At the end of the first week of term Coventry University students were sent an email on Thursday 17 September 2020 from DVC – Education & Students  and the Associate PVC – Organisation Teaching & Learning apologising for the inconvenience caused to some students during the first days of term with regard to Enrolment, Accessing learning materials in Aula, Obtaining a Student ID card & Timetables. The university worked hard to resolve issues in these areas.

Coventry UCU have also captured members’ reflection of their experiences of the first week back at University 👇 and sent these reflections to the ULT.  The following quote surmises the importance of capturing and sharing staff experience: 

“I am sure that later this semester the DVC and the Associate PVC will tell us that induction, Aula, and the academic calendar all worked very successfully and contributed towards an excellent student experience. The truth is very different.“

Members Reflections:

• I am required to do at least three times as much work as my normal workload, and because of the discrepancies of which staff are teaching in person, the workload is very much not distributed equitably through my teams. As a clinically vulnerable member of staff, I was told that I still need to teach in person, despite my apprehension about it, and despite the differences between Coventry protocols and SAGE advice. I teach in a building with no windows to allow for fresh and and adequate ventilation and am currently teaching 13 hours per week in person. This is both unacceptable and untenable in the longterm. The anxiety along of teaching on campus as a clinically vulnerable member of staff has already negatively affected my mental health and physical health.

• Chaos. Enrolment did not work for lots of students. Lots of students couldn’t access AULA or, if they could, couldn’t see all their module pages. Some students enrolled on the wrong module pages whilst the ones they needed to be on were missing. Lack of information / late information for staff about how to handle queries. Timetabling not correct – showing sessions that don’t exist, not showing sessions that do. Last minute changes to make supposedly face to face sessions online. Staffing shortages. I’m already needing to change all my teaching to fit AULA and online/blended and have lost hours at a time firefighting student questions about things I can’t answer or resolve for them. Frustrating to say the least.

• There’s a serious issue caused by the shift to a three-semester model, where new students do not have adequate time to settle in, complete enrolment prior to classes beginning.  This was a problem last year, with admissions confounding this problem by issuing offer letters with arrival dates after the beginning of term.Sometimes students arriving in Wk4-Wk5, leaving them in a high-stress situation with assessments due almost immediately.  We need students to be here and ready to start classes in Wk1, and admissions need to ensure offer letters which allow them to enrol before Wk1 begins. We need a Week Zero scheduled in to provide students 7-10 days to arrive and settle in prior to week 1 classes, and for enrolment to work.  This is not a Covid specific problem, and it’s seriously damaged our students first impressions of CU.  Very difficult to recover their faith once the damage is done.

• Over the Summer there were various faculty proposals to capture what the staff felt they needed to successfully deliver the promised ‘blended’ delivery and 5 contact hours. Unfortunately on campus, it has quickly became apparent that very little had been done to action staff requests; no IT equipment we requested had been ordered. We are therefore unable to run online and blended sessions adequately – which of course, will generate NSS issues that effect student-facing staff, not management. In addition to this, Registry have been unprepared for student returns, and a week in there are many still un-enrolled. Some students returning from placement still have yet to receive their enrollment emails from the University, to begin the process. Again, this means unhappy students unable to log-in to Aula, and rumblings of disquiet and complaint.  I raised these issues with immediate management who did not reply.

• My team is already understaffed, and doubly so for face-to-face delivery as some of us are having to stay off campus for health reasons. So the remainder are having to commit to 5 hours teaching per student each week on top of the work required to prepare and delivery online material. This has sometimes meant delivering to 2 or 3 pods at one time, from the morning until the evening, just to make sure we meet that mandate.

• There are some major issues with the introduction of Aula. Features are missing, such as Q&A forums and the ability to add multiple users to groups. Other features like notifications and messages have bugs. I have also had new students added to modules – without notification. There is no way of telling who has been added. Aula will also tell me that there are x number of students not in a group, but not who they are.  I was also told that Big Blue Button would be phased out only 1 week before the start of term, meaning that hours of development work were wasted. Changes to Aula without notification meant further time was wasted.  Overall it was a very poor choice to switch to a new, underdeveloped platform during a stressful & changeable time.  As a new staff member I have also missed out on having any meaningful development discussions.

