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

[downer]

Student performs pretty badly all semester, arrives late to class. Says they were present when I didn't see them. Now final paper is past due, and student says that they uploaded it, along with a medical excuse for not being able to do a presentation in person. But nothing is uploaded.

There's about a 5% chance the student really does have medical problems, and a 95% chance they are bullshitting. But I have to be nice to them until it is all over.

[Caracal]

Meanwhile, I reviewed his final exams, both of which contain generic claims and almost no evidence (in the few cases where evidence appears, it's wrong). Met with him about these, separate from the integrity meeting because I can't "prove" AI. Again it was an absurd charade in which he pretended to be "looking at his notes." Upshot: he admitted to randomly tossing in comments like, "As we learned in lecture," to make it look as though he was referring to course material.

He's likely going to fail these classes anyway, because his exams are garbage and his essays are full of falsified material. Why not just 'fess up and save us all the phoniness and aggravation?

I need to get a lot better at cutting this type of thing off at the knees, that's for sure.

For what it's worth, I do get students who write things like that with no assistance from AI.

I'm sure you're right about this student, but I still think this is going to end up being a bad use of your time and energy. You're getting drawn into this guy's bs because you need him to admit to cheating and he knows it. You can't really prove he used a bot to write his essay. If you give him the failing grade on the exam that it deserves he hasn't gotten away with anything. He probably would have gotten a better grade by writing his own crummy essay.

I just can't imagine you really want to spend your time with ineffective cheaters instead of students who are actually trying.

I completely agree. There are problems with the exams, and I thought I should give him a chance to explain if he could. The "explanations" are bogus, so now I can just go ahead and grade as is. My mistake was giving him time and space to ruminate about all his problems and blame me for them. Lesson learned.

I know the feeling. Most of the ways we interact with people are based on the idea that the person is basically well intentioned. If they are acting in frustrating ways, we assume it's mostly cluelessness, rather than actual malice. That's generally a good way to approach the world, but it can make it hard to switch to a different mode when it becomes apparent that someone actually just has bad intentions and is a liar and a manipulator. Then the person leaves and you realize "wait, why was I trying to pretend any of this deserved a response or hearing?

[the_geneticist]

Student performs pretty badly all semester, arrives late to class. Says they were present when I didn't see them. Now final paper is past due, and student says that they uploaded it, along with a medical excuse for not being able to do a presentation in person. But nothing is uploaded.

There's about a 5% chance the student really does have medical problems, and a 95% chance they are bullshitting. But I have to be nice to them until it is all over.

And that is why I have students turn something in with their name on it every class.  Granted, I teach labs, but I'd do the same for any lecture day where attendance & participation matter.
For the whole "I uploaded it!", ask them to please send you a screenshot of where they uploaded and/or please email it to you by a set date & time.

[downer]

Student performs pretty badly all semester, arrives late to class. Says they were present when I didn't see them. Now final paper is past due, and student says that they uploaded it, along with a medical excuse for not being able to do a presentation in person. But nothing is uploaded.

There's about a 5% chance the student really does have medical problems, and a 95% chance they are bullshitting. But I have to be nice to them until it is all over.

And that is why I have students turn something in with their name on it every class.  Granted, I teach labs, but I'd do the same for any lecture day where attendance & participation matter.
For the whole "I uploaded it!", ask them to please send you a screenshot of where they uploaded and/or please email it to you by a set date & time.

The default outcome is that the student fails. It is up to the student to take action to avert that outcome. Indeed, since student's current grade is 25%, I doubt any amount of effort at this stage will be enough to change that outcome. I'm not making any efforts to help the student sort out their problems.

[the_geneticist]

Student performs pretty badly all semester, arrives late to class  Says they were present when I didn't see them. Now final paper is past due, and student says that they uploaded it, along with a medical excuse for not being able to do a presentation in person. But nothing is uploaded.

There's about a 5% chance the student really does have medical problems, and a 95% chance they are bullshitting. But I have to be nice to them until it is all over.

And that is why I have students turn something in with their name on it every class.  Granted, I teach labs, but I'd do the same for any lecture day where attendance & participation matter.
For the whole "I uploaded it!", ask them to please send you a screenshot of where they uploaded and/or please email it to you by a set date & time.

The default outcome is that the student fails. It is up to the student to take action to avert that outcome. Indeed, since student's current grade is 25%, I doubt any amount of effort at this stage will be enough to change that outcome. I'm not making any efforts to help the student sort out their problems.

Well, that makes it easy.  If it's not mathematically possible for them to pass, just record the failing grade and call it done.

[downer]

Student performs pretty badly all semester, arrives late to class  Says they were present when I didn't see them. Now final paper is past due, and student says that they uploaded it, along with a medical excuse for not being able to do a presentation in person. But nothing is uploaded.

There's about a 5% chance the student really does have medical problems, and a 95% chance they are bullshitting. But I have to be nice to them until it is all over.

And that is why I have students turn something in with their name on it every class.  Granted, I teach labs, but I'd do the same for any lecture day where attendance & participation matter.
For the whole "I uploaded it!", ask them to please send you a screenshot of where they uploaded and/or please email it to you by a set date & time.

The default outcome is that the student fails. It is up to the student to take action to avert that outcome. Indeed, since student's current grade is 25%, I doubt any amount of effort at this stage will be enough to change that outcome. I'm not making any efforts to help the student sort out their problems.

Well, that makes it easy.  If it's not mathematically possible for them to pass, just record the failing grade and call it done.

That's my plan. We will see how it unfolds. If legiimate doctor's notes actually get produced, it might get complicated. So far, it's all been rather vague, with some reference to medical problems.

