Messages from senior staff

News and updates from senior staff within Humanities.

Dear colleagues,

I love the sense of anticipation and excitement at the start of the new academic year as students arrive in Manchester eager to embark on their degree or to start the new year with lots of good intentions. For all those who work in education, the summer vacation marks a hiatus in the calendar year where we can pause and reflect. For the past two summers, there has been less time to pause and perhaps our reflection has been one of nervous trepidation of what the new year will bring rather than an opportunity for new year resolutions. This summer has been no different. Since March, we have known that A-level examinations would not be happening and that instead results would be awarded on the basis of teacher assessed grades. As a result there was an inevitable over recruitment because UCAS application deadlines are in December and offer-making was largely complete before the announcement. International numbers have held up too and those students who may have postponed further study last year have recognised that we are likely to be living with this pandemic for some time and have taken up their places this year.

Similarly, we knew that while we were likely to see the return of most of our students in September, there would be some who could not make it to Manchester and for whom we would be dual delivering teaching to cohorts on campus and online. The Humanities eLearning team trained over 1,000 colleagues in the use of the new equipment over the summer in preparation for the start of the new academic year. Much of that teaching has gone well despite some teething problems but it was impacted by the recent issues with WiFI across the campus. We really appreciate all those who took the time to provide feedback on the dual delivery. We have read every comment, investigated the issues raised and have developed an action plan to ensure that staff and students’ experience of dual delivery is enhanced as we go forward into the remainder of the first semester. We have identified specific rooms in which there were issues with sound quality and have taken steps to address this. We have recruited a cohort of 35 graduate interns and 250 student facilitators to support the delivery of dual teaching and developed a new online booking system to ensure that interns and facilitators are matched to requests for support.

While I can explain the over-recruitment and the technological glitches that impacted dual delivery and describe what we did to what we did try to mitigate these issues, Professional Services and academic colleagues are at the front line, teaching and dealing with the additional numbers. Inevitably, the difficult start to the new year has meant that many colleagues are spending more time with students and less time on other activities. As this new technology beds in, I am hopeful that we will be able to use it support not just our teaching but also to facilitate research activities and to make us more efficient in meetings. Right now, I am enjoying attending at least some meetings on campus and being able to have those more informal conversations that are important for building and cementing relationships. Over the past few weeks, I have physically met people that I have been working with for over a year and that really does make a difference.

As I write, my children are preparing to go to different competitions this weekend. One in north Manchester and one in south – conveniently at exactly the same time. As parents and carers who are juggling work with our lives outside, we all do our best to manage the sometimes unmanageable. My job this evening may be to celebrate a great performance or to recognise that things haven’t gone to plan but either way, we’ll all get up on Monday morning and have to get ready for school or work. I suppose that every new week provides that same sense of both excitement and trepidation that I began with.

I hope that the rest of the semester goes well for you all.

Best wishes
Fiona