Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 339)
MONDAY 30 MARCH 2009
MR GREGORY
ANDREWS, MR
DAVID CHILD,
MS VICTORIA
EDWARDS, MS
MEAGAN PITT,
MR JUN
RENTSCHLER AND
MS SALLY
TYE
Q320 Mr Boswell: And it is well-prepared
when you do meet them.
Mr Andrews: Basically I submit
my work and they comment on it, but I get a precedent study every
week, at least one, so they have done their research on my project.
They also communicate between each other so if one person was
not there they would know how far I have progressed in between.
Q321 Ian Stewart: That is in architecture
studies; is that the same experience across other studies?
Ms Tye: In history we get voluntary
tutorials and they are working to implement it more within the
department. I did not realise for my first year and a half that
I could go with my essay question and have a tutorial on it; however,
once I did my grades improved dramatically. I actually pushed
this in a meeting and they are actually working now to implement
it. Basically you have the option of a tutorial for every single
piece of work you do, and that is one-on-one for as long as you
need the help. Also you can email them and they email you back
and things like that, so they are very accessible.
Ms Pitt: In terms of law you are
welcome to go and see any tutor, in particular if you email them
during office hours, and that is something I found very helpful
in terms of one-to-one. However, in terms of seminars, because
there tend to be quite a few of us in a seminar—
Q322 Chairman: Give us a number,
ten, 15?
Ms Pitt: I would say between 15
and 20, not that everyone always comes, but it is around that
number. It would be more beneficial if it was more than an hour
because I often find myself not being able to ask all the questions
that I want, and even though I could go to them at a private time
I would just forget the question. It would be more beneficial
if they extended that hour seminar.
Q323 Ian Stewart: Is that because
you are stimulated by the larger group?
Ms Pitt: Yes, it does encourage
discussion which does bring up more questions so I think we need
more time.
Q324 Ian Stewart: Are you taught
by research students, higher degree students or part-time tutors?
Ms Pitt: All of them are lecturers
in the seminars and they are very good at their jobs I have to
say, especially considering that coming from school to university
it is a big step between independent study and being spoon-fed.
That was the most difficult thing for me, I think, so it is important
to have a teacher that has the right balance between knowing what
they are saying and being able to say it in a way that I understand.
In terms of that balance they are quite good.
Mr Child: I would just like to
comment that the staff in the school of technology are very approachable;
if you need to speak to a lecturer you can just go to their office
and speak to them, they are more than happy to let you stop them
during a lecture and ask questions and have a discussion. The
thing that probably stands out for me the most is that my twin
brother did an undergraduate degree at Bath doing electronic engineering
and he was very much surprised that when I refer to a lecturer
I refer to them by their first name. This is something that was
quite alien to him, you do not do that; the classes were a lot
bigger for him and you just did not have that one-to-one contact
and that personal relationship with the lecturers, which I guess
I have taken for granted because I assumed that was the norm,
but clearly that is not the same everywhere.
Q325 Chairman: Victoria, what is
your experience?
Ms Edwards: We are a small cohort;
we were 14, we are now 13. We have five tutors and because midwifery
is such a practical subject half our course is spent in practice
hours either at the John Radcliffe, the Horton or in the community.
They are all tutors who have a long background in midwifery, they
are all practising midwives themselves and also they have the
whole academic side of it to bring to us as well. Out of our cohort
of 13, ten of us are mature students so the midwifery tutors are
particularly tuned in to our needs as mature students—the
majority of us have children and families. It is not that that
means we are asking for special treatment constantly, but we bring
something different to the course and our needs are slightly different
as well. We have a personal tutor who is responsible for all of
us through the whole three years, so we can approach her at any
time, and because we are a small group with a small group of tutors
we know the tutors very, very well and we can contact them via
email, we have their mobiles and we see them and only them in
our lectures so it is good.
Q326 Chairman: Can I just follow
up on that really across the piece, but you do not all have to
answer this. When Glen and I visited a university in London a
number of the students expressed concerns to us about the feedback
they got in terms of their academic work, and this was an issue
I raised this morning with some students from Oxford University
and from the colleges. How do you get feedback to know on your
examined work whether you are making process rather than just
getting a mark or a few ticks, which is what I used to do? What
do you get in terms of feedback that actually improves your performance?
Jun?