• It was only last week that I found out what my teaching schedule would be, whether it was online, etc.  It was clear that a lot of decisions were being made at a late stage.  Due to a late decision to start seminars next week, I have not had teaching this week, so it is hard to say what interactions will be like with students. However, I have a general sense that any given week may bring new surprises.  I’m glad that I’m teaching online, because with the increasing infection numbers, I’m sure we will all be online anyway in a week or two.

• A nightmare. Overworked because forced to fill the amount of face to face hours CU promised students without considering our actual resources: on Tuesday I had to teach for ten hours. Stressed by having to deal with multiple failures of IT and enrolment etc. Burdened with the emotional labour needed to make students feel ok in this chaos. Steeped in a very toxic blame game atmosphere: I have a manager who keeps repeating it’s our fault for not having organised ourselves properly. Upset because lecturers are starting to blame each other, resent other people’s workloads, question other people’s reasons for sheltering… I seriously considered resigning, and I hate everything and everyone.  Support for teaching resources/equipment for home/online teaching has been very poor, non-existent. Having to work online on a small laptop – switching between online classes, documents, sharing screens, answering questions, interacting in chat rooms, Aula etc. on one screen is not easy. When asking for additional equipment the answer has been no. We are expected to use our own computers, screens etc, and some of us don’t have this set up at home. It is very unprofessional.  Many students are still, a week in to semester 1, unable to access Aula, Teams, even the Student Portal – due to access issues, mainly to do with delayed enrolment, many email access / password issues. Students who can’t access their email can’t report this to ITS as they need their email to do so! Calling ITS is an option but long wait times – and for students abroad (remote learners, or those awaiting visas) this option is no good.  The above issues mean that these students can’t enrol to Add+Vantage modules (where places filled up very fast after the link opened Fri 18 Sep), meaning they miss out.  Induction information or guidance to teaching staff has been very poor. A lot of small messages here and there – when this could have been collated into one area/updated link. Tutors are ‘expected to’ memorise the info, which, btw, changes all the time, or is different from different management staff.Overall teaching staff have had a very stressful time setting up and preparing for online/blended teaching over the summer. Then AULA, where information about how to use it was very minimal and some staff only had access a day or so before the start of term. Throughout all this, before students returned some tutors had to teach on PG courses, even in our annual leave, including assessments, moderation, making the start even more stressful. Many teaching staff are not ready, mentally or physically for this. We all understand there is a pandemic, but the university, overall, have been unsupported to teaching staff. Even course director not connecting, no information or even a ‘hello hope you are ok’.  It’s only because of the hard work of teaching staff and their dedication to the students that the start of this ac year has not quite been a complete mess…yet.  Apologies for long rant, needed to say this.

• Fractious. Monday was face to face. Started badly. We had to pods in separate rooms but couldn’t get Teams to work from room to room as lots of echo. Students were moving from pod to pod. Not great.  Social distancing a problem as you just want to sit down with students and show them how to do things, but can’t. This means everything takes longer.  Students who live in Birmingham asking if the have to come in as Birmingham is lockdown. I couldn’t answer as I didn’t know.  Online lectures okay. But the lack of spontaneity and feedback  is very different and difficult, as use to have a lot  of student feedback. Not ideal.  MSTeams a problem as not sharing and presenting files. But sorted now I think.  Enrolment issues and also have students who haven’t got the right marks on Solar and don’t know if they can come back to Uni or not. Repeated emails sent to registry but know response on this matter.  Could do with better equipment as working off a very Mac laptop with a small screen.Overall messy.

• Absolute chaos.  Embarrassing that the University was so badly prepared.  What a poor introduction to university for many new students.  PABs only took place during the w/c 7 Sept, and the new academic calendar meant many returning students were still awaiting results letters and couldn’t enrol until during the w/c 14 Sept. This caused unnecessary stress for students, and placed huge pressure on Course Directors and  Registry as they tried to help large numbers of students that couldn’t access personalised timetables or Aula until much later in the week. Aula was not ready. This meant many students were unable to see an induction video or module materials until much later in week one.  Why on Earth are we moving away from tried and tested Moodle at this time? Many Students that selected online study were given a timetable with  F2F study. Again this placed unnecessary pressure on course directors and registry as they tried to rectify this problem as Quickly as possible. It would have been very useful if course teams and Registry had seen the content of Thursday’s email from the DVC and Associate PVC earlier in the week.  Social distancing meant that students were not supposed to attend F2F seminars until they had access to a personalised timetable. Despite this a number of Students did attend timetabled F2F seminars, to ensure I didn’t miss out on teaching.  Some staff have reported timetabled seminars taking place after 5 pm that have as few as four or five students registered. Why can’t these students be allocated to seminars earlier in the day? School management teams kept a very low profile and left course directors and registry to sort out this mess.  I am sure that later this semester the DVC and the Associate PVC will tell us that induction, Aula, and the academic calendar all worked very successfully and contributed towards an excellent student experience. The truth is very different.

