I’m the Hastings Campus Rep at Uni this year – and have been thinking about what advice I’d give to the new students during induction week if given the chance.  I came up with 5 main points – some of which I was given in my first couple of weeks, and some of which I wasn’t.

Me: 2003 edition

1. Enjoy yourself

Have fun. Make friends. Dye your hair blue. Go to the concert by that band you wanted to see.  Many of you will never meet as diverse a range of people as you will meet here.  Share your interests and expertise with others, and be open to others doing the same with you.  You might pick up a new hobby, a sport, or try something you always fancied having a go at.   Surprise yourself. Go out and party with friends.  Stay in and party with friends.  Just stay safe – there’s nothing fun about placing yourself in harm’s way.  Most of you will never enjoy this level of freedom again.  Become the person you have always wanted to be.

2. Get involved

Sports, video games, geology, biology, politics, LGBT+… if you’re into it, the likelihood is that someone else is too.  Join the society or sports team for it, and if there isn’t one – make one.  The Students’ Union is all about supporting you though facilitating these things. My trombone teacher used to tell me “You’re not playing WITH the band, you ARE the band!” and never has that been more true than here.  I’m a 28 year old fat person who was a year ahead at school so was always too young and too small to make a sports team.  I always fancied giving lacrosse a bash if I ever had the chance.  Came here, showed up to training regularly, ended up taking on the position of goalkeeper and making it my own.  This summer – we won a freaking trophy.  If you have an ambition or a dream – start now, here, today.  Again – most of you will never again have access to this level and variety of resources.  Run for election. Vote in elections.  The Students’ Union isn’t here for other people.  It’s here for you, funded by you, run by you.  Be a part of it.

Brighton Panthers – Women’s plate winners at BluesFest 2013

3. Ask for help

One of my lecturers this year has already quipped that he gets paid the same whether we fail or get a first.  Before I came here, I was a college lecturer and I used to use the same line.  It doesn’t mean that we don’t care.  My lectures are in Hastings, and I have been to lectures over at Moulsecoomb. You have no idea how much easier we have it being at Hastings with our college-sized classes.  If you do not understand something – put your hand up and say so.  You will often find that your coursemates thank you for it.  If you are interested and determined – your lecturers will answer any question you put to them.  Discuss classes with your coursemates. Meet up to work on assignments. Do not struggle in silence. There are no foolish questions. If you need extensions, ask. If you have trouble at home, tell someone.  The University won’t give you your degree on a plate – but they do want you to see you succeed.  If they can help – they will.

Genuine “workings out” board for a Level 5 group programming assignment. Working together, we didn’t find it nearly as hard as it looks!

Where there is WiFi – you can run a backup…

4. Backup your work

• My USB stick has broken/gone missing
• The file corrupted
• My computer’s hard-drive gave up
• I must have left myself logged in and someone deleted all my work

These might have cut it with some soft personal tutor at college, but it’s not going to work here.  The first question you’ll be faced with is “Why don’t you go get it from your backup?”.  Keep a copy of your files on the Uni system where it’s backed up at night.  Use the SkyDrive built into your UniMail account to keep a secure online copy you can access from anywhere.  Keep an extra USB stick at home for a weekly backup of the important stuff.  Make a routine.  Friday night before you go out – make copies of your files so that you don’t end up learning the hard way.  I learned the hard way.  It was 2002 and I was doing A-Level Computing.  I stayed up all night to finish my main project – sauntered in knowing that I wouldn’t be part of the last minute panic, and the copy didn’t work.  Ran home to make another one – to find it hadn’t worked because the hard-drive had failed and the whole system fell over and died – irretrievably.  I then had 5 hours left to re-create the last 5 months work, on no sleep.  For the sake of 10 minutes a week or less – you can avoid that pain.

5. Do not let ANYONE tell you that the first year “doesn’t matter”

I heard a lot of people telling me that the first year “doesn’t matter”.  For a lot of courses, the marks from the Level 4 modules don’t count towards your final degree classification.  That does NOT mean that it doesn’t matter.  Your first year provides you with the groundwork, the knowledge and the skills to ensure that you succeed in Level 5 and Level 6.  If you bunk off or let things slide and put in the bare minimum this year – it will come back to bite you.  We had 4 or 5 programming modules on my course in Level 5 – and I lost count of the number of my coursemates who said “I wish I’d asked more questions/worked harder/put more effort into Programming 101 last year.”  If you suck at something this year – don’t panic – your first year’s assignment and exam grades show you where you need to put more effort in, and where you’re doing just fine.  Use that information to direct your energies and schedule your study time  – and you’ll be doing yourself a massive favour.

Enforcing the use of “mixed ability” groups for assignment work is supposedly geared towards getting the “lower end” of the group to learn from the “higher end”, while the “higher end” consolidate their and reinforce their learning by teaching the “lower end”. In theory, different people are good at different things, which should result in the whole situation evening out over the course of the academic year.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, the higher end tend to work hard at home and/or have a natural affinity for the subject, whereas the lower end tend to be there because they either don’t turn up, or they struggle in general – which tends to lead to the same students populating the same ends of the groups in most modules. This then starts to feel unfair, as the higher end, who are there through hard work and talent – end up doing all of the giving, and the lower end keep doing all of the taking. Those in the lower end who lack dedication to the course, soon realise this – and drop even further behind as they know that they’ll be “carried”, due to the higher end not wanting to lose marks.

While it is often stated that if one person puts in more or less effort than the rest of the group, then the grades will be adjusted accordingly – this contradicts the advice simultaneously given, that there are marks allocated for the demonstration that groups successfully work as a team. Higher end students then feel obliged to “fill in” for the lower end, and end up forging the paperwork to show equal contribution. Again, in my limited experience, if a higher end student submits their work to be judged on its own merits, leaving the lower end student to submit what they will – we have tended to find that the group assignment is capped at the lower end student’s grade, due to the lack of coherence as a team.
Such situations may finally result in a higher end person putting in hours and hours of work – to end up essentially getting two Cs (and personal credit for only one) rather than the one A their time and effort should have earned them.

With the cost of tuition fees ever rising, is this fair? Do you have examples of other courses or organisations which have a more transparent policy on group work? Are you a lecturer who has to deal with this from the other side? I would love to hear other opinions on this!