Jett's Study Abroad Experience
Spring 2023
Spring 2023
Another week, another post! I can't hardly believe that I have already completed my first week of classes as it feels like I just got here a little bit ago. However, in this post I want to talk about everything that I have learned about the differences between classes here at Roehampton, and classes back in the US. First though, I have to talk about some of the highlight of this week. The best part of this week had to have been the river boat cruise that all the study abroad kids took along the river Thames. Although we had to leave super early in the morning and the cruise was extremely cold, we got to see tons of really cool sights including Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Tower, the Shard, and Tower bridge. The boat then dropped the whole group off in Greenwich where we were met by a local guide of toured us around telling us all about Greenwich and the significance of the city. While that is all more information than I can possibly hope to fit in this blog post, I'll leave this story with a picture. Now for the not as fun, but very interesting part, being classes here at Roehampton. They are very different in many ways, with the biggest difference being the setup of the classes. Back in Hawaii, students are very used to a format that usually host several sessions of the class each with various assignments being due on a weekly (or sometimes daily) basis. This means that the professors are much more involved in the students learning process and expect students to be kept up with the rest of the class. Roehampton does things very differently. In the UK there isn't really a concept of a "professor" teaching a class, and instead classes are split into a lecture and a seminar, and sometimes there is an extra online clinic that is required for students to attend as well. The lecture is led by a "lecturer," which for American students would be the same as a professor, however, students then also have a tutor for their seminars, which is usually the point of contact that a student would go to in order to get help or ask questions. Overall, the lecture is very similar to any lecture than a professor in an American university would offer, but the seminars are a session where students go and work with other students to lead discussion-based lessons and apply what they have learned. The biggest difference above all else though, is the assignments that are given to students. Well actually, it's more of the lack of assignments, as students in the UK are expected to follow much more self-guided learning. Lectures, and tutors for the most part, are much less involved in the learning process that students undergo during their time in university. Each module, as classes are called in the UK, is assigned one big assignment that usually takes the form of a 2,500-word report that is due sometime at the end of the semester. These can be research-based reports, class-based reports, or simply a creation of the professors desired learning outcome for the students, but this one assignment can be responsible for deciding up to 100% of the students end grade. While this sounds scary, it is much less rigorous than one would be led to believe since the grading scale is very different in the UK as well. While most American students would aim for 90% or higher in a class in order to get an A, students in United Kingdom universities are expected to get around 65% and up in order to get an A. This may seem like quite an odd concept, but the purpose is so that truly outstanding pieces of work have much more opportunity to be celebrated rather than just getting 100% like 10 other papers. So, while the process is different, it is not anymore scary or intense than a class back at home. My last thought while on the topic of education here in the UK, I realize that many people local to Europe are multilingual speaking 2,3, or even more languages. This caught me very off guard when I met a friend that is from the Netherlands who is able to speak 4 languages. It caught me off guard in a way that really inspired me though, as I began to think about how disconnected I feel from the rest of the world while living in the US. I no doubt feel very fortunate to have grown up in such a stable country with so much opportunity, but I can't help feeling like the education we are given in the US is very biased in the way we are taught. We are taught in one language, we are taught America-centric history, and we are relatively closed away from diversifying our schools. I can't help but feel slightly sad about how our schools are taught in this way sometimes, and I really feel like my eyes have been opened to the endless opportunities that are out there in the rest of the world. I truly have begun to strive to have those opportunities to be multilingual and study/work in a multicultural environment where everyone's voices are heard.
1 Comment
KitsMom
2/13/2023 07:41:12 pm
Very insightful!
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July 2023
While I attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I was born in Littleton Colorado and grew up in a rural area. When I moved out to Hawaii for school, I quickly found my groove in Shidler College of Business as a triple major studying Marketing, International Business, and Quantitative Economics, and I was later chosen to be one of the Shidler Global Leaders. This and several other scholarships, including the Johnson Scholarship, gave me the amazing opportunity to go spend a semester abroad in the United Kingdom.
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