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

[fishbrains]

I am SO sick of the snotty emails I'm getting from students over the past few weeks. IHE, I think, did an article on this a few days ago; I'm trying to get ready to teach (between answering snotty emails), so I'll try to find and link later.

I get the whole "screen bravado" thing, and "they're stressed," but dammit, so am I.  Our customer-first place generally expects us to be happy punching bags, which I've never gone along with, but even for this place, I've never had so many over-the-top messages this early, or even in an entire semester, as I've had since mid-September.

My responses are getting increasingly snarky, BCC'd to my chair and dean, who have been supportive. I'm not mean, but I'm giving these students chapter-and-verse of why I'm not putting up with the attitudes (e.g., they turn in crap work that ignores instructions--or, my favorite, NO work--then bitch about grades; one turned in a paper late on Sunday, then raised hell because it wasn't graded and returned by Tuesday morning). 

Grrr.  Sorry.  Off to teach two LVL classes where I'm the only one talking again.  Surprise, kiddies:  if you won't talk, I have lots of writing ready for you to do instead.

I feel this so much. I had a student who simply sent me the following: "Just to think I worked so hard on this paper and you grade it so hard. Unrealistic."

The student received a B, and for easily documentable reasons. I decided to be nice, and wrote something like: "I can see that you are frustrated, and frustration often comes when our expectations don't align with outcomes. You did receive a good grade, and it was not a bad paper! It was just X, Y, and Z. Hope this helps!"

This is an adult woman who is probably a good 15-20 years older than I am, not an entitled youngin. Who knows what's going on there!

Where else do you think entitled youngins come from?

Just a possible explanation.

[reverist]

Where else do you think entitled youngins come from?

Just a possible explanation.

Fair enough, haha!

[AmLitHist]

Lemme guess: LVL = 'live video lecture'?

Sorry I'm just getting back, Kay. 

LVL= Live Virtual Lecture = the bane of my (and most faculty colleagues') existence = colossal waste of time.

--Many students won't (can't?  I haven't heard about problems) log in.
--If/when they do log in, they walk off, go to sleep, or otherwise disappear during the session.
--They won't turn on their cameras (and we can't make them, as it might "cause embarrassment for other students to know an individual doesn't have a camera or to see his/her living situation").
--They're apparently deathly afraid of speaking into a mic to talk during class.

Thus, it's 75 minutes of me hearing myself talk/ask them questions that go unanswered, even when I call people by name.  I'm hearing similar results from many other faculty. I would SO rather be teaching these online, where I've a long and proven track record of success. Students can't be getting much, if any, value added out of these sections as they now work.

[Aster]

The great irony is that I'm teaching remotely to students that rarely even log in, yet I'm enrolled in a professional development module where some edu-wonk dude is explaining just how wonderful it is for professors to engage their students with active questioning, and how all of us should do this.

Yeah okay, edu-wonk man. Whatever you say.

[Bonnie]

Lemme guess: LVL = 'live video lecture'?

Sorry I'm just getting back, Kay. 

LVL= Live Virtual Lecture = the bane of my (and most faculty colleagues') existence = colossal waste of time.

--Many students won't (can't?  I haven't heard about problems) log in.
--If/when they do log in, they walk off, go to sleep, or otherwise disappear during the session.
--They won't turn on their cameras (and we can't make them, as it might "cause embarrassment for other students to know an individual doesn't have a camera or to see his/her living situation").
--They're apparently deathly afraid of speaking into a mic to talk during class.

Thus, it's 75 minutes of me hearing myself talk/ask them questions that go unanswered, even when I call people by name.  I'm hearing similar results from many other faculty. I would SO rather be teaching these online, where I've a long and proven track record of success. Students can't be getting much, if any, value added out of these sections as they now work.

Well there are lots of reasons to not mandate camera use beyond the one you cite. Bandwidth. Privacy (is my younger sibling e-learning near me and visible? is the only space I have that can be quiet so I can focus my bedroom?). But it does seem for me to be more exhausting to speak to a gallery of black squares with white text.

For participation, I am having a lot of luck using chat for participation. Lots going on in there. And I pull comments/questions out of it to share with group, which frequently leads to voice and typing chat from even more students. Can that be done in your LVL structure?

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I feel this so much. I had a student who simply sent me the following: "Just to think I worked so hard on this paper and you grade it so hard. Unrealistic."

The student received a B, and for easily documentable reasons. I decided to be nice, and wrote something like: "I can see that you are frustrated, and frustration often comes when our expectations don't align with outcomes. You did receive a good grade, and it was not a bad paper! It was just X, Y, and Z. Hope this helps!"

This is an adult woman who is probably a good 15-20 years older than I am, not an entitled youngin. Who knows what's going on there!

What a Karen. Did she ask to see your manager?

[AvidReader]

For participation, I am having a lot of luck using chat for participation. Lots going on in there. And I pull comments/questions out of it to share with group, which frequently leads to voice and typing chat from even more students. Can that be done in your LVL structure?

I also ask them at the beginning to use the chat box if they don't want to deal with microphones. I read out the questions and comments and then answer them. Sometimes I ask questions and give them time to type. I'm in the humanities, so where lots of appropriate responses are possible, I sometimes also say things like "I won't keep going in the lecture until 5 of you have given me an example of X." I did this more at the beginning, and now I don't need to do it nearly as much.