• Overwhelmed colleagues, additional stress

• Additional student numbers, low staffing levels

• Equipment not in place or available

• Time focused on connecting students with enrolment and administration affecting student experience … inefficient central communications channels

• My student group was very confused about the arrangements at the very first session. Most had not been properly enrolled, and so had to rely on their personal emails. The use of Aula was a nightmare as they had to also work in TEAMS. The first session thus gave the impression that Coventry University is completely disorganised as we attempted to navigate between platforms, taking new students with us. This is simply not good enough.  The situation is compounded by the University’s policy on COVID-19.  New postgraduate students were not given clear guidance on whether to travel to Coventry, rent accommodation etc, when the F2F time is limited and moreover is seriously threatened by a resurgence of the pandemic. Other (high ranking) institutions made an early decision to teach entirely on-line: making it absolutely clear to students the arrangements for the year.

• Most of our management team were not there.  Most of the lecturers timetabled to give F2F lectures are union members and those of a “less sycophantic nature”. There seems to have been a lot of setting of old scores here by making certain staff members attend.  There appear to be no admin/ research staff in, clearly the lecturing staff are more expendable!

• Chaotic with predictable problems overwhelming the system.  An Educational micro replication of Boris’ Test and Trace where official positivity becomes steadily more risible and demotivating.

• I’m exhausted! I’ve had 18 hours sleep over 4 nights because I have that much work to do. I’m module leading 3 modules this semester when some of my peers only have 1 for the whole year! Workload isn’t equally distributed across staff and management seem unwilling to make changes to make it fairer. It’s now 4.00am on a Saturday and I’m responding to emails! Aula takes so much longer to put material on than Moodle. Partly because of the enforced structure of the Aula page. I’m having to start from scratch on one module because the Aula person refused to revise the structure to fit with the Content when I took the module over from someone else. It takes a lot more time to prepare online synchronous sessions In comparison to F2F sessions as it requires lots more time to make it interactive. There is little guidance for students on how to use things like teams and they are unprepared for the change in learning at level 2&3. I’ve had to teach myself how to do things In Aula and streams as the support sessions I’ve been able to book on to are limited. If it wasn’t for our lab technician being available to provide moral support in a Practical teaching session and creating a presentation of the new rules, the students seem completely unaware of New rules onsite. They want us to be engaging with teaching but send out pages of information which students won’t read! All the staff are shattered already!

• It’s been quite chaotic, with a lot of issues around students not being able to access Aula. This is very concerning because we spent ages populating Aula with preparatory and welcome materials, only for it to feel it was a waste of time. For students who’ve chosen to study remotely, Aula (which was touted by senior management as being so brilliant) really ought to be at least minimally accessible. I’m worried we will have lost some students entirely because they could not access our welcome messages or any learning materials. I’ve also felt embarrassed that incoming students may have formed the impression that Coventry University (which always boasts about its online learning credentials) is actually run by a bunch of incompetents. Hoping maybe we can convince them otherwise in the weeks to come.

• I am exhausted already, not just from the enormous volume of teaching I am doing (over 20 hours!) but from the fall out of endless errors with Aula, managing the anxiety of students while keeping my own anxiety over returning to campus from bubbling over. I have had panic attacks and migraines from stress.

• It was amazing to have the students back, but what was always going to be a difficult week with having to reimagine our teaching material for blended delivery was utterly compounded by intractable administration problems, inadequate management at FutureLearn, and a Registry department that – through no fault of its own – is beyond failing.

