The Teaching Review has passed - here’s what you need to know
Prompted by the SU’s Reading Week Campaign, the University launched a review of Teaching in Michaelmas 2023. Our current Access, Education & Participation Officer (UG) Katie Clarke, former Sabbatical Officers Fergus Kirman and Caredig ap Tomos, and I sat on this group, contributing student opinions throughout. We also held two workload forums to gather feedback on the review's progress in Lent Term 2024 and 2025.
After a year and a half of consultation, creative thinking and development, we have now published our recommendations to address the “culture of overwork” at Cambridge. We hope you will agree that they reflect the need for structural change at Cambridge.
1. Rankings
The University is going to review how it presents and shares rankings. This could mean changing the way rank is constructed (for example, by presenting them as percentages), taking them off CamSIS so they're not immediately visible alongside your results, adding an opt-out option, or something else which will combat the competitive culture that they encourage. They will still be accessible for references, and you'll be able to request them if you choose to.
2. Saturday Lectures
The goal is to move away from Saturday Lectures in all subjects by 2027/28. Students and staff should be able to manage their own time at the weekend, without compulsory contact hours. Some of the main barriers to this at the moment are estate-related, and we need to find more large lecture spaces to enable subjects to make this change. We also want to stop Exams from happening on Saturdays to allow everyone to take breaks during exam season.
3. Buffer Times
All timetables should have "buffer times" built in. This could involve contact-hour-free Wednesday afternoons, 'break weeks' in the style of the History Tripos, amongst other options. These have been successfully implemented in some subjects, including Natsci and Biology, and would allow you to plan your time better - whether that’s finding the time to do laundry, go to the gym, arrange rehearsals, or consolidate your learning.
4. Extreme Timed Supos
Supervisions shouldn't run late into the night, or start at ridiculous times in the morning. They should take place between 8am and 8pm, allowing us all to build morning and night-time routines that work for us. We know that these times still feel quite extreme, but when we were trying to draw these lines, we had to balance flexibility, work around central contact hours, as well as consider student and staff welfare.
5. A single platform for communication
Each tripos should choose one platform to communicate with students, so we don't have to search through loads of different websites to find the information we need. Currently, the info we need is spread across Moodle, Teams Channels, Faculty Websites and many other sites. The time we spend finding the right information could be better spent on actually learning, resting or otherwise developing ourselves.
- And More!
The review also has recommendations around course choice and content rationalisation, more support for DOS’s and a review of supervision norms for courses.
Many of these recommendations should be implemented by next academic year, with some having a slightly longer timeframe. If you’re interested in the recommendations and more details on implementation, you can find the full report here!