What do you do when the student becomes the teacher?

Yeah yeah, unfortunately I'm not referring to that wonderful cliche of martial arts movies whereby the student surpasses the master.

I'm talking about when you are in a lecture at Uni and have a lecturer who not only pauses a numerous points in an explaination, wipes half of it off the board muttering something about "no, that's wrong" and re-writing it with no further explaination, but also states information as fact that is either, misleading, so out of date to have been proved untrue or is just simply, blatently wrong.

Also whose delivery of these lectures leave 99% of the class (aprox 35 people) confused or in a state of misunderstanding; leading to one student (who actually seems to 'get it') to end up on the phone for hours guiding many of the others. Ending up, once the first assignment had been set, running a few 'informal study groups' in the library to help out a significant number of completely baffled students (who are not dumb by any means, just totally at a loss through the lecturer's poor relating of the subject).

Written proof has now been gained of this lecturer's use of incorrect information - even the references she'd said she'd used have supported the fact she's wrong! But, what do you do with it?


In her defence she is trying to teach genetics, which is not the easiest of subjects by any means, and nor is it her speciality. But surely you should at least keep up with the fast moving nature of the subject and do some research into what you are teaching every now and then?

By the way - her main inconsistencies with the real world are with the nature of the mechanisms of the genetic control of coat colour in horses...
... hey - they say there is always someone else on the Org who knows something informative on any given subject...

... I challenge you!

Well it's like this...




No sorry that's not what I meant...





I have no idea.




But that really does sound like the tutor has been thrown in at the deep end due to having covered that subject somewhere in the past. Was she standing in for someone or does she actually teach that topic? Either way a bit of a shambles really. I'd make an informal enquiry as to why she was teaching a topic she was out of date with. If the answer comes back she teaches this all the time, I'd go further and make it a formal complaint. If she was indeed standing in for someone, I would mention maybe she no longer has the skills in that particular subject to do so.

All University courses should have Course Representatives elected from the student body, and these should meet regularly with the Course Leader (or Course Director) in formal minuted meetings. In the first instance, your Course Rep(s) should seek a private and informal meeting with the relevant Lecturer and express the class's concern, but if no resolution is achieved, then the matter can be taken up formally at the relevant course committee meeting. What you shouldn't do is nothing.

sounds like she shouldnt be the one lecturing that course. there will be another academic who is an expert in that subject, find them, and get them to explain it, and explain to them that no one understands the lecture course.
definately let the people on charge know asap.
I had a lecturer who was extremely boring and quiet, to the point where no one listened. we had feedback forms at the end of the semester. next semester he cam back nearly in tears as a result of what we put (all 1/5) but now he is a better lecturer than ever as he knew he had to improve

I would talk with another elcturer and ask them to have a word with that lecturer and get them to either

1) quit their job

2) go back and learn everything

3) get some well organised notes; they may just be unorganised

Hmm I can empathize with you enormously here! I have had this problem this year but for slightly different reasons, my lecturer had the course "dumped" on him because the previous lecturer retired early, meaning this new fella was making the powerpoints the morning before the lecture... Typically the vast majority of what he was trying to get across to us was stats and calculus which involved a lot of board writing and this kept being rubbed out as he kept getting it wrong. It didn't help that his writing was virtually illegible (for e.g. his q's were g's ) and he had a very thick Spanish accent so everything was being pronounced differently. You spent more time concentrating on what he was actually saying than what he was talking about, not good. Nobody had a clue what he was on about and we will be mostly relying on textbooks this Christmas

The only good thing about this lecturer is he does listen to you and actually dedicated a lecture slot to a post-it note exercise where we all had to write bad points about his lectures and how they could be improved, however I think he was just trying too hard. He's one of those guys you just want to hug which doesn't help either!

Anyway sorry I rambled on a bit there. I'm the last person to comment on genetics, I HATE it with a passion, only module I failed in first year I steer well clear of anything mentioning genes and DNA

Does sound interesting though if applied to something vaguely intriguing like horses in your case, I just got so sick of fruitflies and peas

Hope you find a way around it. A*'s idea of chatting to the lecturer sounds like a plan, she may have no idea how the lot of you actually feel about her lecturing, or just not sure how to go about rectifying the situation. Communication is definitely the way forward If we hadn't constantly pointed out the fact we couldn't read what our lecturer was writing etc. then he just wouldn't have got the hint. Eventually we managed to persuade him to make handouts of the maths he was trying to work out, saves us and him a lot of bother!

You're a student! ... Protest!

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

You're a student! ... Protest!

IIRC, that involves several meetings/demo's in the pub first. Sounds like a plan to me!

*apologies for not having much constructive on the thread, been a long while since I was a student.

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

You're a student! ... Protest!

Thought it was mostly hippies who protest? We don't get much of that at our uni, how boring!

[JediGoat]

Call me odd....but I loved the genetics part of my degree. I was rubbish at it, but I loved it

Sounds like she's getting her qualitative and quantitative theories mixed up.

And anyway...part of learning genetics is to get part way through an explanation and then say, "Hang on....I got that entire bit wrong...let's start again". You don't expect it so much from the lecturers though

Jo