Favorite student emails

[Thursday's_Child]

Student has been emailing almost daily since the semester began. I'm wondering if they were advised that it is a good idea to ask the professor a lot of questions to show that they are engaged because this student asks the most basic questions! Last night, they copied the instructions for an assignment ("compare this with that") and asked if it meant they are to compare this with that.

I'm getting frustrated. To be fair, the questions are easy to answer so it doesn't take much time. But they are POINTLESS. Instructions state to read chapter seven. Student will email, "am I suppose to read all of chapter seven?"

No, it's a trick assignment. You are actually suppose to read chapter eight. Good job on emailing me and catching that.

I mostly see these early in the semester, perhaps because the first time they get a "Yes, that is correct." between salutation & signature.  Subsequent such emails only get a "Yes."

[AvidReader]

FishProf, I would like to become like you one day. :-) Unfortunately, our evaluations have a "comments" section, where students can and do fire away against faculty pretty frequently. Students believe they are customers because they (at least some of them) pay $$$ to the university, that's why they got to be always right.

Same with ours. So (if it's permissible to discuss experiences peculiar to the non-tenure track in response to a post by downer, the adjunct, about his experience - perhaps eigen won't mind) it's quite a leap of faith to suppose that the chair has your back when reading criticisms of the sort mentioned herein. Especially if they've already outed themselves for being pissed that have newly recognized bargaining unit. Better be available on weekends, paid or not, if you want to keep you job.
Something I suspect rarely occurs to the tenure track. When the provost is pissed at you for having a faculty union, the chair takes the side of the faculty and the union. But when the provost is pissed at the adjunct faculty as a group, the chair can take either side.

Former adjunct and current full-time but contingent faculty here.

It's been my experience at every university at which I've taught (7 so far) that the key with students is to set expectations. My syllabus says that I reply to emails within 24 hours. When I teach in person, I tell students on the first day of class that I go to bed at 7 p.m. (a total lie) and that I get up early and check emails first thing in the morning (pretty much true). In past semesters I have told students that one day a week was my technology-free day (also a lie, but not where teaching duties were concerned) and that I would only check emails once that day  in case they had emergencies. When my first major deadline comes around, I remind them that the deadline is midnight and that I go to bed at 7 p.m. and have them figure out when they need to have enough done on the assignment that they can email me if they get stuck and have a response in good time. Later, when students complain about my lack of responses at odd hours, other students are usually quick to say "but prof. goes to bed at 7! Of course you didn't get a reply . . ."

I have found this a hundred times harder, if not impossible, in the COVID time: there is no communal space in which I see all the students at once, and the students emailing at odd hours and annoyed about "slow" responses are unlikely to have come to class, done the work, and watched the explanatory videos. When they refuse to engage with the materials provided, there is no reasonable way to set expectations. I haven't seen enough evaluations yet to know how hard this will hit.

Oddly enough, despite all this, the strain on my email at the moment comes from my dept. chair and former course coordinator, who routinely email outside business hours and ask for immediate responses. Some of these are due to circumstances outside their control; others are not.

AR.

[downer]

Student has been emailing almost daily since the semester began. I'm wondering if they were advised that it is a good idea to ask the professor a lot of questions to show that they are engaged because this student asks the most basic questions! Last night, they copied the instructions for an assignment ("compare this with that") and asked if it meant they are to compare this with that.

I'm getting frustrated. To be fair, the questions are easy to answer so it doesn't take much time. But they are POINTLESS. Instructions state to read chapter seven. Student will email, "am I suppose to read all of chapter seven?"

No, it's a trick assignment. You are actually suppose to read chapter eight. Good job on emailing me and catching that.

I have a discussion forum on the LMS for questions about the course and tell students to post their questions there. They can answer each other's questions and get some minimal credit for participation if that helps. I visit once a day and answer the unanswered questions.

For routine questions emailed to me, I reply telling students to post on the LMS.

[AvidReader]

No, it's a trick assignment. You are actually suppose to read chapter eight. Good job on emailing me and catching that.

I mostly see these early in the semester, perhaps because the first time they get a "Yes, that is correct." between salutation & signature.  Subsequent such emails only get a "Yes."

Last week, I told students to upload as much of their essays as they had written to a discussion board for peer review. Two separate students emailed to ask what "as much as [they] had written" meant. [What they really meant was "how much should I write at the last minute to so I can get points for submitting work?]

One thing you could try for readings is to put the page numbers in brackets: Chapter 7 (pages 33-45).

AR.

[FishProf]

FishProf, I would like to become like you one day. :-) Unfortunately, our evaluations have a "comments" section, where students can and do fire away against faculty pretty frequently. Students believe they are customers because they (at least some of them) pay $$$ to the university, that's why they got to be always right.

Same with ours. So (if it's permissible to discuss experiences peculiar to the non-tenure track in response to a post by downer, the adjunct, about his experience - perhaps eigen won't mind) it's quite a leap of faith to suppose that the chair has your back when reading criticisms of the sort mentioned herein. Especially if they've already outed themselves for being pissed that have newly recognized bargaining unit. Better be available on weekends, paid or not, if you want to keep you job.
Something I suspect rarely occurs to the tenure track. When the provost is pissed at you for having a faculty union, the chair takes the side of the faculty and the union. But when the provost is pissed at the adjunct faculty as a group, the chair can take either side.

