University of Sydney (USYD)

I need to rant about the lecturer Ron Castelino for Nurs5042.

There are many things wrong and incompetent about the way he teaches, which I must say is extremely shocking for Usyd.

Firstly, the way he lectures comes of a lot in a very condescending way as if he is looking down on all us students. Example being is he would ask a question on a drug or affect it has on the body/disease (mind you this is a first year introductory unit) and then crickets (well some people do have done science or health science degrees would know most likely) but what gets me is the answer he gives is like so intense like is is smashing us students with all this information he knows and we don't, and majority of the time how he responds is not relevant to a first year nursing student. Clearly trying to overcompensate for something.

Secondly, the lecture slides is a massive issue. So it is either he is reading every single word on it making the lecture even more boring then it normally is (will explain later) or he will have something that completely has other information, or even worse some aspects of the example he talks about are not even on a slide making it so confusing and infuriating.

Thirdly, the tone and presentation of himself lecturing is in a monotonic voice and just dose not seem interested, so it just dose not feel very engaging or enthusiastic making the content already even more harder to learn. In addition, he dose have an accent and it also contributes to making it very difficult to understand along with these other issues I have mentioned so far. The lecture I have to describe as if your going to a rodeo, it just goes round and round. For example when learning about diabetes and dementia recently where he would lump topics or drugs or conditions together then move onto another topic, but then go back to the previous one making it so confusing to focus and understand with this constant flip flop not finishing an area fully before move on makes it hard to prepare for exams as your scared you might have missed something as he is not adequate with giving information via lecturing.

Can Usyd please hire better lecturers for pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics please instead of the appalling and really bad lecturer. I am sure they are able to find others instead of him that would make learning these tough dense content more exciting because what and how it is being taught to us extremely poor quality.

There’s a lot of great things about this uni, the history, the people, the diversity, the qualifications provided and the status. Yet all of these things still do not out weigh the incredibly overpriced, old and backwards tutor staff. The saying about bad apples ruining a batch of good apples reigns true in this situation. USYD requires you to pay a premium for a very average education that you can gain in other universities in Sydney. Although this may not be true in all courses the horrible courses with poor tutors and facilitation causes individuals to question why they’re paying up to 11K+. This is evident in a course I’m currently taking part in called WORK1004 with some great course material, yet the tutors do not seem as invested into their students education as the rest of the uni causing students to lose interests and by extension marks and money. How horrible and inflexible this course is run during the covid period also reminds me of the premium I’m paying for tutors and lecturers who are only looking for me to fail. Which segways me to the next point, the inflexibility of the uni. There is no customisation to my timetable compared to their competitors such as UNSW, UTS, ACU and Macquarie, all unis that provides an education just as useful with similar job opportunities. This universities is constantly ruined by their numerous bad apples such as the WORK1004 staff who proliferate disinterest throughout their students, causing young minds to become disheartened in their capacity to learn. I quote an individual “biggest waste of my day” when referring to that exact course, and I’m sure that this is shared with other poorly ran courses.