Mr Rentschler: I have to say that
I am quite dissatisfied with the feedback. I do not know how it
works in the other schools but in the business school in the first
year I submitted some work and I got I do not know how many per
cent but it was quite good, say it was 72 per cent. The lecturer
told me it is a good piece of work so I said "There is one-third
missing, where is it?" and she said "You cannot score
better than 80 in the first place" and I said "All right,
what is missing then?" She said it was just the general impression
or something like that and so I could not improve anything; I
did not know what I did wrong, I did not know how to improve my
work, and that has been similar throughout the last two years.
Compared to my school education at home in Germany I think it
is quite surprising that you have hardly any real possibility
to see your exam work, for example. If you do not know and you
cannot do your exams afterwards where is the point in doing exams
if you do not know what the mistakes are and what to learn from
them?
Q327 Chairman: Any other comments
on that?
Ms Tye: I have had a very different
experience. On every single piece of work—we usually get
a piece of work midway through the semester and then at the end
of the semester and we get the cover sheet marked with all the
different requirements and what mark we have got with comments
at the bottom. Usually on an essay we have to go for a tutorial
to pick up our work and they go through it with us as to what
we need to do. If we have done a presentation then usually at
the end of the presentation we get feedback on exactly what we
have done wrong and why we have got the mark we have got. With
exams and things that are right at the end of the semester we
usually get an email saying if you want to come back in and pick
up your work and discuss your grades you are welcome to in the
following semester, so that is even when they are not teaching
us.
Ms Edwards: I have had a mixed
experience. The two exams that I have sat have not been midwifery-based—one
was a physiology exam and the other was a research exam and they
were generic across all the healthcare professions. Those two
I have had no feedback from, just a mark, but all the essay assignments
that we have handed in for midwifery they tick on the criteria
sheet where you came on that but then there is an A4 page on the
front and through your work you will find numbers, one to whatever,
then you look at the A4 sheet and it is number 1 "You could
have expanded this point a bit more", "How about discussing
this ... " or number 2: "Don't use colloquialisms"
or whatever it is. You can go through the essay and they will
give you lots of feedback.
Mr Child: I would say it is varied,
it depends which lecturer it is to be honest. Some are absolutely
brilliant, you get reams and reams of paper back telling you everything
you could have done better and even highlighting the points that
you actually got right and making a deal of the fact that you
did it this way and that is a very good way of doing it. That
is a positive, but with other lecturers you just get a mark back
but in all fairness for the lecturers who just give you a mark
you can go and speak to them, you can arrange to go and see them
and discuss the work, so there is always the option for feedback
if you feel you need it.
Q328 Chairman: Do most students take
advantage of that or if the mark is good enough they do not?
Mr Child: It depends what your
mark is to be honest. If it is a good mark people are quite content
with that, if it is a low mark they will be more insistent on
finding out what went wrong.
Ian Stewart: Unless you are Jun and you
want the other eight marks.
Q329 Mr Boswell: Can I just ask a
separate question about your interaction with other students on
a course. You were talking about relatively small seminar groups
which all of you have experienced at some stage, although you,
Gregory, said you had one-to-one tuition on an intensive basis
for a quarter of an hour at a time. People often say the tutorial
as practice down the road is the apogee of learning and the supreme
test. How much value do you attach to having your peers in the
room, people doing the same course as you and being able to bounce
ideas off them as well? We might start with Victoria because she
is on a specifically vocational course.
Ms Edwards: It is hugely important
because a lot of what we come across in practice is very emotive
and can be quite distressing or can be really thrilling, and when
your emotions are going up and down like that and you are dealing
with those situations that we are it is really, really important
in a safe and confidential environment to be able to discuss those
things.
Q330 Mr Boswell: Would anyone else
like to comment?
Ms Pitt: In terms of law the fact
is that there is debate and disagreement in itself, so it is important
to get the other person's opinion because what they think I might
never have thought of but it is a valid point. That is quite important
so I would agree with that.
Mr Child: Two things on this one.
Tutorials being optional, the number of people turning up varies
depending on which subject it is. They are useful for improving
your understanding and helping with the specific coursework, but
one point I would like to make is that the former student project
that runs is a non-marks based project so you do not actually
get any academic grades out of that, it is purely you wanting
to be involved to learn and to work with your peers, which is
something the school pushes very hard and is certainly an invaluable
experience.
Q331 Mr Boswell: Just for the record
the Chairman and I would say it was a remarkable outcome and—I
know you could not be there, David—that presentation at
the Commons was really worthwhile, it was brilliant. I would acknowledge
everything you say, that you do not have to get marks to do good
work, perhaps we should say that. Can I just probe briefly the
link between research and teaching? I do not know for a start
whether any of you know how research-intensive your tutors are,
whether you looked them up on the internet before you decided
to honour the university with your presence or whether you have
views as to whether their being research-strong is good for you
as a pupil or not; any views on that?
