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I think that academic staff should be mindful, and I'm saying should, be (how shall I say?),
facilitated to be mindful that mature-age students have their own particular needs.
We're not children, we have a lot of experience. Some of us are graduates and postgraduate
and whatnot and we somehow have to do some of those undergraduate units again and therefore
we have to fit into the student body and I think, to be mindful of them and to, of us,
and to cater for our needs but also to be mindful that there are some, as I've had one
in last year, who try to dominate all the time and argue with the lecturer and somehow
curtail that because it's depriving the brand new students that come out of school.
I didn't take a high profile in tutorials and I encouraged the young ones to speak.
So I think somehow as an academic, perhaps if you could balance it out and encourage
those who have less experience and perhaps those who want to take over, mature-age students,
to cater for them but also to say, well, you know, other people, you know, need to be approached,
but to be aware that in this day and age, there are so many, there's a preponderance
of mature-age students coming into universities, and they have every right to be here too.
I know a lot of young people sort of begrudge the fact that, "What are you doing here?"
you know? "You should be dead or you should be retired."
A lot of people sort of come up to me and say, "Oh, professor," you know and I sort
of laugh at that but they don't know how to approach me so I think maybe the lecturers
could do something to ease that situation. It's a very real situation. I had about three
or four or five mature-age students and we all sort of sat together, you know, although
I did make a lot of approaches to younger people and encouraged them to have conversations,
have coffee together and things but not all mature-age students can do that, especially
men sort of in their 50s and 60s, a lot of men, I'm saying, who haven't had the university
experience before. Thank you.
I'd say from the outset, be clear, concise and (ah, don't do that), be clear, concise
and ensure that students know what's expected of them in lectures, tutorials and assessment
tasks, not only by sort of stating what needs to be done but reference where that information
can be found, so in your first lecture, pull out the unit guide and go, right, so, "On
page 3, these are your assessment tasks, these are what they are worth and this is what you
need to do in order to get good marks." And as long as they know that, then when they
turn around and go, "Oh, I didn't know it was due this week," you can go, "But if you
went back to the first lecture, I said that it was due here, I said exactly where to find
the information and you really should have no excuse for not going onto iLecture and
listening to that because you didn't show up."
Just one very quick point that a lot of us mature-age students haven't got a clue about
computers and it's a very steep learning curve and a lot of academic staff that I've come
across sort of aren't aware of that and somehow, you should be conversant and it's quite a
nightmare. I dropped out of Macquarie University four years ago because of the computer but
I came back with a vengeance, but there are people like that that, you know, I'd probably
like to see that you could be very mindful of and perhaps encourage and not treat them
like idiots because they're asking a question, "How do I do this?" or "How do I do that?"
I think the most important thing, like thinking back about all the units and especially all
the tutors that I've really enjoyed working with or, yeah, working in their classes, was
their, like the common thread was that they were all really approachable, they were all
really friendly and they all tried to get to know a little bit about their students,
so, asking them also questions about other stuff that wasn't strictly uni-related, like
where are you working, like that kind of stuff and also, giving a little bit about themselves
away as well, like not just "I'm your lecturer, I'm," you know, "boxed up in a little world,
but you know, I'm actually a person as well," and just to talk about, like I learnt a lot
about some of my tutors, like where they were from and, yeah, even what uni they have studied
at and stuff like that which just helps make them more approachable, more human and, yeah,
just me, kind of more happy to, yeah, be in their class, I guess.