When Learning Loses Its Shape

Walking into the classroom with hope

There are days when we walk into the classroom carrying more than slides and lesson plans. We carry hope. The quiet hope that something will shift, that a spark will catch, that learning will still take root. That hope is held carefully, knowing how easily it can be disturbed.

Lately, the wind has been strong.

The gap students arrive with

Students arrive in the UK having invested enormous sums of money, with families waiting at home and futures resting on this degree. Many step into a master’s programme without the foundations such study quietly assumes. Some do not own laptops. Some struggle to use the learning management system. Some have never searched for academic material independently. Their educational histories are often shaped by memorisation and survival rather than inquiry, reflection, or critique.

The sudden expectation of independence feels like an earthquake beneath their feet.

A comparative perspective: what has changed

I witnessed similar challenges during my years teaching in Australia, but the gap was significantly smaller. Fewer postgraduate students arrived with severe language or academic readiness issues. Entry thresholds were clearer, cohorts more balanced, and the pressure on individual classrooms felt manageable.

In the UK, the gap feels wider and more concentrated. Larger intakes, faster-paced block delivery, and a heavy reliance on international recruitment have magnified the issue. What once appeared as an exception now feels like a dominant pattern, and the classroom absorbs the full impact.

Teaching with clarity, care, and repetition

In response, teaching slows down. Expectations are explained repeatedly. Tips, examples, structures, and guidance are offered with care. Students who listen and engage, even with weak English, begin to find their footing. Their work is imperfect, sometimes clumsy, but unmistakably their own. These moments remind us why teaching matters.

Then there are others who panic.

Language as invisible labour

For some students, limited English proficiency makes even basic engagement difficult. In practice, this often requires us to move beyond English alone, drawing on shared community or ethnic languages simply to ensure understanding. Teaching the same concept multiple times, in different languages, while simultaneously building academic English vocabulary, is exhausting.

This labour is rarely acknowledged. It demands sustained cognitive effort, emotional patience, and cultural sensitivity, all while maintaining academic standards and keeping the class moving. The challenge deepens when students arrive without basic technology, something repeatedly emphasised in Western universities as essential for learning. Without laptops or digital fluency, teaching stretches further, asking academics to compensate for gaps that should not exist at postgraduate level.

When fear replaces learning

Under the pressure of six-week blocks, visa anxiety, financial stress, and fear of failure, some students turn away from learning and towards shortcuts. For some, this means paying others to complete assignments. For others, it means relying heavily on generative AI tools to produce content they do not fully understand. The intention is often panic rather than malice. The outcome, however, is the same.

The AI problem

AI-generated content has introduced a new and troubling layer. Students often accept AI output as inherently correct, even when it is inaccurate, generic, or completely misaligned with what has been taught. The language sounds fluent and confident, yet theories are misrepresented, references invented, and the specific focus of the unit ignored.

When students rely on AI without understanding, they cannot explain what they submit. They repeat incorrect ideas with confidence and struggle in live discussions and presentations. AI becomes a replacement for thinking rather than a support for learning.

This is not a failure of technology. It is a failure of readiness.

Where the Issue really begins

These patterns do not start in the classroom. They begin within recruitment systems that promise ease where difficulty is inevitable. Some agents oversell degrees, blur ethical boundaries, and normalise forms of “support” that cross into contract cheating. Students arrive expecting a transaction rather than a transformation, and reality hits them hard. Universities depend on international students to survive. Without them, jobs disappear and departments close. Yet the same system often fails to prepare students properly and leaves academics carrying the emotional, ethical, and pedagogical consequences.

This contradiction sits at the heart of the problem.

The hidden workload for academics

Every outsourced or AI-generated assignment increases our workload. We are expected to detect inconsistencies, investigate authorship, question understanding, and sometimes conduct vivas, absorbing stress and risk that were never meant to be part of the academic role. The emotional labour is heavy, and the silence around it heavier still. Teaching slowly becomes policing, and that is not what education was meant to be.

Why I continue to teach?

Teaching exhaustion and student transformation

Teaching in this context is exhausting at the start. The gaps are wide. The pace is unforgiving. Holding the classroom together requires constant emotional and cognitive effort. Some days feel like pushing against resistance from every direction.

Then something shifts. As the block or semester draws to a close, transformation appears. The student who once struggled to speak begins to articulate ideas. The hesitant voice steadies during a live presentation. The student who relied on shortcuts begins to attempt their own thinking. These changes are not always dramatic, but they are deeply real.

Watching this growth is one of the quiet rewards of teaching.

Teaching-focused roles and what they make possible

As academics in teaching-focused roles, this is where our contribution lives. In the classroom. In the slow work of development. In moments of understanding that never appear in metrics or league tables. Teaching-focused work creates space for transformation, for learning that unfolds imperfectly yet honestly.

Simplifying learning, not overwhelming it

This experience also reminds us that we must keep developing our modules. Learning does not improve by filling PowerPoint slides or overloading the LMS with content students cannot yet comprehend. It improves when we simplify, clarify, and prioritise what truly matters. Less content, more understanding. Less noise, more learning.

Holding onto what matters

The role is not to fix the entire system. It is to teach with integrity, to support those who genuinely try, and to honour the dignity of real learning in a world increasingly drawn to shortcuts.

Something inside still refuses to give up on education. It is the same place that has carried me across countries, careers, and uncertainty. It is the place that believes learning is a sacred act — one that cannot be outsourced, purchased, translated, or generated without understanding.

That is why we continue. Even when the wind is strong!!!