Lecturing in Uganda

I’ve been lecturing here for a few weeks now, so it’s time to write down some impressions.

First; the environment: With a limited budget, the university decided against building purpose-made tiered lecture theatres, so instead the lectures are just in large rooms or halls. This works ok, although it does make the people at the back seem a long way away. The building is very noisy though, with the scraping of chairs and tables and the talking of hundreds of students in the corridors and stairs making being heard sometimes quite tricky. I also need to concentrate on speaking slower!

Sorry about the lack of photos of the lectures, but in the background of this photo (behind Lyndsey) you can see one of the two Computer Science buildings!

The building, although new, seems a bit dingy and grubby – the effect of five years of dusty air and countless students. Without the nightly scrubbing of all the floors and stairs I’m sure the place would be considerably worse. The lack of water to the toilets is however a more pressing need – a large tank and a bucket being the sanitation alternative. Once I find a source of cheap alcohol hand sanitiser I plan to install it by the sinks.

Second; the students: An incredible mix from across the country. With very different attitudes towards learning and towards their lecturer! Many are keen to learn, printing out practice papers already, but many are also quite lazy, as I was, halfway through my undergrad, too distracted by other aspects of student life to focus on search heuristics or other academic concerns. The official language of the university is English, but Ugandan English is very different from ‘our’ English – making lecturing a challenge. The ability of the students is also very mixed, with some following along in lectures and able to shout out answers, while others even seem to struggle with written English. Teaching many hundreds of students with this spread of ability feels like a real challenge.

Rose (my co-lecturer, who I take turns with), and I decided to give the students a short test on the first four weeks of term. Worryingly, many of them seem to have struggled with it – even though the answers are all in the notes online. The apparent willingness and keenness during lectures doesn’t seem to translate so completely to work outside the lecture theatre.

Had my first lecture during a power-cut the other night: But the students were able to combine their mobile-phone torches to illuminate the white-board.