By KAVISHA DI PIETRO and SALONEE MISTRY

The Monash Students Association (MSA) is investigating alleged changes across a number of faculties and units towards eliminating in-person lectures in favour of online-only lecture content.

Since mid-August, the MSA says it has received complaints relating to 37 units across all faculties, lead by Engineering, Arts and Law faculties.

The MSA said the content from units had been moved partially or entirely online without notifying the students before enrolling in the unit.

Education (Public Affairs) Officer at the MSA David Power said moving course content online was part of Monash University’s “active agenda learning framework”.

“When we spoke to a unit coordinator from one of the units that was shifted online, we were told that this is a part of the university’s active agenda learning framework which has been set up to establish or experiment with non-traditional modes of delivery,” he said.

“Most of these are recorded versions of the lectures and seem to have been recorded at the beginning of semester.

“A student even complained about the recorded lectures being from the previous semester.”

Mr Power said initially the unit guides did not explicitly say a unit would have online only lectures but they have all since been changed.

Units with online-based content now say “scheduled activities for the unit may include teacher directed learning, PA directed learning and online engagement”.

Monash University science student and Monash Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) leader Cole Teller said online-only content was “extremely detrimental” to students' learning.

“I do academic support for a class that has moved from three lectures a week as well as a lab and a tutorial to two lectorials a week, a tutorial and a lab,” he explained.

“The lectorials go hand-in-hand with a large body of pre-class reading and video lectures, and then are spent essentially just working examples from the reading, rather than going over the content.

“I’ve spoken to a number of students I work with through the program I’m involved with PASS and their unanimous opinion is that lectorials aren’t worth going to because they feel like they are being made to teach themselves material they’ve never dealt with before and nothing substantive is present in class,” he said.

Mr Teller, who is also an international student, said he was frustrated by paying “$36,500 a year” for university when content had moved online.

Despite 62.8 per cent of surveyed students saying the cuts to in-person lecture resulted in decreased learning contact hours and time at university, a number of students said the changes benefited their learning.

Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law student Angelina, who did not want her last name used, said the changes have been beneficial.

“I have two units with purely online lectures and it is awesome,” she said.

“I don’t have to feel guilty about skipping classes because there is no class to skip and I can watch it anytime.”

“It is actually really good to have them online because I can work it around my schedule and don’t have to travel an hour and a half by public transport to go in person.”

Although Angelina said there were a number of positive aspects relating to online learning content, she also noted key pitfalls.

“It is not great that my philosophy unit doesn’t have tutorials though, especially because it is the kind of content that you really need to discuss with somebody to get the hang of it,” she said.

“It makes it a bit harder to grasp and I find myself a bit more of a loss doing assignments because I am not sure whether or not I am understanding it correctly.

Mr Power said the MSA’s next course of action was to contact the Dean’s office and hold a public meeting to condemn these actions.

“With the amount of changes that the university is initiating this is probably one of the gravest ones,” he said.

“It is deplorable and seems like the university’s focus has shifted to becoming a degree factory and the lack of student consideration is evident.”

Mojo contacted the office of Deputy VC and VP Education Prof Susan Elliot and the Strategic Marketing and Communications office for comment. No response was received  by the deadline.