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5.2 Staff interview data analysisA total of 10 staff members participated in the interview.5.2.1 Teaching content and textbooks(1) Do you set specific readings for your students?Among the answers, only one teacher’s answer was “very rarely”. The otherlecturers gave specific readings or reading guidelines to students. These commentsshow some typical methods of setting specific readings:“Yes, of course. In the study guide there are a number of readings, and I try andintegrate those readings into the activities and so the only reading material I provideis the essential reading…”“We do issue study guide notes plus readings which are very large…”“In our study guides there are specific readings set for each week…”(2) Do you check that your students are up-to-date with their readings?Nearly all lecturers checked whether or not the students were up-to-date with thereadings, but they checked in different ways. Some lecturers had plans to do this;for example, one lecturer said, “We do, we have weekly discussions and thestudents have to come to class prepared for those discussions”. The other lecturercommented, “They have to be up to date to do the assessment”. Some lecturers didnot have a plan; one lecturer said, “No, I don't check them, I can tell as they usuallydon't understand what you are talking about in class if they haven't done them” or “Igive students a question in class…” One lecturer said, “Only if I am dealing withpost graduate students in a semi-supervisory type role but not with classroomoriented teaching”.(3) Do you quiz your students on the content of the textbooks?Most lecturers did not use quizzes to check whether their students were up-to-datewith their readings. One commented, “however most of the ones I deal with are notreally that way inclined so the short answer would have to be no”. A few teachersused this method occasionally; one of them said, “Occasionally we have quizzes aswell”. Only one lecturer definitely did this, but he commented, “It was running lastsemester and not running this semester”.(4) What were your observations in terms of student use of lecture notes andreferences?All the teachers believed that students use lecture notes, but the specific details oftheir observations were different. The following are some of the comments:“They use the lecture notes a lot more than they use the textbook.”“I’d say the majority of them don’t but they might work their way through the lecturenotes while they are in class. The feedback is that they find them good, but theydon’t tend to be prepared.”“The students tend to want it easy and they tend to only want to use the lecturenotes…. My observation is that students if they can 'not' do the work, they will 'not'do the work.”“I find the students love the PowerPoint…”Lecturers seemed dissatisfied with the students’ referencing. One of themcomments “I’m disappointed with the referencing skills of the students in general. Ioften find that students submit their work without proper referencing” and anothercommented, “I’m very tough on referencing … I had one student who I referred tothe head of school over referencing. He had actually copied a lot of material from awebsite and it was un-cited material”.(5) What constitutes a good textbook?It appears that lecturers from different fields of study focus on different categories oftextbooks. The comments are as follows:78