Week 9 - Perception and Communication

Week 9 – Perception and Communication

When I was at sixth form one of my business studies teachers left on maternity leave and a part time teacher was hired to fill in. My initial business teacher was laid back and left you to your own devices after the lesson plan was explained, and talking was allowed as long as it was mostly work related and as long as the work was completed on time. The new teacher however was quite the opposite, he was very strict and made sure silence was kept in the classroom at all times, the lesson plan was very structured and the new teacher would spend a lot of the time explaining every last detail instead of us researching it ourselves. Classmates and I were often told off and disciplined for talking and we had to attend a few lunchtime detentions. From going to one extreme to the other in teaching styles it was hard to adjust too, and the majority of the class including me took a disliking to the new teacher. We all liked our initial teacher and had got used to being able to talk in class and be involved in a more laid back environment. As the year went on the teacher got more laid back and adapted his teaching style to our group, through talking to us he learnt that letting us discuss the work would be mutually beneficial. We then started to do important pieces of coursework that had a strong influence on our grade, and because our new teacher was very structured he helped us all through it and really got on our backs to make sure we got it done. The group and I then gradually started to get along with the new teacher and we were all sad to see him leave after our old teacher returned from maternity leave. To avoid making this mistake in the future I’ve learnt to give people more of a chance, and if we’d have discussed the no talking rule to the teacher sooner the problem could have been solved much sooner. So I’d definitely be more patient next time and look at possible situations to resolve the problem as opposed to sitting there and just dealing with something that I don’t agree with. 

Three ways in which the university can improve its communication with its students are –

1. ·         Keep up to date technology wise – Technology is forever changing and the university needs to keep its communication channels current. The university currently emails students with news about the university or lecture details (time changes, room changes, cancelled lectures etc). And not all students check their emails. A system could be put into place where by text messages are sent out to alert students about cancelled lectures or other important information. Students all check social networking sites like twitter or Facebook more often than emails, so important information could also be sent out on those sites.
2. ·         Keeping the personal touch – I’ve found that personal tutors at the university don’t do enough to get involved. I’ve only seen my personal tutor a handful of times and although I know that if I need to see someone about any uni related problem I can email my personal tutor and sort something out. However I think that personal tutors could turn up at the end of lectures and ask if everything is okay, this way they’d get to know their students more and they’d be more likely to open up to the personal tutors and discuss any potential problems they may have.
3. ·         Cutting down on mass emails. The university send out big group emails to all students even if they aren’t relevant to your course. This just makes students not want to check their emails from the uni because the majority of the time its not related to their course. This should stop as students might not check important emails from the uni as they might think its just another email that’s not relevant to their course.