A question for the seniors - teaching

AlanSparrowhawk

Perhaps more suited to a broader education forum.

Just wondering how do those that teach (in this case in TCD) feel about teaching/lecturing? Is it something you really enjoy/are passionate about or is it one of those really annoying things you are forced to do that eats into you time?

TCD puts a lot of emphasis on research and on the metrics they have for productivity (number of articles in journals, the impact of those journals etc.) so does it make it more difficult to be an effective lecturer in the college? Would it make more sense to have people on the payroll who's job is teaching first and research second?

Is it possible to teach, research and administrate (head of school/dept) all at the same time?

Sparks

AlanSparrowhawk wrote: »

Perhaps more suited to a broader education forum.

Possibly; I don't think you'd find too many lecturers in here really.

Just wondering how do those that teach (in this case in TCD) feel about teaching/lecturing? Is it something you really enjoy/are passionate about or is it one of those really annoying things you are forced to do that eats into you time?

All three.

TCD puts a lot of emphasis on research and on the metrics they have for productivity (number of articles in journals, the impact of those journals etc.) so does it make it more difficult to be an effective lecturer in the college?

Only when job performance metrics don't measure standards of lecturing.

Is it possible to teach, research and administrate (head of school/dept) all at the same time?

No, but you can do one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening...

Boston

The emphasis on research is to the absolute detriment of the undergraduate education.

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

The emphasis on research is to the absolute detriment of the undergraduate education.

Actually, it's not; as any physicist will tell you, one of the greatest physics teachers ever was Richard Feynman, who was also one of the more active researchers at the time.

Also, not having an emphasis on research is highly detrimental to postgraduate education.

Not to mention, the way the Irish Government allocates funding is highly dependant on research productivity; so if there's no research, TCD would go from a leading university to a prefab full of rats in the back end of nowhere at an alarming pace.

Boston

Sparks wrote: »

Actually, it's not; as any physicist will tell you, one of the greatest physics teachers ever was Richard Feynman, who was also one of the more active researchers at the time.

Also, not having an emphasis on research is highly detrimental to postgraduate education.

Not to mention, the way the Irish Government allocates funding is highly dependant on research productivity; so if there's no research, TCD would go from a leading university to a prefab full of rats in the back end of nowhere at an alarming pace.

Actually your wrong. What ever about the rare situation whereby great researchers make great lecturers the consistent thing I've noticed down through the years has been that good lecturers don't have much in the way of new research and good researcher aren't good lecturers.

To do 4 hours of lecturing in a week you need an additional 8 hours of prep time especially in the first years of lecturing a course. That represents ~ 40% of a working week. No serious researcher can afford to give up that much time and the ones that do, their research suffers.

You've come out with the classic line about this fantastic genius one in a million physicist who was able to do it all but the reality is that most lectures are just normal people far from brilliant. The one an only worth while metric I'd use is the number of lectures taught by PhD students or Administrative staff. If your a good researcher look to make prof you get out of as much lecturing as possible.

Fremen

Boston wrote: »

To do 4 hours of lecturing in a week you need an additional 8 hours of prep time especially in the first years of lecturing a course. That represents ~ 40% of a working week. No serious researcher can afford to give up that much time and the ones that do, their research suffers.

[...] The one an only worth while metric I'd use is the number of lectures taught by PhD students or Administrative staff. If your a good researcher look to make prof you get out of as much lecturing as possible.

No serious researcher works a thirty hour week. All the up-and-coming guys in my university work nine to seven, six or seven days a week.

We've talked about this before, but your department is the only place I've ever heard of grad students lecturing. It didn't happen at all in maths or computer science in UCD and doesn't happen in my current place.

Boston

How many years can someone work 9-7 6 to 7 days a week, how common is that in general?

It's not just my department that has PhD students lecturing.

Fremen

Boston wrote: »

How many years can someone work 9-7 6 to 7 days a week, how common is that in general?

It's not just my department that has PhD students lecturing.

