Tertiary Education Union organiser Heather Warren says Massey University staff are disappointed with the potential restructure.

Massey University staff want to be involved in the decision-making should changes proposed under a controversial and radical restructuring plan for the university be introduced.

Tertiary Education Union members held two-hour stop-work meetings on the university's three locations on Thursday to discuss possible changes under Massey's "digital plus" strategy, which will remove duplication of courses across campuses in Palmerston North, Wellington and Albany.

The university has released discussion documents for the future of some of its colleges under the strategy. Each subject will be centralised at an "anchor" campus.

Union regional organiser Heather Warren said the staff who attended the meeting were angry and frustrated.

READ MORE:

* Massey staff to down tools to discuss proposed restructure

* Student body not consulted over Massey restructure

* Massey University: Students slam proposal to axe science from Albany campus

* Big changes to Massey's college of sciences in university restructure

"But I think it was really clear from the meeting the anger and frustration has subsided into disappointment around the way, with the consultation and the process, management has gone when looking at introducing new strategies and new ideas to staff.

"There's a lot of disappointment around the process and a lot of feeling that staff aren't getting the full information they should be getting."

Union members passed a couple of resolutions at the meeting.

"The clear feeling of the members is that the staff and members aren't against change and in fact embrace change. They recognise teaching and learning is evolving.

"What they want is to be involved in the consultation and the idea for consultation at the beginning rather than having a top-down approach."

Warren said there was a rejection of the "defective consultation process on the discussion documents".

Staff wanted to engage, but not via this approach where ideas hadn't been run past staff or students.

"[Members] reject the displacement of face-to-face provision of teaching and learning by online provision of teaching and learning."

That meant online teaching should be used to enhance learning, but it should not be at the cost of displacing staff or the reduction of face-to-face teaching, she said.

Members could see other benefits in online delivery.

A Massey staff member, who Stuff agreed not to name, went to the Palmerston North meeting.

She said one staff member said the consultation was not in line with being a Treaty of Waitangi-led university, and another said Māori and Pacific students were doing the least well in online learning.

She said a staff member mentioned research that showed Generation Z preferred face-to-face teaching and another said Massey was Palmerston North's largest employer and losing jobs would be bad for the community.

Massey vice-chancellor Jan Thomas emailed staff after the meeting about feedback.

She said more information would come later in the process and the university was responding to questions on data where possible.

Next week staff will be invited to an survey about internal communication.

Thomas said a narrative had developed about science not being available on the Auckland campus.

But she said 10 college of science disciplines would be available at Auckland and 12 in Palmerston North, while three key bachelor of science majors from the college of health were suggested at Albany.

"Several staff commented about Massey's culture – we are working on a project around values-behaviours for our university and a university-wide discussion will come out on this soon."

A Massey spokeswoman said earlier this week discussion documents had been released, but while the process was under way the university couldn't comment about potential outcomes.