Ms Tye: I am a big fan of research
and the history department has a particular strength in research,
which you do see in your lectures a lot; you are consistently
getting figures or analysis or theses coming—we have not
quite published this yet but we just thought we would throw it
at you, see what you think. History is a research-based subject
so if you did not have people right at the forefront it would
be a serious detriment to the level of learning you are getting.
Q332 Chairman: Can I just check on
that? If I am researching Henry VIII and the Tudors—I am
not, but let us say I was—and I am a real expert, I know
everything about the Tudors and Henry VII's ships et all, but
you are being set work on 19th century social and economic history,
how does that help, having a researcher working in a totally different
area?
Ms Tye: You would not, you are
taught by people who are researching in that area.
Q333 Chairman: You are stuck with
whatever they are interested in.
Ms Tye: No, because they are very
good, they tend to encourage you to actually challenge their ideas.
I am doing a module at the moment with a guy called Roger Griffin
who does fascism and he has got a very definite idea of fascism,
but he is still outlining what everybody else thinks and he is
there, "Does anyone want to challenge me, does anyone want
to give anything different to this?" and a lot of time they
are asking you does anybody want to do an independent module,
does anybody want to do research and work with them, challenge
their ideas. I wrote an ISM for someone and totally challenged
what they believed in and they were totally okay with that.
Q334 Mr Boswell: Is that pretty well
true across the various schools in your experience?
Ms Pitt: It depends for me personally
on the area of law that we are talking about because for theoretical
subjects like legal method and constitutional law I prefer someone
that is more research-based and knows what they are talking about.
In terms of areas like contract, tort, commercial I would prefer
someone who has actually practised in the field so they know the
nitty-gritty of it and not just the whole theoretical side, so
it depends.
Q335 Dr Harris: You really want the
person who is writing the exam paper, do you not?
Ms Pitt: Yes, probably.
Q336 Dr Harris: To what extent do
you think you are going to get that? Obviously you have not taken
your exams yet but to what extent do people know which of the
lecturers to have particular regard to, depending on whether they
are on the exam board this time, or whatever the equivalent is?
Ms Pitt: I tend to look at past
exam papers. I am only an undergraduate so you can see who did
the previous year's and if they are still there that tends to
be the person who is doing the exam, so from that I kind of listen
to what they say.
Q337 Mr Boswell: There is some game
theory in this. Can I just ask you—my final question—about
we hear from perhaps other institutions that sometimes people
complain and they say we have got a really good tutor in this
department, the only trouble is it is a five-rated department
and we never see them and the whole thing is in the hands of graduate
students or whatever who teach us. Do you ever get that sort of
a problem, of tutors never around to teach you? On the whole I
must say you have described situations where your tutors are accessible;
is this because they are not very research-intensive or are they
super-people?
Mr Child: Certainly the point
on research, from your previous question and this one, there is
a mix. Some lecturers are research-intensive, some have apparently
no interest, but that is only from what we see. However, I suspect
it is rather different in engineering to what it is in other subjects
in the fact that although people doing research are pushing the
knowledge and understanding we also have a fair few lecturers
who have had many years of industrial experience and certainly
within the automotive and motor sport sectors any developments
in technology and general engineering practices are not necessarily
published and do not necessarily have research as such to go with
them in the traditional sense, so you do learn from lecturers
who are doing current research and are aware of current research,
but equally and just as important, if not more important, you
are learning from the people who have been there, done that and
understood the fundamental engineering principles of the situation
they are applying, which has not necessarily been made aware to
the general community.
Q338 Mr Boswell: It seems to me that
there is a germ of an agreement with Meagan on that in that you
are saying there are some people who will be great on materials
science or aerodynamics in principle and somebody else who will
fix you up a new diffuser overnight if that is what the Braun
team needs.
Mr Child: Yes, exactly, there
is the academic side to the research and the lecturers who are
recognised as good researchers and for the work they are doing,
but equally there are other people who are not interested at all
in publishing research or having any recognition for it; they
are more interested in the final result and how to do things,
so to be able to learn from both types of people is invaluable.
Q339 Dr Harris: Meagan, what is your
feeling about law students at the other university in Oxford?
I ask the open question first and then I have got a few follow-ups.
Ms Pitt: In what context?
| 
