This is causing huge problems in several areas:  1. The lack of communication means students have only found out after unexpectedly missing a lecture – so can’t catch up, especially for GV100 which has no online resources. It also means that students can’t plan around this to go to guest speaker seminars or conferences. Further, peer mentors and student ambassadors have been incorrectly advertising this to new and prospective students. 

2. Timetable clashes mean students have to chose politics lectures over economics lectures, and so struggle with the graphs and equations constructed in economics. GV200 also clashes with the Political Theory guest seminar, which many students would like to go to. 

3. Individual lecturers, such as Rob Johns now cannot opt in, even though they want to. 

Potentially, there’s a very serious problem for students with English as second language, as well as non declared disabled: lecturers talk fast and use jargon, Listen Again would allow people to play it back and translate any difficult words. And the recording is made available to disabled students, but this discriminates against those who, for a variety of reasons, haven’t declared it to the university. 

    - However, the department will want evidence of this, so we need feedback from international and disabled (both declared/non declared) in order to use this. You don’t need to make a special statement, just send me a message (amkeeg@essex) to say if you belong to either of these groups – and everything you say will remain anonymous and confidential, unless you explicitly say otherwise. You can also find me on facebook - Lexi Keegan

Petition the department to: 

Reintroduce the listen again service 

Reduce timetable clashes within the department 

Consult students on any further changes to this service, and inform them of the outcome