Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[sinenomine]

I taught that unit....

[Sea_Ice]

I taught that unit....

OMG!!  No words - just the beverage of your choice.  On the plus side, you now know something important about your student...

It would be tempting to have a f2f review of the unit, but that would be time-consuming and rather aggressive - perhaps something like an exam-wrap for everyone, during the next class?

[the_geneticist]

One of my students just told me they couldn't find anything in the library about Pearl Harbor. I think they didn't look very hard.

*facepalm*
They really expected you to say "OK!, I'm sure there is absolutely nothing"?
Heck, there is even trashy historical fiction about Pearl Harbor

[apl68]

One of my students just told me they couldn't find anything in the library about Pearl Harbor. I think they didn't look very hard.

Time to assign a "learn how to use the library" refresher - I assume that librarians are still happy to offer those?

Oh yes!  If only more instructors would let us.

[apl68]

One of my students just told me they couldn't find anything in the library about Pearl Harbor. I think they didn't look very hard.

*facepalm*
They really expected you to say "OK!, I'm sure there is absolutely nothing"?
Heck, there is even trashy historical fiction about Pearl Harbor

I do recall a friend who had recently gotten hired as a history instructor at an under-resourced state university who said that he'd found that when he assigned students topics to produce one-page annotated bibliographies on, there was for most topics basically one right answer.  A case of a newly-minted PhD having to remind himself that not every institution is an R1.  But he did get hired right out of grad school!

[Langue_doc]

Forumites, this is a venting thread, rather than a "give gratutious advise to the newbies" thread. Sinenomine, who comes across as quite experienced, already taught the unit in question.

Banging our heads in despair ≠ asking for advise.

I taught that unit....

[the_geneticist]

*bang! bang! bang!*

Students are working on their presentations for the end of the term.  It's a big project that they've been building pieces towards for weeks. They are presenting in teams to say what they each individually contributed to the big class set of data and work as a team to ask & answer a bigger question from that big set of data.

A TA that teaches TODAY* emailed this morning to say they are "confused"
Are the students in teams?  Why is there an individual portion?
Why are they supposed to include "unrelated information" about their individual [basket]?
What do I tell the students?!?

Tell. Them. To. Use. The. Project. Guidelines. That. Have. Been. Posted. All. Term.

Seriously, day 1 of the class included having them read the guidelines & scoring rubric.  We've been building this for weeks. 

[Tell me you haven't bothered to read the class materials without telling me you haven't bothered to read the class materials]

*Oh no, it's even worse.  They taught lab yesterday.  This cannot be good.

[sonoamused]

One of my students just told me they couldn't find anything in the library about Pearl Harbor. I think they didn't look very hard.

They clearly just walked in, looked around and upon failing to see a sign pointing them to the Pearl Harbor section, or failing to find a database called "Pearl Harbor" - they left.

[Hegemony]

I was in our library once when I overheard the librarian explaining to a pair of baffled students that some reference work or other was in alphabetical order. The students had not heard of alphabetical order. "So it's based on the first letter? How do you know which letters come first?"

At least the students had heard of letters. I think.

[fishbrains]

I can kind of see the alphabetical order problem since students receive information more through search engines than anything else (no yearning for card catalogues here!), and they probably haven't dealt with long lists of people very often.

Kind of reminds me of the old joke where when asked to put frog, cat, and dog in alphabetical order, the student writes "fgor," "act," and "dgo."

Many of my students don't know what a syllable is, and they look at me like I've lost my mind when I . start . clap . ing . like . I . am . have . ing . a . f*ck . ing . stroke.

Fun times

[AmLitHist]

I can kind of see the alphabetical order problem since students receive information more through search engines than anything else (no yearning for card catalogues here!), and they probably haven't dealt with long lists of people very often.

Kind of reminds me of the old joke where when asked to put frog, cat, and dog in alphabetical order, the student writes "fgor," "act," and "dgo."

Many of my students don't know what a syllable is, and they look at me like I've lost my mind when I . start . clap . ing . like . I . am . have . ing . a . f*ck . ing . stroke.

Fun times

<wiping iced tea off my screen>

[apl68]

I was in our library once when I overheard the librarian explaining to a pair of baffled students that some reference work or other was in alphabetical order. The students had not heard of alphabetical order. "So it's based on the first letter? How do you know which letters come first?"

At least the students had heard of letters. I think.

They never heard anybody sing the alphabet song?  Not even on Sesame Street? 

One thing that concerns me about exclusive reliance on search engines to look up information is that this way of thinking tends to turn everything into atomized facts, with no system or order to them.  And I've noticed a definite difficulty for young recent school graduates in thinking systemically and making connections between the different things they know.

That's one reason why I still prefer to do my reading from actual books.  Some types of digitized books can be all too easily to treat as databases full of bits and pieces, instead of an organized whole.  I notice that people who do all their Bible reading from a phone app come to think of Scripture as a database of discreet verses, instead of a structured corpus of structured books.

[marshwiggle]

I was in our library once when I overheard the librarian explaining to a pair of baffled students that some reference work or other was in alphabetical order. The students had not heard of alphabetical order. "So it's based on the first letter? How do you know which letters come first?"

At least the students had heard of letters. I think.

They never heard anybody sing the alphabet song?  Not even on Sesame Street? 

One thing that concerns me about exclusive reliance on search engines to look up information is that this way of thinking tends to turn everything into atomized facts, with no system or order to them.  And I've noticed a definite difficulty for young recent school graduates in thinking systemically and making connections between the different things they know.

And they're terrible at coming up with synonyms, or other ways of trying to get at information. If the search terms or question they use doesn't work verbatim, they're completely lost.

[Langue_doc]

I was in our library once when I overheard the librarian explaining to a pair of baffled students that some reference work or other was in alphabetical order. The students had not heard of alphabetical order. "So it's based on the first letter? How do you know which letters come first?"

At least the students had heard of letters. I think.

Aren't contact lists on our phones in alphabetical order? One would assume that at some point during the school years students were taught the alphabet and also learned how to alphabetize names and other information.

[Liquidambar]

I was in our library once when I overheard the librarian explaining to a pair of baffled students that some reference work or other was in alphabetical order. The students had not heard of alphabetical order. "So it's based on the first letter? How do you know which letters come first?"

At least the students had heard of letters. I think.

Aren't contact lists on our phones in alphabetical order? One would assume that at some point during the school years students were taught the alphabet and also learned how to alphabetize names and other information.

Contact lists are searchable.  Just type the first couple letters of what you want to find.

I'm still baffled why students wouldn't know the alphabet song, though.