For starters, I am the chair.  But I will (and have) backed any faculty member who draws a reasonable boundary.  I put it in my syllabus and encourage my faculty to do the same.

Bear in mind, I am saying I won't schedule a Zoom meeting on the weekend, not that I don't respond at all. 

[mahagonny]

FishProf, I would like to become like you one day. :-) Unfortunately, our evaluations have a "comments" section, where students can and do fire away against faculty pretty frequently. Students believe they are customers because they (at least some of them) pay $$$ to the university, that's why they got to be always right.

Same with ours. So (if it's permissible to discuss experiences peculiar to the non-tenure track in response to a post by downer, the adjunct, about his experience - perhaps eigen won't mind) it's quite a leap of faith to suppose that the chair has your back when reading criticisms of the sort mentioned herein. Especially if they've already outed themselves for being pissed that have newly recognized bargaining unit. Better be available on weekends, paid or not, if you want to keep you job.
Something I suspect rarely occurs to the tenure track. When the provost is pissed at you for having a faculty union, the chair takes the side of the faculty and the union. But when the provost is pissed at the adjunct faculty as a group, the chair can take either side.

For starters, I am the chair.  But I will (and have) backed any faculty member who draws a reasonable boundary.  I put it in my syllabus and encourage my faculty to do the same.

Bear in mind, I am saying I won't schedule a Zoom meeting on the weekend, not that I don't respond at all.

Well, and you're probably not in a toxic department like the one I was in. I was giving a worst case scenario, but I have no reason to believe it is rare.

FishProf, I would like to become like you one day. :-) Unfortunately, our evaluations have a "comments" section, where students can and do fire away against faculty pretty frequently. Students believe they are customers because they (at least some of them) pay $$$ to the university, that's why they got to be always right.

Same with ours. So (if it's permissible to discuss experiences peculiar to the non-tenure track in response to a post by downer, the adjunct, about his experience - perhaps eigen won't mind) it's quite a leap of faith to suppose that the chair has your back when reading criticisms of the sort mentioned herein. Especially if they've already outed themselves for being pissed that have newly recognized bargaining unit. Better be available on weekends, paid or not, if you want to keep you job.
Something I suspect rarely occurs to the tenure track. When the provost is pissed at you for having a faculty union, the chair takes the side of the faculty and the union. But when the provost is pissed at the adjunct faculty as a group, the chair can take either side.

Former adjunct and current full-time but contingent faculty here.

It's been my experience at every university at which I've taught (7 so far) that the key with students is to set expectations. My syllabus says that I reply to emails within 24 hours. When I teach in person, I tell students on the first day of class that I go to bed at 7 p.m. (a total lie) and that I get up early and check emails first thing in the morning (pretty much true). In past semesters I have told students that one day a week was my technology-free day (also a lie, but not where teaching duties were concerned) and that I would only check emails once that day  in case they had emergencies. When my first major deadline comes around, I remind them that the deadline is midnight and that I go to bed at 7 p.m. and have them figure out when they need to have enough done on the assignment that they can email me if they get stuck and have a response in good time. Later, when students complain about my lack of responses at odd hours, other students are usually quick to say "but prof. goes to bed at 7! Of course you didn't get a reply . . ."

I have found this a hundred times harder, if not impossible, in the COVID time: there is no communal space in which I see all the students at once, and the students emailing at odd hours and annoyed about "slow" responses are unlikely to have come to class, done the work, and watched the explanatory videos. When they refuse to engage with the materials provided, there is no reasonable way to set expectations. I haven't seen enough evaluations yet to know how hard this will hit.

Oddly enough, despite all this, the strain on my email at the moment comes from my dept. chair and former course coordinator, who routinely email outside business hours and ask for immediate responses. Some of these are due to circumstances outside their control; others are not.

AR.

We don't get to write our own syllabus. There's nothing in the syllabus about office hour consultation and the students don't know we are adjunct unless we tell them. So if office hours availability is considered a norm, then....
on edit: I've read the self-study done by the then department chair and his team, which was submitted for acceditation. In it they describe how in their view they've had myriad problems with adjunct faculty over years.

[FishProf]

Nope, not toxic.  And adjuncts are paid well and are part of the union and we have a good contract.  I have no reason to believe my world is rare, or common.  I have no basis on which to make that determination.

I don't doubt your experience, however.

As someone else wrote, or implied, "Put it in the syllabus, clearly."  The repeat as needed.  Set the expectations and then meet them.  Don't kill yourself trying to meet someone else's expectations.

[Caracal]

Bear in mind, I am saying I won't schedule a Zoom meeting on the weekend, not that I don't respond at all.

I tend to triage emails. If someone writes me with something time sensitive (the quiz on the LMS isn't working) I write back and address it as soon as I possibly can. If I don't deal with something like that, it is likely to be more of a headache later. If the question is very easy to answer, I will also often respond right away, if it is convenient for me to do so. The things that I don't feel any obligation to respond to quickly are things that are non-urgent, but also will take some time to deal with, like students who think there's some sort of minor error in their attendance or quiz grades.

