Incompetent Lecturer

Tiddlypeeps

Hi, I wasnt sure where to post this to get the best answer. I figure lecturers that post in here might be able to tell me.

What is the standard procedure if most/all students fail or do very poorly in a subject in a third level course?

I don't know if this will make a difference, but several formal complaints have been lodged about the lecturer in question by a few of the students.

peanuthead

Not many lecturers have permanent positions I believe, so I would imagine that if you make a complaint it would be taken seriously. It's not like school at all. These things get dealt with if the uni cares about their reputation

dlofnep

We had a lecturer who was part-time, and never taught us anything in class. His reward? He was made permanent. Nothing ever really comes from it to be honest. They will say you should have reported it earlier in the year, rather than at exam time.

cbreeze

If a lot of the students don't do well, then this would be noticed by the people whose job it is to monitor the quality. The class should complain, through the student reps, to the head.

Tiddlypeeps

We have made complaints earlier in the year, to the lecturer himself and then to higher ups when no changes were made.

The main thing I am wondering about is, if everyone fails or does badly its all well and good if the lecturer looses his job, but do we still all fail or get terrible grades even tho it was not our fault. Is there a system in place to handle this kind of scenario?

peanuthead

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

We have made complaints earlier in the year, to the lecturer himself and then to higher ups when no changes were made.

The main thing I am wondering about is, if everyone fails or does badly its all well and good if the lecturer looses his job, but do we still all fail or get terrible grades even tho it was not our fault. Is there a system in place to handle this kind of scenario?

no I think you all still fail

If you have a feeling this is going to happen, you need to either put some work in yourself or get extra help Im afraid. No point sitting there waiting for it to happen and then looking for it to be fixed afterwards

Tiddlypeeps

peanuthead wrote: »

no I think you all still fail

If you have a feeling this is going to happen, you need to either put some work in yourself or get extra help Im afraid. No point sitting there waiting for it to happen and then looking for it to be fixed afterwards

Im not sitting waiting for it to happen. I would be in the top few people in the class for grades, i'm doing as much work as I possibly can and im still in huge danger of failing.

I guess myself and the rest of my class will be repeating the year so. I just hope they take our comments on board and get rid of this guy, otherwise the amount of repeats will just keep stacking up till there isnt enough places to cater for everyone.

Pat Mustard

Get your class reps to make a complaint on behalf of the students to the Head of the Degree/Course programme. Otherwise, they should probably complain to the head of the faculty. They need ask for this guy to be replaced.

This happened when I was in college. A useless lecturer turned up and gave maybe 4 or 5 lectures in a particular subject. He was not a permanent staff member though. This guy had never been heard of by us before. He was unclear and incompetent. Complaints were made by the reps. The lecturer was replaced in fairly short order. The replacement was about as good a lecturer that one could ask for - he made quite a dry subject very interesting.

Monotype

It depends on the college, but sometime you can't do anything about it. I had some terrible lecturers. One guy turned up to less than half the classes. But there was nothing we could do about it as he was well respected and the college probably thought they couldn't afford to lose him.

Another guy was terrible and kept failing half the class every year, so they got rid of him, as it looks bad to have that many people failing.

You just have to put up with it for the most part as students' union, mentors, course heads etc., don't really care as long as they're being paid. I know this sounds bad, but it was the situation for my undergrad. You have to ask yourself if this module will affect the final degree score; can you avoid the lecturer in the future by choosing alternative modules and can you learn off the paper.

Tiddlypeeps

Monotype wrote: »

You have to ask yourself if this module will affect the final degree score; can you avoid the lecturer in the future by choosing alternative modules and can you learn off the paper.

It most definately will, we have the lecturer for two modules, both of which are heavily CA based, and this is my final year.

Fol20

I used to have a Chinese lecture who used to speak like yoda in star wars,to put a longstory short over half of my class fail(luckily i wasnt one of them) ..Nothing happened and he still teaches,iv heard he blamed it on the attendance but sure not many went to his class because we couldnt understand him

rizzla

A while ago back when I did a PLC cert course one of the lecturers would neglect our class and rarely if ever turn up as he was more involved with a HND project for another class.

Days he did turn up, most of the class wouldn't as they'd assume he wouldn't be there as usual.

The majority of the class filed complaints and in our assignments we made reference to why certain parts of our work was unfinished or broken.

We all got a passing grade at the end of the year, even if our work was not up to scratch and those who's projects were great got the relevant grade.

I don't believe anything happened to the lecturer but the subject was removed from the course content the following year.

smcgiff

Fol20 wrote: »

I used to have a Chinese lecture who used to speak like yoda in star wars,to put a longstory short over half of my class fail(luckily i wasnt one of them) ..Nothing happened and he still teaches,iv heard he blamed it on the attendance but sure not many went to his class because we couldnt understand him

You sure it was the lecturer's fault?

Blushingblue

I had a lecturer in second year of college where he never worked from any book, or gave reference to one, and he refused to give and let us take notes. He just came in and talked about the subject and had no sort of system in place of what topics we were going to learn.
At the Christmas exams, I think our average mark was 37% and he wondered why we failed!

We complained about his teaching methods to him and to our Class head with nothing done about it, except he coming back to us angry for complaining about him to someone other than him. So most of our class refused to turn up (I think at one stage he had about 7/8 of the class who regularly turned up out of the 100 of us). Some of us went to another class (different lecturer ,same subject), who was going to be examined with us on the same subject course, and asked for the notes, sample questions and some course outline and we did the work ourselves. I don't know the average, but my friends and I all got results in the 50%-60% range, but there was many who failed.

We heard, when we reached 4th year, that every year had complained about him so much and numbers in his class were so low and many choosing to move to different modules, that they asked him to give all classes notes and something to reference too.

But it did take a few years of complaining to get it done. We heard many of the classes previous to us also had complaints about him and nothing being done!

dan_d

Grading on a normal distribution curve happens. It's a good thing you lodged complaints however, as this will contribute to the grading.