• Postgraduate results were not released until the first week of term, meaning re-enrolling part-time students could not select their modules until after term started. Even after enrolling on Day 1 they have still a week later not had modules attached to Aula, giving them a first week  full of confusion and panic. Registry queries from students and academic staff dating back to August have still not been actioned/answered – academic staff now have no functional contact with Registry, and we are left trying to deal with administrative problems on top of our teaching.  International students who arrived in the country weeks ago to avoid quarantine clashes and who enrolled at the earliest possible opportunity, have still not got complete enrolments and still cannot access Aula and the Library services. Some students have been enrolled on Aula on personal email addresses. With two weeks to go before teaching, Aula staff overwrote all of my teaching material that I’d spent weeks preparing, and it took a further 48 hours of international emails between the UK, Brazil and India before it was reinstated and my own access returned to me on my own modules. One of our Course Directors resigned and left the week before term started, so I am now CD for a third programme. FutureLearn versions of our programmes were unable to keep up even a basic marking turnaround. They hired additional cover (in September!) and their lack of preparedness and support for that staff member meant that they resigned two days before term began and as such I am now covering a further two FutureLearn modules in addition to a workload that is already more than 400 hours over allocation. On Wednesday this week I found myself simultaneously covering three online teaching sessions. I am undertaking a PhD while also bringing the largest single amount of commercial revenue into my department, yet the hours for my commercial work have been stripped from my workloading to ensure it looks merely appalling, rather than utterly horrific.

• Students need clearer messaging about use of face coverings, hand sanitiser and cleaning materials in classrooms, and one way systems. The evening on campus teaching slots are hard on both staff and students. Online teaching is also exhausting and the workload is huge – pre recording materials and producing good quality asynchronous learning activities takes an inordinate amount of time, and  online sessions are difficult as students are not used to this way of interacting and are reluctant to contribute to discussion other than by typing in the chat, rather than speaking. I hope this will get better with time, but the additional workload associated with preparing online materials and revising on campus activities to fit social distancing and other safety requirements is immense. We will all be burnt out by the middle of the semester.

• Absolute chaos.  I have never experienced such a poor start to an academic year and we don’t even have the full quota of students.  Imagine if we had recruited to target!!!  Poor students had multiple occurrences of modules on their timetable and didn’t know which sessions to attend. I am fed up apologising for the university.  Getting rid of induction was a disaster and students did not know anything about Aula when they came to their first class with me.  No printers were working in William Morris Building.  I saw a new colleague (started in September) desperately looking for a copier that worked as he wanted to prepare some teaching materials for himself.  I am under risk of redundancy and this is like the elephant in the room.  All the associate heads and the head of subject are just carrying on as normal.  I have been given extra teaching and told it will be sorted out in semester 2, but I won’t be here in semester 2.  I want to scream, I am being made redundant and you are pretending it is not happening and its not just me being made redundant but many of my colleagues.  I am utterly shocked by the way we have been treated and I am hanging on in there by the skin of my teeth.  I am lying to students saying I will be covering various topics in semester 2, but I won’t be here then.  It is like a nightmare.  I am no worried about my safety as I only have contact with students for 2 hours a week.

• Very many students (part-time and apprentices) were incorrectly enrolled onto the wrong cohort or not enrolled at all. Students could  not access Aula or their timetables. The reason for this shambles is down to the fact that results from the exam boards had not made it through. Why? Because of the stupidity of the new academic calendar that has no tolerance for anything.

• The extension of the teaching day without any support for carers, overtime, or assurances about the future reversion to normal teaching hours is not acceptable and the union should be opposing it.

• It was chaotic and unorganised.  I was constantly apologising to students who were becoming increasingly upset that their uni email wasn’t working and they didn’t have access to Aula.  It’s quite embarrassing as I had zero control over the situation and neither did the admin team I was working with.  Sub-par student experience.  Aula to be blunt sucks. It doesn’t have the functionality needed. We are piloting and doing the work for them. It crashes and then you lose your content.  It doesn’t seem to be going down well with the more mature student.  I hate being constantly connected.  And I don’t want to make a video for every little thing – why do I need a video for office hours?  What about students who connectivity issues – video uses so much bandwidth!  I am not delivering my best and most interesting modules because I’m so focussed on making sure technology works that good content and good teaching go by the way side. I’m always playing catch-up. This once again proves that senior management are so out of touch with students and the life of an academic.  Not to mention that taking everything online has meant the workload has doubled with absolutely no consideration/workload model!  Last week I clocked 60 hours.  This is unhealthy and we are at breaking point.

