Edward Tsang, Personal Opinions

Teaching Overhead: a high premium for teaching quality control

Edward Tsang 2009.06.19 (updated 2010.02.01)

How much time does monitoring cost in teaching? Quite a lot. This is a price we pay for quality control. Was it fully costed? How much have we gained from it?

The old way of teaching

I started teaching in the 80's. At that time, teaching involves preparing the lectures, delivering it, setting assignments, setting exams, marking them, and giving feedback to students. Most heads of departments were fine teachers themselves. They were inclined to trust their teachers in teaching.

Before it all begins

Today, before preparing our lectures, we are asked to write down learning outcomes. Then four to six of us are asked to review each learning outcome set by our colleagues. Most reviewers can find something to improve in others' work -- sometimes quite rightly, sometimes for proving that they are doing the job properly, and sometimes due to ignorance of others' work. Nevertheless, we have to respond to reviews.

More, before it all begins

We have to schedule our assignments before teaching starts. We have to tell students when assignments will be set, and when they should be submitted, and when they will be marked and returned. Who can argue against good planning? Then we have to set our assignments, file them with the administrators for the record. It's surprising that we do not have to specify the learning outcomes in our assignments. One possible explanation is that no one really cares about those written learning outcomes; most teachers know what they want students to learn.

Overheads after teaching begins

We have to set resit exam papers before exam starts, just in case some students have to resit. We have to review each others' exam papers. [I always asked a colleague to comment on my exam papers on an informal basis. That seemed to work.] Formal reviews always recommend more changes. If we ask 6 people to look at a piece of work, there are bound to be different opinions. Some of them may be eager to show that they are diligent. We have to respond to reviews.

We have to observe each others' lectures. Forms have to be filled in before and after an observation. Someone has to look at those forms and comment on them.

There is a substantial amount of email contacts to brief us on how to review others' papers, how to observe others' lectures, when to meet, what form to fill in , who to report to, how to respond to comments, etc. Much of our time are spent on these secondary activities, which (I suspect) are not costed.

Was the overheads reviewed?

It is funny that all these controls are considered useful without question. How much do they cost? How effective are they? Teaching activities are heavily controlled and reviews. Perhaps these management measures reviews themselves should be scrutinized too.

How useful are these controls? To the conscientious teachers, these controls do not improve teaching. They take away the flexibility in teaching. They consume an enormous amount of time, which could have been put back in teaching. For those who don't, there are ways to get round the above controls.

Potential savings

If each of us spend 25% of our teaching time on overheads, that means our employer is spending 33% more than the "old way" to provide teaching. Given that the vast majority of teachers care about teaching, the price for relaxed control is slim. There is no reason why a university (together with all its conscientious teachers) should all pay a high price for to protect themselves against a small amount of malpractices.

[End]