[Langue_doc]

Student performs pretty badly all semester, arrives late to class  Says they were present when I didn't see them. Now final paper is past due, and student says that they uploaded it, along with a medical excuse for not being able to do a presentation in person. But nothing is uploaded.

There's about a 5% chance the student really does have medical problems, and a 95% chance they are bullshitting. But I have to be nice to them until it is all over.

And that is why I have students turn something in with their name on it every class.  Granted, I teach labs, but I'd do the same for any lecture day where attendance & participation matter.
For the whole "I uploaded it!", ask them to please send you a screenshot of where they uploaded and/or please email it to you by a set date & time.

The default outcome is that the student fails. It is up to the student to take action to avert that outcome. Indeed, since student's current grade is 25%, I doubt any amount of effort at this stage will be enough to change that outcome. I'm not making any efforts to help the student sort out their problems.

Well, that makes it easy.  If it's not mathematically possible for them to pass, just record the failing grade and call it done.

That's my plan. We will see how it unfolds. If legiimate doctor's notes actually get produced, it might get complicated. So far, it's all been rather vague, with some reference to medical problems.

If doctor's notes are produced after the end of the semester, then that would be the chair's headache. Accommodations for students who need them are effective only after the date in the letter from the Disabilities office.

[Caracal]

Student performs pretty badly all semester, arrives late to class. Says they were present when I didn't see them. Now final paper is past due, and student says that they uploaded it, along with a medical excuse for not being able to do a presentation in person. But nothing is uploaded.

There's about a 5% chance the student really does have medical problems, and a 95% chance they are bullshitting. But I have to be nice to them until it is all over.

And that is why I have students turn something in with their name on it every class.  Granted, I teach labs, but I'd do the same for any lecture day where attendance & participation matter.
For the whole "I uploaded it!", ask them to please send you a screenshot of where they uploaded and/or please email it to you by a set date & time.

I just tell students that if they come late, they have to come up at the end of class for me to mark them late instead of absent on attendance. If they tell me the next class, that they forgot, I'll believe them and add them in, but probably only once...The name thing would be nice, but I have a lot of students and no TA, am not very efficient at entering things into gradesheets, and need to avoid large piles of paper.

For the upload thing, one of the real advantages of giving out extensions like candy is that you can just pretend to believe students. I would have given you an extension anyway, so there's no actual advantage you get by lying to me.

[Aster]

End-of-Term extra submissions this semester were at an all-time low. It was a lot of extra credit, and the work to earn it was very low.

I even went out of my way to spend extra time advertising it.

For one class, only 20% of the class submitted the extra credit. I've never had anything even close to that low before. In most classes, submissions for this will range from 50% to nearly 100%.

There are too many students this semester that just don't seem motivated into minimum effort.

[lilyb]

End-of-Term extra submissions this semester were at an all-time low. It was a lot of extra credit, and the work to earn it was very low.

I even went out of my way to spend extra time advertising it.

For one class, only 20% of the class submitted the extra credit. I've never had anything even close to that low before. In most classes, submissions for this will range from 50% to nearly 100%.

There are too many students this semester that just don't seem motivated into minimum effort.

Same here. I rarely give extra credit but did so this semester to help the slackers. Everyone acts excited in class, then I get 3 extra credit submissions total.

I do everything humanly possible to motivate students. And yet, I cannot break through this wall of post-pandemic apathy.

[Thursday's_Child]

End-of-Term extra submissions this semester were at an all-time low. It was a lot of extra credit, and the work to earn it was very low.

I even went out of my way to spend extra time advertising it.

For one class, only 20% of the class submitted the extra credit. I've never had anything even close to that low before. In most classes, submissions for this will range from 50% to nearly 100%.

There are too many students this semester that just don't seem motivated into minimum effort.

Same here. I rarely give extra credit but did so this semester to help the slackers. Everyone acts excited in class, then I get 3 extra credit submissions total.

I do everything humanly possible to motivate students. And yet, I cannot break through this wall of post-pandemic apathy.

Me too... 

[downer]

I teach at different schools and with various populations. The 18 and 19 year old community college students have major problems, even more than previously. They have little staying power.

I'm not seeing much change in students at the more selective school I teach at. Also the CC nursing students are still motivated, though they also often have a bunch of family issues.

[history_grrrl]

You can try typing the essay prompt into ChatGPT. My bet it you'd get a very, very similar essay to what he submitted.  Now, it doesn't prove that the student used Ai, but does demonstrate the similarities in the writing.

I actually did this for AI Guy and the similarities were very striking.

I asked him for some of his class notes to see if there was anything to explain the content of his two exams. He did this, after bitching about my demands, and the notes are garbage; no lecture notes, no reading notes, just a few notes from his seminar discussions (presumably other students' observations). No wonder he turned to AI. He also thoughtfully let me know what grades on his exams would allow him to pass the classes.

I graded his exams as if they weren't AI, and with additional knowledge from him about how he inappropriately tweaked his essays. Both are Fs. If he gets 0s on his essays (not my decision, ultimately), he will fail both classes. Since he truly doesn't understand why making up footnotes is a problem, I don't think he'll fare well.

[Harlow2]

Grad student with an incomplete notified me that she'd be turning in the work at the end of the semester, 2 days hence. It turned out she hadn't done any of the assignments.

She has had a rough time of it in her out of school life, so I gave her a further extension. Not sure she'll actually use it.

[EdnaMode]

Had a student contact me via several emails over the weekend (that I didn't read until this morning) and by a phone call just now, to ask if I would reach out to another professor and ask him to "bump up my grade because I asked him to change it from a D to a C and he was unwilling to do so," and if the request came from a faculty member and not a student, the prof might be willing to help him out. I told him no way, under no circumstances would I do that, and it was completely inappropriate to ask me to do so.  What planet is this kid living on?