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

[Langue_doc]

Arg! I'm stuck in the grade appeal loop that will not die.
Student earned a D in my course in the Fall. Appealed the grade in January of 2023. I fill out the paperwork send it off an hear nothing. I assume the appeal was denied.

Apparently the appeal paperwork got "lost". Appeal is resurrected in April. I have a meeting with the Associate Dean of my college and decide the expedient thing (aka least work) is to let student take makeup exam even thought I have a no make up exam clause in my syllabus.

Student is "on vacation" all of May and so can't take the exam. Then she reschedules twice because of car issues and too much work in her summer course (which started while she was on vacation). Finally, some giant grade appeal meeting is scheduled so I tell her she has to take the exam before that.

She takes the exam last Thursday- turned it in after 15 minutes. The grade does not change her final course grade. When I email student about her grade her response is "We can discuss that at the meeting on Monday." GRRR.

What a waste of time.

So today I sit on a zoom portal for over 30 minutes waiting for this meeting to stat that was scheduled without my input. During summer when I'm not paid. Apparently it was cancelled last minute and no one told me. So now it's likely to be rescheduled for I don't know when.

Your admincritters are truly spineless. Couldn't you say that you aren't available until the beginning of the semester? How about an out-of-office-until-date X so that you aren't forced to respond to emails from the higher-ups? Do you have a union? I'm sure you've thought things through, so all I can say is that I am really sorry that you and possibly other faculty have to put up with these situations.

[FishProf]

I got one of my favorite recurring emails today.

"Dear Fishprof,

You are receiving this E-mail because the course "Prehistoric Baskets (BW119_BL_SU1_2023)" is part of the online DGCE course evaluation process for 23/SU1. This course is currently reporting a low response rate of 25% (Total number of participants: 4).

Please communicate the importance of the feedback with your students and advise them to participate in the current evaluation process in order to help improve teaching excellence and the success of our academic programs.


All student responses are completely CONFIDENTIAL (we can see who completed the online evaluation, but we cannot view the actual responses for each student)."

Nope.  I don't think I will.

[Stockmann]

Dear student group 1: You know what you should've done with that analysis? Include it in your damned lab report, that's what. I grade what you put in your report, not what you did but didn't tell anyone else.

Dear student group 2: You had three sets of measurements. You needed to analyze all three. Don't make stuff up that somehow you thought only one set needed analyzing. Gee, ya think maybe that tanked your grade?

I feel your pain!  The belief that only "our" data needs analysis, when data from the entire class was made available - along with explicit instructions to include it b/c Replication is good - seems widespread.  At least you (maybe?) didn't get one where brand new information was discussed in the Conclusions section - I hope?

It was kind of worse - the three data sets were for different types of experiments, requiring different analyses, not replication. The only set they analyzed was (surprise!) the one with the simplest behavior and they didn't discuss much about it. Also, they had the chance to submit the report early for detailed feedback, with the chance to re-submit and only be graded on the second version - but horse, water, drink....
It's unusual to fail this course, even more unusual to fail other than by ghosting half way through, but one of the students in this group actually did - got an outright zero on another rotation with another prof.

[Cheerful]

advise them to participate in the current evaluation process in order to help improve teaching excellence and the success of our academic programs.

Hilarious.

[Caracal]

I got one of my favorite recurring emails today.

"Dear Fishprof,

You are receiving this E-mail because the course "Prehistoric Baskets (BW119_BL_SU1_2023)" is part of the online DGCE course evaluation process for 23/SU1. This course is currently reporting a low response rate of 25% (Total number of participants: 4).

Please communicate the importance of the feedback with your students and advise them to participate in the current evaluation process in order to help improve teaching excellence and the success of our academic programs.


All student responses are completely CONFIDENTIAL (we can see who completed the online evaluation, but we cannot view the actual responses for each student)."

Nope.  I don't think I will.

Yeah, I get those all the time too. If you wanted to improve your response rate you could.

1. Do what some schools I've taught at do and have a process where evals are required to be done in class and taken over by a student. That was nice because I only had to teach half a class that day.

2. Require students to complete an eval to see their grades.

3. Don't require it, but have some sort of small incentive for students like a gift card

Why is it supposed to be our job to increase participation in evals?

[FishProf]

For day and in-person classes, we do in-person evals exactly as Caracal suggests.  For online, evening, and summer courses, it is an online eval.

I rarely get more that 15-20% response rate, and I care even less.

[artalot]

I made the mistake of agreeing to teach online this summer. Never again.
One student with 'limited' computer access also has limited reading comprehension abilities (confused the due date of an assignment that was labeled on the syllabus, on the LMS and discussed in class).
Another student has trouble with their speakers and microphone, thus apparently can't hear or participate in class.
Finally, a student didn't realize the class was synchronous and expects me to basically teach them the class separately because they have to work.

Bang, bang, bang.

[the_geneticist]

Stu #1 "Read the syllabus"
Stu #2 "Check out a new computer from [campus resource]"
Stu #3 "You should drop"

How many students are in the class?

[Hegemony]

Never teach synchronous online. Only teach asynchronous.

[Caracal]

Never teach synchronous online. Only teach asynchronous.

Yeah, I can't say I enjoy it, but it works much better.

[marshwiggle]

Never teach synchronous online. Only teach asynchronous.

Synchronous online teaching is like a movie made by recording live theatre. It has neither the immediacy of the live performance, nor the polish of the movie which comes from more freedom around sets, costumes, editing, etc.

Just. Say. No.

[the_geneticist]

Never teach synchronous online. Only teach asynchronous.

Synchronous online teaching is like a movie made by recording live theatre. It has neither the immediacy of the live performance, nor the polish of the movie which comes from more freedom around sets, costumes, editing, etc.

Just. Say. No.

Can I steal this metaphor?  Think I'll be needing to use it in the not-so-distant future.

I'd be willing to offer a *small* online lab if I can have $$ to send a "lab kit" to each student, TAs for grading, and several months to build the course.  And it would be asynchronous, but not self-paced.

[Larimar]

Never teach synchronous online. Only teach asynchronous.

I second this!

[ciao_yall]

Never teach synchronous online. Only teach asynchronous.

I second this!

How do you have student interaction with asynch online? Just discussion boards?

[apl68]

Never teach synchronous online. Only teach asynchronous.

I second this!

How do you have student interaction with asynch online? Just discussion boards?

In the asynchronous classes I've had, that's mostly been the case.  We used some collaboration features in Blackboard to do group work and critiques of each others' work.