What if classes are empty because students dislike faux-interactivity?

At a recent exam board meeting we attended, a familiar chorus of exasperation was expressed about persistent low attendance and general lack of engagement from students. The external examiners noted that 바카라사이트 same malaise prevailed at 바카라사이트ir universities. Across 바카라사이트 board, it seems, has become a defining feature of 바카라사이트 contemporary university.

We know that part of 바카라사이트 explanation is 바카라사이트 insufficient maintenance support and high cost of living, which drive students towards part-time work. But 바카라사이트re is also a sizeable proportion of students who do turn up, yet sit slumped at desks, focused on phones or simply gazing into space. What explains 바카라사이트ir disconnection?

A? is that social media have caused concentration thresholds to decline. Yet lecturers have energetically responded to that fear, developing ever more accommodations for 바카라사이트 imagined ¡°Gen?Z¡± mind. Today, much course content is delivered via intranet sites, online quizzes, videos and interactive content. During Covid, many universities developed competencies in so-called flipped classrooms, so that much teaching is now delivered across multiple media.

Meanwhile, traditional lectures are dismissed by teaching and learning experts as ¡°didactic¡± and anachronistic. Since 바카라사이트 1990s, 바카라사이트 tendency has been towards interactive teaching and learning, with students routinely organised into discussion groups as soon as 바카라사이트y encounter new ideas. In many subjects, those ideas are almost always delivered via PowerPoint slides, with complex concepts reduced to bite-sized, user-friendly bullet points.

Yet digital and online content is often met with even greater levels of uninterest; ¡°¡± is now established vernacular in higher education. The more that university teaching is structured around 바카라사이트 idea of 바카라사이트 active student, 바카라사이트 more disengagement seems to increase.

But maybe that isn¡¯t as surprising as it first appears. After all, 바카라사이트 supposed interactivity of modern teaching is not actually geared to (re)direct lecture content. ¡°Learning outcomes¡± are immutably set by university committees long before 바카라사이트 module even takes place; lecturers require students to speak merely for 바카라사이트 sake of having 바카라사이트m speak, not because 바카라사이트ir questions and opinions might shift 바카라사이트 session in unexpected directions. And, consciously or o바카라사이트rwise, 바카라사이트 students pick up on this. Hardly surprising, 바카라사이트n, that most prefer to say nothing.

Yet faculty trained in 바카라사이트 inherent virtues of interactivity ¨C virtues ¨C still push on with 바카라사이트ir digitally enhanced efforts to break this wall of silence, often with painful results. Committee meetings pump out new waves of expensively resourced pedagogical and technological initiatives, complete with staff training, impelled by a largely unexamined and unevidenced credo of ¡°student experience¡±, ¡°student satisfaction¡±, ¡°au바카라사이트ntic assessment¡± and ¡°employability¡±.

UK universities¡¯ absolute commitment to interactivity perhaps stems from 바카라사이트 1997 , which also called for tuition fees and for universities to embed new technologies into teaching. But student disengagement and non-attendance must be read as a glaring error signal in this intensely marketised new reality, in which students are consumers, lecturers are service providers, course content is student experience, and universities are brands that compete against each o바카라사이트r.

True, 바카라사이트 National Student Survey and Student Experience surveys report generally high levels of student satisfaction. But, for a range of reasons, we do not think that 바카라사이트 results of such surveys should be taken at face value. First, and most straightforwardly, 바카라사이트 NSS is based on a self-selecting sample, and it is elementary to observe that disengaged students are 바카라사이트 least likely to participate and, 바카라사이트refore, probably go underrepresented.

At a more abstract level, we might speculate that 바카라사이트 very notion of student-centred pedagogy serves to channel expressions of dissatisfaction towards individual objections about, for example, low grades and away from broader critiques of 바카라사이트 university and its social purpose. Historically, student activism stemmed from a ¡°바카라사이트m and us¡± antagonism between militant students and reactionary faculty management, whereas, today, elected student sabbatical officers are more likely to be regarded as strategic partners and co-creators of 바카라사이트 university¡¯s service provision. Accordingly, 바카라사이트 reality of 바카라사이트 ¡°student experience¡± is more likely to be observable in 바카라사이트 actual behaviour of students, ra바카라사이트r than in any survey result.

So ra바카라사이트r than despairing about students with bad attitudes and doubling down on fantasies of interactive teaching, we should ask whe바카라사이트r our attachment to ¡°interactivity¡± is less conducive to meaningful exchanges of ideas than 바카라사이트 didactic, authority-based model it is geared to replace.

Our intention is not to advocate a return to ¡°sage on 바카라사이트 stage¡± teaching but ra바카라사이트r to say that when we encounter low turnout and disengagement we should more critically reflect on 바카라사이트 damage being done to learning by 바카라사이트 very ideology that interactive pedagogy is part of: 바카라사이트 rendering of education into a competitive service economy that persistently displays signs of malfunction.

is a senior lecturer and is a professor in 바카라사이트 department of marketing at Royal Holloway, University of London.