You probably have heard of away days - days when firms take their staff away from the workplace to clear their heads, do something different, interesting, have nice time, but overall it's a team-building activity. Sounds good, doesn't it?
The Degree Farm has its own take on away days. Going away from the workplace means going to just another university building (literally, sometimes it's just across the street, a building in which many of us teach on daily basis...). Doing something different? Getting involved in team building activities? Positive experiences to remember and increase creativity? Rather not!
Our management's approach to away days can be summarised in the following way: make staff go to another university building which is no further than 5 minutes walk away. Remember to ensure that everyone acts as if they were in some far-away leafy place. Keep them busy for 5 hours - seat them down in a room and have 5 hours of presentations and training.
In each open day there's a good dose of propaganda so we don't forget how great the Degree Farm is and that it's all thank to our amazing deanery. The highlight is when one of the deans comes forward and points out that we are lucky to have our jobs and should be grateful. Good times!
Then we are briefed on changes and suggested changes. Obviously our feedback is appreciated and taken into account by the managers when making their decisions (sarcasm). The typical scenario looks like this: the head of department informs us of a change dreamt up by one of the deanery gurus. Then we are asked what we think about it, after all it's the lecturers who do the work. We express our concerns and say it won't work, it's impractical, impossible etc. Then the head of department says that there's nothing we can do about it because the dean is passionate about his idea. Within two days we all receive an email from the dean informing us that feedback was overwhelmingly positive and he has decided to implement the changes. As you can see the lecturers' input is very valued at Degree Farm!
Then there is some technical training - how to do things online, use virtual learning environment, fill in forms, write up exam papers and all that stuff.
Then we need to think how to improve the student satisfaction to get a good NSS score. How could we do that? Let's brain storm for ideas how to bribe or scare our students into giving us the highest marks. To one of the away days the managers invited a person from another department who told us how to perfect the NSS score. How do they do it at their department? They take third year students away to a resort for 5 days and make them fill in the online survey out there! Unethical? Immoral? Simply wrong? You'd think! Well our line managers don't see such a problem. The only reason why our department didn't do the same are its size and the student numbers. It's simply logistically too difficult to send hundreds of students away for 5 days along with necessary staff. This may still change because Degree Farm decided to create new posts whose holders will be responsible for organising such trips. More happy times ahead!
At the end of the time all staff are energised, motivated, their creativity is overfilling the place - that's what a normal person would expect after a normal away day. At Degree Farm the overwhelming feelings are tiredness, powerlessness and frustration. But nobody will say a word out loud because they have been reminded how lucky their are to have their jobs. The brave ones who tried ended up without pay increments, were denied promotions and mistreated terribly by the management. Critical thinking and honesty are an enemy at Degree Farm (and it's supposed to be a university...).
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