• This was the usual shambolic start to the year in relation to students not enrolled and relevant resources not available. In this instance, the Moodle issues were replaced by the more substantial Aula issues. The rush to sign-off modules prior to the deadline imposed on the company only meant the problems were pushed along to the start of term. How can we be expected to run modules when the module resources were only handed over the week before or days before in one of my instances. Aula did not transfer over the relevant information from the Moodle web, only a section.  I am confused by Aula – not by the system, but by the philosophy. Student-led learning, social learning, community learning, Heutagogy… these sound great, and I can see why Aula would be someone’s vanity project, but has that someone ever taught Coventry University undergraduates? Do students really want to share their photo and a little bit about themselves? Students should be encouraged to be engaged, but in practice only a small percentage ever are. So let’s accept that, and stop pretending that we are Warwick. Coventry University should take a long look at who it is and where in the sector it is placed, not waste money on projects which would be better suited to another environment.  The problem that we have overall is that the structure of the organisation is such that bad news is not communicated upwards. Those in senior positions only select those who are simply going to do what they are told. So many projects, so much money has been wasted. Changing the name of the current project does not change the long-term issue. Are we still on Project Amundsen? What happened to the ambition to be in the 100 Best Employers?  My personal reflection on the first week of the year – apart from Aula, this could be any year.

• Great. Module leader was really well prepared and it went really smoothly. Zoom and Aula all okay though we are still getting used to Aula. The students (L6) seemed keen and quite sympathetic when I spoke to them. It’s all a bit weird. I think they just want to get on with their studies.

• Would like to see more enforcement at the entrance of buildings for students to sanitise, wear masks and use the one way systems. As the current signs are too small or on the floor.

• Colleagues in support services (timetabling and registry) appear to be over-stretched and under resourcedleading to me fielding an excessive number of queries and questions to do with enrolling,  fee payments, mis-leading timetabling information and no-access to Aula. Some modules I teach on are still not transferred from Moodle to Aula. This means having to directly email students material whilst they are waiting to gain access. Currently work is 80% administrative fire fighting and 20% planning/ delivery.

• I am concerned that at 17:45 the hand sanistiser dispenser was empty in Ellen Terry and there was no-one present to report this to. Also, as we are supposed to be working later (until 9 pm), why does the pedestrian access to multi-storey car park close so early?

• It would be useful to have screens for lecturing staff, temperatures to be taken on arrival to teaching buildings, and for security staff to enforce mask wearing. None of these exist in my building – GE.

• The toll on teaching staff is quite heavy with the five-hours promise made by the university. We’re seeing staff working long stretches of hours with very minimal breaks because the pods are staggered in timing. This is due to there being too many pods and not enough staff so we’re juggling multiple pods many of which are running concurrently. We keep bringing the issue up but are told we need to adjust and adapt because guidance is changing constantly. If teaching were all done online then we wouldn’t need to be changing that much constantly because there are less factors to be managing!

• Chaotic. For many reasons.  Enrolment issues. The usual chaos. Students unable to access finance as enrolment hasn’t gone through. For some these are inexplicable mistakes for others it is part of senior management piss poor planning ie exam boards being held after term starts!! Impacts are on students stress, staff stress in trying to help sort it out, and this year in contact tracing safety. Students coming to sessions before being able to enrol = the university unable to officially track their attendance!! Incredible!!  Aula – where do we start – it’s like uni senior management are setting us up to fail. It feels like an episode of The Hunger Games. Let’s throw unfit for purpose processes and programs at the staff and see how many survive the term.  Aula just not ready to use yet. Issues with messaging functions being unreliable, student lists unviewable, material unprintable, a model that is actually incredibly flawed – an endless overwhelming stream of messages. Impossible to manage and e-moderate. I’ve come off other social media due to the proven issues with mental health and now I am forced to use a social media-Esque tool at work. Euch. It’s inevitable we will move back to Moodle – with the added work that will now involve.  Face to face old school teaching. Well we were told over summer to plan for face to face teaching to be reserved for the interactive most necessary sessions. First for 3 hours then gradually up to 5 per week per student. That was fine (unwise but we planned for it). Then a few days before teaching started the bombshell that all face to face has to be old school front facing with no interaction.Being able to use a key paper resource tool – two days of meetings to risk assess!  If we are to do 5 hours face to face it needs to be interactive with PPE to enable this. If we can’t interact why bother? A better education experience can be obtained online or by doing lectures face to face! The senior management seem to have no clue as to the primary purpose of unis – to provide quality education. So much more – just piss poor planning from senior management. One of them told me the plan for how to return to uni has sort of overlooked  how trashing would actually happen face to face!! Unbelievable!

