Favorite student emails

[fosca]

3rd - you signed up for the 15 day sprint class. There's a lot of stuff.  What did you expect?

Fifteen days of regular classes that would award the same credit as a whole semester course for a fraction of the work?

I know this is what some of my students seem to think 8-week courses are; I make sure to explicitly say/write "It's all the work in half the time" several times in the first week to make sure it sinks in.  I still get complaints it's too much work, whereupon I remind them what they signed up for.

[FishProf]

True to form, the students (yes, plural) complaining about things not being posted yet are the same ones who haven't done a fraction of what has already been posted.

(Inside poker - the work is posted, they just can see it because they haven't done the prereq work yet).

[downer]

3rd - you signed up for the 15 day sprint class. There's a lot of stuff.  What did you expect?

Fifteen days of regular classes that would award the same credit as a whole semester course for a fraction of the work?

In my classes, the fraction is about 0.95

[FishProf]

3rd - you signed up for the 15 day sprint class. There's a lot of stuff.  What did you expect?

Fifteen days of regular classes that would award the same credit as a whole semester course for a fraction of the work?

In my classes, the fraction is about 0.95

So that rounds to zero, right?  Right?

[downer]

3rd - you signed up for the 15 day sprint class. There's a lot of stuff.  What did you expect?

Fifteen days of regular classes that would award the same credit as a whole semester course for a fraction of the work?

In my classes, the fraction is about 0.95

So that rounds to zero, right?  Right?

I guess lots of students wished that. I started with 27 students. Looks like 15 of them will finish the class.

[FishProf]

"Hello! I am going to be in your social biology course BI-111-EL and I was just wondering when the course will be available on blackboard and the assignments will be able to be seen? Thank you so much!
-Stu"

Well, let's see.  The semester STARTS on Tuesday, so I was thinking I would make course materials available on...Tuesday.

[fishbrains]

"Hello! I am going to be in your social biology course BI-111-EL and I was just wondering when the course will be available on blackboard and the assignments will be able to be seen? Thank you so much!
-Stu"

Well, let's see.  The semester STARTS on Tuesday, so I was thinking I would make course materials available on...Tuesday.

I'll take some of the blame there. I had all my classes up on Thursday. Students are already submitting work even though classes don't start till Tuesday.

I was always one of those freaky students who wanted to get ahead of things; so now if my class is ready to go, I just go ahead and release it.

Not advocating for early release, just saying ...

[FishProf]

I'll take some of the blame there. I had all my classes up on Thursday. Students are already submitting work even though classes don't start till Tuesday.

I've done that myself as well (this last inter-session semester, for example).  My response/reaction is to the expectation that I should have materials available before the semester starts.

[fishbrains]

I'll take some of the blame there. I had all my classes up on Thursday. Students are already submitting work even though classes don't start till Tuesday.

I've done that myself as well (this last inter-session semester, for example).  My response/reaction is to the expectation that I should have materials available before the semester starts.

Yeah, I'm wondering if opening classes early is kind of like sending emails on a Saturday. Maybe we don't want to set that kind of expectation.

[FishProf]

I worry about the same thing.  The only time I do it is before the super-short intersession.  But it doesn't seem to matter.  The students who need it won't use it and the ones who use it don't need it.

It's the temporal version of extra credit.

[marshwiggle]

I'll take some of the blame there. I had all my classes up on Thursday. Students are already submitting work even though classes don't start till Tuesday.

I've done that myself as well (this last inter-session semester, for example).  My response/reaction is to the expectation that I should have materials available before the semester starts.

Yeah, I'm wondering if opening classes early is kind of like sending emails on a Saturday. Maybe we don't want to set that kind of expectation.

One of the things that I don't like about having everything delivered through the LMS (as I do now) versus using my own website (as I did pre-Covid) is that now there's nothing that students can see without being registered. So, if a student is interested in my course, I can't just point them to last year so they can take a look. Or, if I want to look at another person's course that is a prereq for mine, I can't.

I'd really like it if the LMS allowed "open" material which anyone could see and "closed" material, obviously including quizzes and so on, which was only for people in the course. All-or-nothing isn't ideal.

[downer]

I worry about the same thing.  The only time I do it is before the super-short intersession.  But it doesn't seem to matter.  The students who need it won't use it and the ones who use it don't need it.

It's the temporal version of extra credit.

I hope that opening the course early for a short course could scare some students away because they can see the workload early on. I think it does a bit. I also like when good students get started on online discussion work early since then I can give feedback and other students can see what good work looks like.

[FishProf]

Considering my pay can be affected by scaring students away early, it is a bit of a dilemma.

[apl68]

I worry about the same thing.  The only time I do it is before the super-short intersession.  But it doesn't seem to matter.  The students who need it won't use it and the ones who use it don't need it.

It's the temporal version of extra credit.

I hope that opening the course early for a short course could scare some students away because they can see the workload early on. I think it does a bit. I also like when good students get started on online discussion work early since then I can give feedback and other students can see what good work looks like.

That gets back to getting through to them the understanding that just because the course is short, it doesn't mean that it's less work.  From what people have said here, a lot of them really don't seem to get that.  A lot of students really seem to have the idea that an abbreviated course is a chance to get the same credit with a fraction of the work.  Magical thinking in action, I guess.

[Puget]

I just wanted to check with you about the signup link for the individually assigned readings. Is it the one titled "Sign up for individually assigned reading here"? Just want to make sure I'm using the right one.

No matter how obvious you've made things. . .