ITT Students Protest At Over Lecturer Feedback Issue

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Institute of Technology Tralee students walked out of the college on Tuesday morning. Photo by Gavin O’Connor.

A WALK OUT was conducted by hundreds of Institute of Technology Tralee students on Tuesday morning because lecturers are refusing to give students feedback on their assignment over a dispute with the ITT on the college complaints policy.

“We will be saying to lecturers that they need to drop this action and they need to start giving feedback,” said President of IT Tralee Students Union, Ben Slimm.

This is the last week of college classes and with exams around the corner students are anxious they are not maximizing their chances of better grades.

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The Teachers Union of Ireland are in discussions with the Workplace Relations Commission which has left the students caught in the middle.

In March, the TUI staff in the college moved to not comply with the ITT’s students complaints procedure which is a policy within the institute that outlines how complaints are made.

Two weeks ago, the union took their grievance another step further by not providing students with feedback on exam, academic progress or assignments. Also as part of the dispute, lecturers will not be attending student lecturer meetings when the exam results come out in June.

“We have students that are nearly ready to submit their thesis and they can’t get any feedback on where they may be going wrong,” said Ben Slimm.

“So obviously this is  a big concern for them as they reach their last few weeks before the deadline to submit. One of the crucial things is feedback on what needs to be corrected and how students can get a higher grade.”

“The reason students are assigned a thesis supervisor is so that that supervisor can supervise your work and look at your stuff and to give you feedback which some aren’t currently doing at all. So it’s impossible to know what is expected of you. Likewise for first years who may have just got exam results from continuous assessment they sat earlier in the semester – they can have the results but they can’t have any feedback,” said the ITT SU President.

The TUI say they are in a sensitive stage of discussion with the Workplace Relations Committee the at the moment and it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on this morning’s student action.