• Aside from the registry debacle pertaining to enrollment messages and student issues about deposit payments and being asked to pay full tuition fees up front in some cases, alongside the lack of clarity about the processes on campus for students, and limited clarity about how to handle “students who have just flown in and have no isolated but have turned up to class”. There are also the frustrations of the need for more staff to deliver content given the limited room capacities and rooms, which meant that in instances modules needed to request support from others, while everyone was inundated and overloaded with their own work. Then there was the “encouragement” as part of the risk assessment to avoid “peak travel times” when using public transport to go to university, though the feasibility has clearly not been addressed for those travelling in for an 0900 session. There has also been students who “live together” and thus do not wish to adhere to guidances  because they live together so want to sit next to each other and jeopardize others.

• Enrolled students were not attached to all their modules in Aula. Aula clearly has very basic & primitive functionality compared to Moodle. Why in the middle of a pandemic would management force staff to change the university’s virtual learning platform. For instance you can’t even hide files within a folder unlike Moodle. Decisions are being made by managers who don’t teach and are remote and detached from students and their experiences. The room allocated for my teaching was not appropriate and there is no alternative available. We are receiving so many emails from managers for things which need to be actioned straight away without any consideration for what our work load entails. Bringing the academic year forward has not helped the situation.

• With the UK having reached a “turning point’ and the number of infections, people on ventilators, deaths and those carrying the disease without symptoms rise it is inevitable that the spread of the virus will infect staff and students at this University.  There is a lot of talk and focus on the students university experience but very little on the academic staffs experience/safety when they are put on the front line during dangerous times to deliver 5 hours in-person teaching promised.  Particularly, when most of this work can be done online without in-person delivery.  What will happen to the students university experience when staff get ill or worse?  To the academic staff and so on?  Over 6,000 infections and rising … it is a worrying time that will take time to get through.

• The start of term is always stressful, but this year it is so much more than stressful. The need to teach students in groups of 16 has doubled everyone’s workload to an unsustainable level!

• Total disaster! Endless student complaints and emails about inability to enroll, join courses etc. Add to this the complete mess of Aula, slowing down, site unavailable and we have a perfect storm of 26 hour days while lecturers make up for total failure of SMT. And we get rewarded with a pay cut!

• The online video call classes went better than I expected.  Aula worked ok but the feed is generating a lot of work and will need to be managed carefully.  Quite a few students had enrolment problems which I couldn’t solve for them which is very frustrating.

• The biggest problem is the Workload model has been discontinued, meaning managers are simply arbitrarily adding all sorts of additional workloads to academic staff. This includes significant repeat teaching sessions across modules (practically doubling module hours), and also requiring staff to engage in remote travel to teach on other campus locations i.e. Cov campus staff being directed to travel and teach in London campus settings).  Without any accountability or transparency between staff workloads, no one has a fair overview of what is being demanded or the levels of exploitation occurring under the radar.  UCU needs to tackle ghost hours and NO accountability (by demanding a transparent and fair workload model be reinstated, thereby allowing us all to see the real scale of the demand). People are being worked longer hours, and to the brink with additional demands to prepare Aula, APA, and learn new conferencing tech. I thought the workload model was an evidential tool connected to the employment contract. it was meant to ensure parity of hours expended between staff and to ensure we do not exceed the Working Time Directive.

• The first week has been the worst ever. The DVC and Associate PVC have persistently told us and senior management that everything is going well, Aula is ‘out of the box’ ready etc. They are lazy, have lied and do not have a single strategic bone between them. They have no idea what is really happening on the ground. What is the point of them? Will they be held accountable for the mess we are in? Will they be held accountable for the unnecessary stress they have caused staff and students. The senior leadership is culpable of ‘group think’, they only employ people who will tell them what they want to here and we are paying the price. Why do the board of governors let them get away with it?