Don't know. My point is that before you're tenured, you have to work like a dog.

damnyanks

I knew some researchers in TCD who also had to teach (Statistics department). The main issue is that they don't have a teacher / researcher split like some other colleges. Therefore a lecturer is getting paid to publish and they've been request to teach. They don't have course material and frankly they don't care about the teaching. They have to do it , so thats why they are there.

AlanSparrowhawk

Fremen wrote: »

Don't know. My point is that before you're tenured, you have to work like a dog.

Same as almost any profession really.

Boston

Fremen wrote: »

Don't know. My point is that before you're tenured, you have to work like a dog.

True, it's still detrimental to research. Anyone I've known whose had to do lecturing while working on a PhD has said they got very little done besides the lecturing in that period. It's just this thing that eats and eats away at time.

damnyanks wrote: »

I knew some researchers in TCD who also had to teach (Statistics department). The main issue is that they don't have a teacher / researcher split like some other colleges. Therefore a lecturer is getting paid to publish and they've been request to teach. They don't have course material and frankly they don't care about the teaching. They have to do it , so thats why they are there.

They have to do it, but afaik then get paid extra for it. It completely depends on your position though. Like professors have to do so many hours in my department as part of their base pay.

AlanSparrowhawk wrote: »

Same as almost any profession really.

Here's the problem. You may be working like a dog lecturing but your supervisor doesn't care about that. You get no extra benifit from being a good lecturer as opposed to a bad one, all that matters as you said is the number and quality of publications. Try using "I spent the last week making lecturer notes" to your superiors and see how far you get. It's why i don't do labs, tutorials or lecture.

AlanSparrowhawk

Boston wrote: »

Try using "I spent the last week making lecturer notes" to your superiors and see how far you get. It's why i don't do labs, tutorials or lecture.

Well the undergraduates loss is obviously the academic research's gain in this case.

I had a number of excellent lecturers in my undergraduate. By talking to them I got the impression that they spent time making the lectures out for the course (they only thought 3/4 classes at most, a freshmen, a JS and a SS). And every year they'd update them with better references and examples and add in the new material. When it came to the week of the lectures themselves they'd spend an hour or so just preparing for the lecture.

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of senior academics don't actually spend too much time (in my limited experience) in the lab etc. but their research consists of telling their PhDs what do to. I'm not a PhD student so I could be way off the mark here.

Boston

True.

The more senior you get the more time you spend administrating rather then doing new original work. Sitting on board meetings and chasing up grant money.

skregs

i agree with Boston. There are a lot of research-oriented lecturers who dont seem to put effort into lectures and treat the undergrads they deal with like crap.
ESPECIALLY if you question them on anything outside of the pre-prepared lecture.

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

Anyone I've known whose had to do lecturing while working on a PhD has said they got very little done besides the lecturing in that period. It's just this thing that eats and eats away at time.

Actually, the lecturing is fine. Very few people take on large lecturing hour loads - tenured lecturers might have three or four hours at most. And, at least on stable courses, notes are reused. While doing undergraduate engineering, my structural engineering notes are identical to my fathers, who did the same course eight years previously - and when I say identical, I mean the same material, in the same lectures, with the same exercises. Word for word. And it wasn't the same lecturer - the lecturer changed twice between himself and myself doing the course.

Now granted that's civil engineering on a topic that we've been teaching the same way for a few dozen decades and CS courses change more - and when the course changes, that creates more work; but even then, the lecturing isn't the timesoak.

The timesoak is the students - between out-of-class requests for help, arbitration of disputes over marking and other things, that's the real timesoak right there. Suggestions on how to ethically reduce that amount of time would be gratefully received.

You may be working like a dog lecturing but your supervisor doesn't care about that. You get no extra benifit from being a good lecturer as opposed to a bad one, all that matters as you said is the number and quality of publications. Try using "I spent the last week making lecturer notes" to your superiors and see how far you get. It's why i don't do labs, tutorials or lecture.

Then you're not a postgraduate student in CS or Engineering. It's a condition of the stipend that a postgrad has to do a certain amount of demonstrating.

BTW, you're also omitting the role of TAs in all this - theirs is the real pain of a job, they've not only got to take on the hassle of organising all the lab sessions and demonstrator timetabling and so forth, but also cope with corrections and often they get drafted to assist in other areas as well, running tutorials or whatnot.

