Some are turning to longer, less frequent, classes – but there’s a pedagogical trade-off, says UCD lecturer Keith Wilson.
Keith Wilson says he’s scheduling longer lectures for the upcoming school year, than he has in the past.
“It’s not ideal pedagogically,” says Wilson, a lecturer at University College Dublin (UCD). Teaching philosophy, he’d prefer shorter, digestible sessions.
“But issues with student travel and attendance are currently feeding into timetabling of classes, with some lecturers preferring to hold longer classes, or schedule multiple classes on the same day, rather than single-hour lectures or tutorials,” he says.
Wilson said he thinks that with longer, less frequent sessions, more students will show up.
But it’s not that easy to book two-hour slots in lecture halls and classrooms at Dublin universities, several faculty members said. There’s competition.
Wilson says he’s been able to get his preferred timetable this go-around though. “All of my lectures and seminars are either 1.5- or 2-hour blocks,” he says.
Wilson is not the only faculty member making this kind of adjustment. Lecturers at UCD and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) say it’s become more common to see students balancing jobs, care duties, and longer commutes to class.
Wilson said there’s a tradeoff. “On the one hand, pedagogically, it’s better to spread it out. But for practical reasons, it’s better to concentrate it into big blocks.”
With housing in the city hard to find, and more and more expensive if it can be found, students are living further away and travelling in – or working more to make ends meet, the lecturers say.
“I’ve had students basically tell me that they’re struggling to make it to classes, or they have to skip classes, because they live very far outside,” says TCD lecturer Nicole Kapelle. “They may have work responsibility or care responsibilities.”
Kapelle, who teaches sociology, says gaps between classes are another deterrent. “If you have a class at 9am and then another at 5pm, students often just can’t wait around all day.”
One of her classes last year shifted online, informally, she said, because she worked with the students and together decided it was the only viable option.
She said though, that was only possible because it was a small class. In general, the university encourages professors to avoid online learning, Kapelle says.
Marie Moran, an associate professor in Equality Studies at UCD, says her Monday morning lectures are a particular challenge.
“A lot of students go home for the weekend, work in local bars or shops, then get the Monday morning bus up. They’re exhausted,” she says.
Moran said she’s had a two-hour lecture slot for a number of years.
“We’re one of the few social sciences that offer a two-hour block, and students said they absolutely love it, it just makes their lives easier.”
UCD lecturer Keith Wilson said he’s learned from the patterns of his students how he needed to shift his timetable to meet their needs.
“What was happening because of long commute times and unreliable bus services, students were essentially voting with their feet and picking and choosing what they go to,” Wilson says.
“If they only have one hour on a Thursday, they might decide it’s not worth their while coming in,” he says. “But that’s a big problem from a teaching perspective – if you’ve got two hours of lecture a week, and they’re only coming to one, they’re getting 50 percent of the course material.”
But getting longer teaching slots can be “a real struggle”, says UCD sociology lecturer Lea David. “For some modules I would even prefer three hours … but that is mission impossible.”
Boróka Bó, another UCD sociology lecturer, agreed. “Large lectures with 500+ students are incredibly hard to fit into two-hour blocks simply because there aren’t enough big lecture halls.”
Some students say they see the shift to longer blocks as practical. Others call it a distraction from deeper issues.
“I don’t think longer classes or shorter classes would have made any difference. It’s just bollocks to be honest,” says Shane Lynch, a recent UCD graduate.
“I think it would suit UCD better to build cheaper housing,” he says. “We’re meant to be one of the richest countries in the world, and yet we’re putting on longer classes because we can’t build enough housing for students. It’s like putting a plaster on a burst artery.”
Faculty members brought this up too: if there were available, affordable housing then students wouldn’t be living far out, working so much to pay the rent, and dreading long commutes on unreliable buses to get to campus.
“Of course, at the heart of all of this is the government's failure to provide high quality, subsidised accommodation for students,” said Moran, at UCD. “Instead, it's an absolute racket” and lower income students are hit the hardest, she says.
Switching to longer classes will make them harder, says UCD student Etta Sullivan, who prefers shorter ones, with breaks built in.
“I was able to engage and focus throughout the whole lecture. If we had a movement break, it was good,” she says.
For her, early starts are more of an issue than lecture length. “To get in at 9am I have to leave hours early. If they could avoid doing 9am lectures, it would be a benefit.”
She said she valued being in the lecture hall for both the learning and the social aspect. “PowerPoint slides aren’t conclusive, you need to have those extra notes if you can at all from the lecture.”
UCD professor emerita Kathleen Lynch said universities need to recognise the pressures that students are under today.
“Commuting, including the cost and time it takes to travel, is a huge issue for students who live far away,” she says. “This is especially problematic for poorer students, or those with children and care responsibilities.”
Aidan Agnew, who graduated as a PhD in biochemistry from Trinity last year was both paid to assist undergraduate classes, and commuting as a student.
If massive social issues like inadequate transport infrastructure and the affordable-housing shortage are affecting students and their lecture attendance, he says.
“Then, you know, like, professors and lecturers can try that as much as they can. But like, the onus is kind of on, you know, society to fix itself.”
UCD lecturer Wilson put it more cautiously, “Ultimately, we’re a learning institution, we want students to succeed. But we can’t solve Dublin’s accommodation crisis. That’s for the city to do,” he said.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
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