Recycled lecturers: What do you think?

By Ian & Michelle

Are you being lectured by the same lecturer over and over again, perhaps throughout your whole degree program? Recycled lecturer is a term given to the same lecturers who are being used by the faculty to teach different subjects. Recycled lecturers are being discussed vastly among students. The students and lecturers in American Degree Program (ADP) SEGi University have different opinions about the increased usage of recycled lecturers. Most of the students being interviewed agreed that, recycled lecturers occurred the most in Psychology majored subjects.

“I have faced recycled lecturers and it is mostly from psychology majored subjects” says Monitha, 23.

A 4^th year student, Kelly Pang Jia Yi added “I have encountered some from Communication major as well.”

Some of the students are positive about the idea of recycling the lecturers.

“It is not only cost-efficient, but also trains the students to be familiar with the lecturers. Not to forget, it helps me to obtain better grades too” chuckled Isaac Tan, a finance and management major student.

Britney Lee, 20 who sees the bright side of recycled lecturers, “It is good for me as I can know the teaching patterns and requirements of the lecturer”

Most of the students’ responses remained neutral.

Both Monitha, 23 and Kimmy Lim, 23 do not mind recycled lecturers if the lecturers are up to their expectations.

“It depends on the situation, if the lecturer is good then it is good for the student however if the lecturer is bad, then student will not benefit much” says Monitha.

“A good lecturer should be able to teach and educate future generation while being able to keep up and understand the current trend in order for the teaching process to be conducted efficiently,” added Kimmy.

However, there are students who oppose the idea of recycling lecturers.

A 3^rd year student, Yoon Khee says “I prefer having different lecturers for every subject”, she also added, “By having different lecturers, I can gain different insight from different lecturers who are specialized in their respective subjects because certain recycled lecturers tend to not know the subjects well,” she added.

Lecturers have their own opinion and perspective on this matter. They considered the pros and cons from the perspectives of a student and a lecturer.

When asked for opinion on recycled lecturers, Ms.Shoba Gunarasa says “As a lecturer, you do not specialize in the subject you teach but it might be a good exposure for the lecturer. However students want more than material in the textbook and they need experiences from lecturers. It is about practicality in real life. By having different lecturers, students can learn more from the different experiences by different lecturers.”

Ms. Alison Poh, who are currently teaching 5 subjects this semester says “The subject has to be in our (Communication) major, otherwise the faculty cannot assign it to us. Even it is within the major, some subjects are not taught during our times, so when the subject is not my specialization it challenges me.”

“When you have too many subjects to be taught, it is hard to focus. I think it is better to teach a few subjects that are your strength. Moreover, it is not too ideal if you keep teaching the same student every time,” added the full time Communication majored lecturer.

However, Dr. Chandran, a part time lecturer who teaches communication major has a different perspective as a whole.

“Part time staff is very expensive, particularly lecturer is supposed to teach a minimum of 3 different subjects. However, since part time lecturers are costly, it is better to fully utilize the lecturers to fulfill the quota. Sometime some rich institution can afford of hiring the different lecturers for different subjects” he says.

“It is all based on the price, what you pay is what you get. Differences between premium and normal give you not much of choice” he added.

For the issue of recycling the lecturers, there always be pros and cons, with diversity lecturers, student will be able to work with more lecturers with different style of teaching, however student definitely need to pay more; with recycle lecturers, students can cope better and reduce the time needed to get familiar with the lecturer and straight away can proceed to the learning process, but definitely you will be expecting to seeing her or him again.