But at the end of the day, if you have a bad lecturer, it's not because they're prioritising their research - it's because they're bad at their job, full stop. Besides which, you're assuming academics do all the work for their research - which is rather ignoring the point that usually the bulk of the actual grunt work is done by their PhD students.

Jonathan

lol nice username sparks

Sparks

Jonathan wrote: »

lol nice username sparks

Yeah. Pay attention - when the Admins play practical jokes, this is what it looks like

Boston

*Lil' Miss Sparkles* wrote: »

Actually, the lecturing is fine. Very few people take on large lecturing hour loads - tenured lecturers might have three or four hours at most. And, at least on stable courses, notes are reused. While doing undergraduate engineering, my structural engineering notes are identical to my fathers, who did the same course eight years previously - and when I say identical, I mean the same material, in the same lectures, with the same exercises. Word for word. And it wasn't the same lecturer - the lecturer changed twice between himself and myself doing the course.

Now granted that's civil engineering on a topic that we've been teaching the same way for a few dozen decades and CS courses change more - and when the course changes, that creates more work; but even then, the lecturing isn't the timesoak.

The timesoak is the students - between out-of-class requests for help, arbitration of disputes over marking and other things, that's the real timesoak right there. Suggestions on how to ethically reduce that amount of time would be gratefully received.

Thats very poor. You see it all the time, lecture notes being handed down from one lecturer to another over the years. Just leads to outdated and irrelevant material being taught to students. Maybe you can do it with first years because the material can't be that much beyond leaving cert level, but real third level courses need to be kept up to date.

A lecturer who never updates his notes, never does coursework, never provides feedback and ignores students outside hours is pretty ****e in my book, but that's what the majority I've encountered are like, especially in Civil, which is one of the reasons it has such a crap reputation as an undergraduate course.

Then you're not a postgraduate student in CS or Engineering. It's a condition of the stipend that a postgrad has to do a certain amount of demonstrating.

Lol, just lol. Don't even get me started on that one, it's another thread made up entirely of rage. Some people on stipends get paid to demonstrate, some supervisors pull strings so their students don't have to and some like moi got stuck doing them for free along side people who where also on stipends getting 32 euro an hour. And if you think my supervisor or any other supervisor in my department ever accepted "I was doing labs" as an excuse for letting PhD work slide, think again.

BTW, you're also omitting the role of TAs in all this - theirs is the real pain of a job, they've not only got to take on the hassle of organising all the lab sessions and demonstrator timetabling and so forth, but also cope with corrections and often they get drafted to assist in other areas as well, running tutorials or whatnot.

If by TA you mean PhD student, then yes I know all about it. I did it once and I still hate the second year engineers.

If by TA you mean Lab assistent, then you're having a laugh. That work in done by the PhD students CS and Engineering.

But at the end of the day, if you have a bad lecturer, it's not because they're prioritising their research - it's because they're bad at their job, full stop. Besides which, you're assuming academics do all the work for their research - which is rather ignoring the point that usually the bulk of the actual grunt work is done by their PhD students.

Lecturing, researching and Administrating are completely different things, it's not fair to expect someone to be good at all threee. Thats where things just start to fall apart.

Jonathan

From what I have seen so far, I would have to agree with the lecturer quality to research quality inverse relationship.

Boston wrote: »

I did it once and I still hate the second year engineers.

you too.

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

Thats very poor. You see it all the time, lecture notes being handed down from one lecturer to another over the years. Just leads to outdated and irrelevant material being taught to students.

Boston, that's ridiculous. You might as well argue a classics student shouldn't be studying Plato because last year's classics students studied him as well.

I did point out, didn't I, that computer science and some engineering courses change from year to year as things are updated? But things like structural analysis are at this point, "stable". In other words, they don't change much.

real third level courses need to be kept up to date

What great step forward has there been of late that requires that we teach basic truss analysis differently? I mean, if this was the 1700s, you would be seeing the courses change annually - because at that time, civil engineering was where computer engineering is now.

A lecturer who never updates his notes, never does coursework, never provides feedback and ignores students outside hours is pretty ****e in my book

See, you're hearing me talk about getting a suntan, and thinking of someone being sprayed with a flamethrower...

