as I like to think I’m an individual I appreciate that I am not unique. If I can lose my connection for so long then it can happen to other students too; which poses the question – what happens if a student can’t access their course materials for a significant period?

Can they change presentations? Can they plead special circumstances come exam time? Can they have their money back? The truth is there isn’t a simple answer to any of these questions (well apart from the “can I have my course fees back?”). It depends on the course, the time of year (in the sense of how far through the course you might be) and possibly it depends on which way the wind is blowing at the time – which on reflection is quite worrying. Now I’d like to make it clear here that I don’t have definitive answers to any of my questions because posing hypothetical questions to someone at the other end of the phone when the whole set up is designed to deal with concrete problems and situations is fraught with difficulty, and the while the person I spoke to did their best to try and help, the best they could come up with was that every circumstance would be taken into account should the need arise. Reassuring, but not definitive.

So should I be concerned? The university is making its continued push forward with the Virtual Learning Environment, more and more courses have at least an online element, and while I understand that I make my choice to study online completely voluntarily, the choice to do so or not is becoming more and more difficult for many as our university moves into its e-business/e-learning future. While I understand the arguments put forward about the university having to change and adapt if it is to survive in an increasingly competitive higher education market, I also know that in the virtual world as in the real one – life happens.

Student Support Review First Report

A draft copy of the much heralded Student Support Review First Report landed on my desk last week (and many thanks to Mary Kirby for facilitating that).

Wow what a weighty tome it is! I've just finished working my way through it in preparation for the round of discussions that of course will follow its publication and I'm impressed with how much of what it contains reflects the student viewpoint that I know fed into the review process and informed the team behind it. Not that I ever doubted they were listening to us, but it is good to see the evidence of it.

The report will now do the rounds of Senate and the consultative structure where once again the student voice will be able to feed into it - so I do urge those of you on committees to read the report when you get your papers, discuss it with your local student groups, attend your meetings where it will be discussed, and raise your student voice.

The review team have opened a forum on FirstClass called Student Support Review Evidence - it's purpose is to gather additional evidence and comment on the overviews from the evidence website (that isn't up and running yet but I'll provide a link as soon as it is) they are inviting comments from all interested parties (so that would be us then yes? It's our future support structure and mechanisms they are talking about so we're interested in it aren't we?) - if you have anything to say then go along and say it please.

O U S A will also be hosting it's own forum (which will be opening soon and will be located inside the O U S A Matters forum) - this will be more of a discussion forum so that those who wish can feed back to the team of student reps who attend the Stakeholder Reference Group (which is a part of the Student Support Review team consulting structure) can take a wider student view of the first report back to the next meeting. Please do come along and join in the discussions.

Exam Stress

I love our university dearly and am often proud of what they achieve in the way of awards, accreditation by external bodies, and accolades from students. However sometimes, just sometimes I have to hold my head in my hands and give a little cry of despair.

Exam time can be stressful enough for students, but imagine getting to the exam and being told by the invigilators that one of the questions on the paper was no longer available to you as an option to answer and you should strike it through. Worse still, imagine sitting the exam and not being told by the invigilators about the now disallowed question, then getting home relieved that you had survived, only to have a letter drop through your mailbox advising you that one of the questions you had answered had actually been disallowed.

This is what has happened to many students on one science course recently. In fairness they have been told that

"The University has now also put in place mechanisms to ensure an equitable assessment for all students performance in the examination"

But that doesn't alter that fact that a significant number of them were not told about the disallowed question and so answered it.

So far no information is forthcoming from the university about what will be done for these students. I am investigating and will update the blog as soon as I have news

25/10/06
Apologies for the delay folks (my fault not the universitys - they got back to me very quickly but my life got in the way of my updating the blog)
19/10/06
Having heard back from the relevant department of the university (and my thanks for their speedy response), I am satisfied that they are aware of the full situation regarding the above exam, and am confident that when the results are determined they will be done so in a manner that is fair to all students who sat the exam, and that no one will be either advantaged nor disadvantaged.

That’s it folks – fingers crossed that your results are what you wished for yourselves.