Seminars
A realistic Guide to life at UCLan - written by students!
Comments from students...
Seminars are new to many students too and they come in all different formats – some marked, some not. Here are a few first hand experiences for you to digest:
“We first went into first year and literally we were all assessed right from the beginning. It was such a shock to the system to be sat in a classroom discussing things, but knowing that every word you said is technically being marked.”
“They just went over it in the first one and told us not to worry about it. They told us to just answer all the questions set out in your book, then we’d go through it in the classroom and we’d pretend that we were not being marked on it. It was quite a hard thing to do.”
“Even now, in my second year, I still don’t know how they mark your seminar performance. Obviously they tot your mark up at the end of the year, but you don’t get any feedback as to what they’re looking for when you do your seminar.”
On that last point, make sure that if you have any doubts about what is required of you, you get a satisfactory explanation from your lecturer. It’s a bit of a disadvantage playing a game and not knowing the rules, which is what is effectively happening if you don’t know what you’re being marked on.
“When we got our course books at the beginning, the way that most of them worked was that each seminar was set out with questions. So, for example, you’d have to have to read 10 cases and part of your textbook. They’d basically tell you that you were better off answering the questions and then they’d just go through them to make sure that you had answered them and written your notes. You’re not allowed to take your lecture notes into seminars anymore, because they think that you’re basically going to sit there and read them out. So, in that sense, it’s quite good, because it does mean that you learn better.”
“Ours aren’t marked. The only time our seminars are marked is if we’ve been told that we’ve got an assignment or presentation to do, which isn’t very often. Usually it’s just that we have to do a lot more written work, or we have a presentation for some modules. It’s only about one presentation per module though.”