My point wasn't that "students are a pox on humanity" - especially since everyone in college is a student, at one level or another from undergrads to the provost, and if they don't think that, they're doing it wrong.

My point was that you budget for a certain amount of time for a course. X hours for lecturing, Y hours for prep work, Z hours for corrections (often farmed off to TAs in larger courses like the undergraduate engineering courses), and so on. Part of that is time you block off for dealing with student queries outside of lectures, labs and tutorials - the walk-in queries. But those blocked-off hours aren't the timesoak - the timesoak are the students who decide they don't recognise office hours. And you can't block off time for arbitration of disputes, pretty much by definition.

The thing is, I can't think of an ethical way round that really. Well, the out-of-office-hours thing for walk-ins is just slappable, but the disputes thing is something you just have to do.

But the rest is just time management - anyone who's ever worked in industry (in CS at least) learns to do that the hard way. Balancing twenty tickets from six different major clients in a small startup firm makes college time management look as hard as melting jelly, really.

Lol, just lol. Don't even get me started on that one, it's another thread made up entirely of rage.

Go for it. You think you're the only one with rage stories on that one?

And if you think my supervisor or any other supervisor in my department ever accepted "I was doing labs" as an excuse for letting PhD work slide, think again.

Boston, I've had to change supervisors for my PhD. As in, applied to do so (for those who don't know, that's a Big Deal in TCD, or at least it was at the time. Divorce would have been less of a Deal). Trust me, I get the "bad supervisors" argument in spades. But someone who's bad at their job is just bad at their job - it's not down to external factors.

If by TA you mean PhD student, then yes I know all about it. I did it once and I still hate the second year engineers.

Amen brother. 2E3?

If by TA you mean Lab assistent, then you're having a laugh. That work in done by the PhD students CS and Engineering.

No, I mean TA. Demonstrators are demonstrators.

Lecturing, researching and Administrating are completely different things, it's not fair to expect someone to be good at all threee. Thats where things just start to fall apart.

I think it's a bit of a "Pick two" scenario really, with a large pinch of "Know thyself". I've seen people be good at one; I've seen them be good at two. Three... three is when your time management skills should be screaming "WHOA".

However - I've also seen folks who were only doing one of those three make a complete horse's posterior of the job as well. I don't buy that bad performance is purely down to taking on two of those things at once.

Boston

Advances in teaching technique would at the very minimum require notes to be kept up to date. The basics of an FM radio system haven't changed but there's certainly been advances in how to teach it.

Lecturing is a time sink, regardless of what way you look at it.

I'm not saying my supervisor is bad. Why should my supervisor accept "I was teaching Labs" as an excuse? You're running a research group why would you be happen that your PhD students and PostDoc's time is been taken up like that? Especially if someone on a stipend and not even getting paid for it. And before any starts on the "that's what the 8k is for", trinity benefits from every-time I publish something as a PhD student, every bit I've IP I produce the college has a stake in.

In essense I don't think alot of people can be good at even one of researching, administrating or lecturing. The exceptation that people should be good at two as part of the Job is unrealistic give how many people are needed.

I can be a good lecturer, a good researcher and a good organiser, I know this, but If I try to do more then one of those an once I fail at all.

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

Advances in teaching technique would at the very minimum require notes to be kept up to date.

Yes - but there's not really many of those, beyond the kind of blue-sky academic research in that area that shouldn't ever be deployed in a live environment where people's degrees are on the line, not until they're completely tested.

Lecturing is a time sink, regardless of what way you look at it.

Well, I look on it as being an investment in the next wave of academics myself. Like I said, lecturing's not a timesoak, you get a return on it. It's the dross around it that soaks up time for no real reward.

I'm not saying my supervisor is bad. Why should my supervisor accept "I was teaching Labs" as an excuse?

See, that is saying your supervisor is bad. "I was teaching Labs" is not an excuse - it's a mandatory, required activity in the college. If your supervisor is making out that it's an excuse, he's a bad supervisor. If he doesn't want you teaching labs, it is his job, not yours to arrange that exemption. Not doing so and then giving you a hard time about your duties as a demonstrator is nothing more than managerial incompetence.