• Timetabled rooms not big enough to accommodate number of students on module – had to turn students away at the door or move to bigger lecture theatre (not practical moving big group of students around the building).  A number of students not wearing masks around buildings. Sat too close in classrooms (difficult to police)  Problems with computers not working.  The problem with enrolment (which almost entirely the fault of ULT and new academic year) is an absolute disgrace. I have had students sign contracts for accommodation, turning up at classes not knowing if they have progressed well into the first week of term!

• The Aula support team does not appear to be able to resolve problems, also, it is not easy to have to teach live face-to-face and remote at the same time. Although I have a relatively high level of ITS skills, having to drop Moodle and BBB for Zoom and Aula at a time that is already quite stressful is inconsiderate to say the least. They NAY has cost us 20 places in the Guardian league tables. It will be interesting to see how much we plummet we the current it mess we are in. The CDs will of course be blamed.

• Awful. Lack of organisation and lack of instruction from senior management for staff and students. I was exposed in a small space to 45 different people in the first week. Lack of support and I feel the university have failed its staff and students regarding their safety.

• Chaotic!  An administrative shambles with respect to enrolment, online learning platforms, and misinformation sent to students in error.

• It has been good to see the students but there are a number of them who clearly do not feel like there is any potential danger. They therefore do not all take the due care that is expected when it comes to social distancing etc. I am exhausted after one week. Still don’t know if there will be any hourly paid support.

• Relentless emails from students and we can’t even offer support when they can’t get on Aula or are not enrolled. Just helpless and frustrating that it has detracted so much from us preparing teaching material which we are running out of time to do. Student sessions fantastic and that is why we do it. Behind the scenes horrendous.

• Teaching rooms in the different buildings on campus are not set up the same.

• GE classrooms on 3rd floor and above do not have the PCs set up to do online streaming in class, furniture is stacked up all over the place and old outdated machinery is left in rooms. Jaguar classrooms are outstanding and a pleasure to teach in.

• The lack of organisation and preparedness on behalf of the university left me extremely distressed and anxious. I had prepared all that I could in advance of the start of teaching, but then found that students had not been added to Aula sites, textbooks had not been added to the library site, students had not been able to enrol, timetables not available, etc., and was left facing students with no way to help them. I raised these issues with Aula, with the School leadership, library and text book suppliers in the week prior to the start of teaching. Some issues were resolved on the fist day of teaching (one class added to Aula site at 08.45 on Monday 14 September), some within the first week (textbook) but the student enrolment issue persists. We as lecturers have to face the students and their concerns while trying to teach and provide work-arounds to make up for the failed systems. I have felt embaressed, anxious, helpless and extremely stressed and unhappy.

• As “clinically vulnerable adult” I have grave concerns about RT campus. My biggest concern was that the management categorised my risk level to be the same as other colleagues who were deemed at risk because they may have to be at home if their children’s school closed. This makes a joke of the clinical needs category. As a vulnerable adult, I am more at risk of catching COVID and, in the unfortunate event that I may contract it, the outcomes for me could potentially be life changing (at best). How this would be equitable to being off to care for healthy, least vulnerable children due to school closures is a nonsense! This risk assessment process needs to be risk assessed! My manager was astounded at how high risk I was but it took verification from my GP, that I was indeed at risk, for them to consider referring me to Occupational Health for assessment.  I am awaiting this appointment and will not return unless I absolutely have to.  Furthermore, reports from mature masters students in the halls of residence are highly alarming with new UG residents having house parties and not abiding by any of the Gov and Universities guidelines regarding social distancing. With this in mind  I am not surprised that the last few weeks have seen an exponential increase in COVID virus transmission. This furthers my concerns of being able to RT campus and undertaking f2f and hand-in teaching, particularly when healthy staff are off because of child care issues!  Whilst I believe the University have done their best to put appropriate and reasonable measures in place to limit risk in the classroom, it’s not possible to control the behaviour of students once they are out of the buildings.  I therefore wish to continue to WAH and support teaching with the provision of synchronous, asynchronous lectures, course and module materials and webinars.  It would be foolish for me to return at present.