I probably should set up better systems, however, where I have some sort of canned reply I can send from my phone when I get one of these non urgent requests saying that I will look into it when I get the chance and get back to them about it and then I could move it into a folder of student stuff to address.

[kiana]

I tend to triage emails. If someone writes me with something time sensitive (the quiz on the LMS isn't working) I write back and address it as soon as I possibly can. If I don't deal with something like that, it is likely to be more of a headache later. If the question is very easy to answer, I will also often respond right away, if it is convenient for me to do so. The things that I don't feel any obligation to respond to quickly are things that are non-urgent, but also will take some time to deal with, like students who think there's some sort of minor error in their attendance or quiz grades.

Ditto. The other ones that I'll respond to on my own time are students who are asking great questions where it is a pleasure to answer.

[research_prof]

FishProf, I would like to become like you one day. :-) Unfortunately, our evaluations have a "comments" section, where students can and do fire away against faculty pretty frequently. Students believe they are customers because they (at least some of them) pay $$$ to the university, that's why they got to be always right.

Same with ours. So (if it's permissible to discuss experiences peculiar to the non-tenure track in response to a post by downer, the adjunct, about his experience - perhaps eigen won't mind) it's quite a leap of faith to suppose that the chair has your back when reading criticisms of the sort mentioned herein. Especially if they've already outed themselves for being pissed that have newly recognized bargaining unit. Better be available on weekends, paid or not, if you want to keep you job.
Something I suspect rarely occurs to the tenure track. When the provost is pissed at you for having a faculty union, the chair takes the side of the faculty and the union. But when the provost is pissed at the adjunct faculty as a group, the chair can take either side.

I am a TT faculty, but I do not think my chair or my dean for that matter have my back when they read students' complaints about my courses.

[mahagonny]

FishProf, I would like to become like you one day. :-) Unfortunately, our evaluations have a "comments" section, where students can and do fire away against faculty pretty frequently. Students believe they are customers because they (at least some of them) pay $$$ to the university, that's why they got to be always right.

Same with ours. So (if it's permissible to discuss experiences peculiar to the non-tenure track in response to a post by downer, the adjunct, about his experience - perhaps eigen won't mind) it's quite a leap of faith to suppose that the chair has your back when reading criticisms of the sort mentioned herein. Especially if they've already outed themselves for being pissed that have newly recognized bargaining unit. Better be available on weekends, paid or not, if you want to keep you job.
Something I suspect rarely occurs to the tenure track. When the provost is pissed at you for having a faculty union, the chair takes the side of the faculty and the union. But when the provost is pissed at the adjunct faculty as a group, the chair can take either side.

I am a TT faculty, but I do not think my chair or my dean for that matter have my back when they read students' complaints about my courses.

On the old forum a tenured poster named Vox Principalis asked 'why would you even read course/instructor evaluations after you get tenure?'
on edit: at the same time my impression has been one of the functions of the tenure track faculty union some places has been  to protect them from each other.

[FishProf]

I am a TT faculty, but I do not think my chair or my dean for that matter have my back when they read students' complaints about my courses.

Honest question: What would it mean to you that your chair "has your back"?

[research_prof]

I am a TT faculty, but I do not think my chair or my dean for that matter have my back when they read students' complaints about my courses.

Honest question: What would it mean to you that your chair "has your back"?

Probably be able to evaluate if a student's complaint is legitimate or not. A complaint like "this professor demonstrated a harassing behavior throughout the semester" is different than a comment saying "the assignments were tough". The former is something that should be further investigated, but I would expect in the latter case to understand that students do not want to do the work and that's why they complain about the assignments, so the problem is not with the faculty but with the students. But this will not happen, because as I said students are the university's customers and we need to keep them happy.

[mahagonny]

Nope, not toxic.  And adjuncts are paid well and are part of the union and we have a good contract.  I have no reason to believe my world is rare, or common.  I have no basis on which to make that determination.

It's quite common. Whatever your adjuncts think of their work conditions, the world according to tenure track faculty as regards treatment of adjunct and especially those more on the administration side such as yourself is frequently as you describe. 'Specially on a public forum.

[mahagonny]

I am a TT faculty, but I do not think my chair or my dean for that matter have my back when they read students' complaints about my courses.

Honest question: What would it mean to you that your chair "has your back"?

Probably be able to evaluate if a student's complaint is legitimate or not. A complaint like "this professor demonstrated a harassing behavior throughout the semester" is different than a comment saying "the assignments were tough". The former is something that should be further investigated, but I would expect in the latter case to understand that students do not want to do the work and that's why they complain about the assignments, so the problem is not with the faculty but with the students. But this will not happen, because as I said students are the university's customers and we need to keep them happy.

In our case, if anyone's wondering, 'having your back' would mean, at minimum, telling the students the same thing the administration tells the adjunct union during negotiations, namely that adjuncts do not do office hour service. That way students would not be expecting it, and would not be thinking of it when filling out the comments section of the evaluation forms.