You're running a research group why would you be happen that your PhD students and PostDoc's time is been taken up like that?

Immaterial. Your PhD students and postdocs do not dictate college or school or department policy - what you describe is like blaming the dishwasher because the restaurant isn't open for business at three am.

In essense I don't think alot of people can be good at even one of researching, administrating or lecturing.

I'll offer no argument there, as I've witnessed firsthand that that's true
I'm just saying that that's a function of them, not of the job.

but If I try to do more then one of those an once I fail at all.

And you know that, and so you won't try it.
That's a good thing.
It's the people who don't know that; or who do and don't give a darn about it. Those people are why this false debate shows up a lot. If those people were more professional, then the lecturing-vs-research question wouldn't arise in the first place.

Boston

The problem is the non mandatory hours. When I was working with the first years it was easily an hour prep for every hour of face time plus all the extra hours which where not mandatory but definitely required. Thats the whole point. It would have been easy to do a half assed job, the bare minimum, but in order to do the job right you had to go beyond the mandatory and that's where problems arise. Lecturers like TAs get paid (or not in my case) for every hour of face time so there's no incentive to be good at the job, all it does is cost you more time.

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

Lecturers like TAs get paid (or not in my case) for every hour of prep time

Er, no, we don't. You're paid per hour spent lecturing, and it's explained very openly right at the start that for every hour spent lecturing, you can expect to spend up to six in prep and post, unpaid.
It's up to you to manage that time demand. If you can't, it's up to you to not take it on.
Postgrads are a different story because the department has a claim on their time. Bullying them the way your describing is not only incompetent, it's unacceptable.

Why have I got this awful feeling I could tell you your supervisor's name from the description you've given?

Boston

My error, meant face time.

My supervisor wasn't bullying me, but rather supported me when I highlighted irregularities in how the department was treating students and shared my concerns that there was an unfair burden being placed on students who the department could get to work for free.

AlanSparrowhawk

Poor academics have it so hard. :(:(

Boston

I was kinda thinking that its the undergraduates who have it hard, shrug.

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

My supervisor wasn't bullying me, but rather supported me when I highlighted irregularities in how the department was treating students and shared my concerns that there was an unfair burden being placed on students who the department could get to work for free.

In that case, is there even a problem? Or is he supporting you by not accepting that you had to spend mandatory time demonstrating?

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

I was kinda thinking that its the undergraduates who have it hard, shrug.

Meh. Everyone's got static, it's just a different channel. I enjoyed being an undergrad, even during the stressful parts. I had a harder time as a postgrad until my supervisor was changed, and after that I was in a bit of a tailspin. Going out to industry did me a lot of good, not least in that it taught me the hard way that any boss, be it academic or industrial, will try it on to get more from you than they're entitled to; and that it taught me that there's only so much a boss is entitled to, and they have to pay for that much. Coming back in after those few years, it's a completely different experience than when I was in here first.

It's not as simple as declaring you won't take any guff, btw, lest I sound too much like I'm leading SIPTU It's more that you learn that there is, regardless of what your boss believes, an entitlement to a certain basic level of treatment. Mind you, I see a few academics in here even today who could stand to learn that. On the upside, I see far, far more who knew it at a visceral level the same way we know gravity. It's a shame we don't explain this to people starting PhDs and MSc work, instead of the dry advice to "choose your supervisor carefully".

Boston

*Lil' Miss Sparkles* wrote: »

In that case, is there even a problem? Or is he supporting you by not accepting that you had to spend mandatory time demonstrating?

Deadlines are deadlines. You need X done for Y date. I missed the deadline because of doing labs gets old and it gets old fast.

Sparks

Boston wrote: »

Deadlines are deadlines. You need X done for Y date. I missed the deadline because of doing labs gets old and it gets old fast.

Yes, but while deadlines are deadlines, projects are projects. And project management 101 tells you that you don't set a deadline that the available manhours won't let you reach.

If your deadline assumes that you'll shirk your demonstrating duties, then the person setting that deadline is incompetent.