I also have been celebrating the students who choose to upload photos to our video software (Google Meet, which puts up colored circles for non-video participants). I have been praising the photos quietly and pointing out that it is nicer to stare at anything that is not a colored circle (don't want your face on screen? A cat is cute too).

AR.

[kiana]

Dear Cheaty McCheaterson of the oh-so-blatant dishonesty,

You can hide, but you can't run. And you can't hide forever.

[polly_mer]

It sounds a lot like enrolled people don't want to participate in their own education and aren't even trying to fake it for several of the recent posts.

We have seminars all the time with just projected slides and the presenter speaking with a lively chat box for the audience.  There are no black boxes.

We have meetings with no video and just discussion, possibly with someone calling on volunteers in order to ensure quality audio.  Again, no black boxes because most people are just calling in.

College: A place where many would prefer to not to get full value for their money.

[Anon1787]

It sounds a lot like enrolled people don't want to participate in their own education and aren't even trying to fake it for several of the recent posts.
We have seminars all the time with just projected slides and the presenter speaking with a lively chat box for the audience.  There are no black boxes.
We have meetings with no video and just discussion, possibly with someone calling on volunteers in order to ensure quality audio.  Again, no black boxes because most people are just calling in.
College: A place where many would prefer to not to get full value for their money.

Same here. If students are just phoning it in at best, why should I be spending so much time creating materials that 75%+ of students ignore until an exam when they frantically try to search them for answers (or worse, plagiarize from sites after a quick Google search)?

[AmLitHist]

It sounds a lot like enrolled people don't want to participate in their own education and aren't even trying to fake it for several of the recent posts.
We have seminars all the time with just projected slides and the presenter speaking with a lively chat box for the audience.  There are no black boxes.
We have meetings with no video and just discussion, possibly with someone calling on volunteers in order to ensure quality audio.  Again, no black boxes because most people are just calling in.
College: A place where many would prefer to not to get full value for their money.

Same here. If students are just phoning it in at best, why should I be spending so much time creating materials that 75%+ of students ignore until an exam when they frantically try to search them for answers (or worse, plagiarize from sites after a quick Google search)?

I agree with you both, Polly and Anon.  Bonnie, I've done all of what you suggest:  chat, group breakouts and report-back, in-session Bb writing assignments/quizzes (all of which provide evidence of minimal/no effort from all but one or two students).  And I do get the idea about not requiring cameras, though I do think having them on would provide more incentive and a sense of responsibility on students' part. 

I get this kind of group in F2F classes sometimes, but there it's easier to get a feel for who's willing to be nudged into participating but might just be a little shy. Here, I can't read that, and when I've tried all the tricks that to get things started, nothing works. I do have one guy in this class--a HS dual enrolled student--who occasionally talks, but I'm sure he feels awkward after awhile, when all his older classmates are dead silent.  (For what it's worth, he's a really good writer and has a high A going into midterm.)

I'll say, too, that I'm hearing from my chair and others in my department, and others, that they're all having similar classes.

I really am trying to roll with it and trying to keep things interesting, but I feel like I'm wasting my time and not doing anybody any good in these classes.  I know:  I can't care more than they do.  Still, it seems pretty clear that I do.  I'm going to talk with my chair at midterm to see if I can convert to a quasi-online format--maybe meeting one day a week for workshops on papers, etc.  But if they won't talk/participate, that's not going to solve anything either.

Mainly I'm just trying to keep up my own motivation and remind myself that things will get better someday (I hope).

[Bonnie]

So sorry AmLitHist. Teaching to such unengaged students would be very draining, I think. I hope you get the ok to change fyour format.

[Aster]

The apathy and whininess is so much higher this term that I've started looking at buying these T-shirts.

It Was In The Syllabus T-Shirt Funny Gift T-Shirt
https://www.amazon.com/Was-Syllabus-T-Shirt-Funny-Gift/dp/B07GX514SY/ref=sr_1_13?dchild=1&keywords=its+on+the+syllabus+t-shirt&qid=1602451692&sr=8-13

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

The apathy and whininess is so much higher this term that I've started looking at buying these T-shirts.

It Was In The Syllabus T-Shirt Funny Gift T-Shirt
https://www.amazon.com/Was-Syllabus-T-Shirt-Funny-Gift/dp/B07GX514SY/ref=sr_1_13?dchild=1&keywords=its+on+the+syllabus+t-shirt&qid=1602451692&sr=8-13

Funny. Do you plan to do any video chats wearing it?

[polly_mer]

I really am trying to roll with it and trying to keep things interesting, but I feel like I'm wasting my time and not doing anybody any good in these classes.  I know:  I can't care more than they do.  Still, it seems pretty clear that I do.  I'm going to talk with my chair at midterm to see if I can convert to a quasi-online format--maybe meeting one day a week for workshops on papers, etc.  But if they won't talk/participate, that's not going to solve anything either.

The longer I'm out of academia, especially the institution category where so few students wanted to learn anything, and the longer I spend with my international colleagues who have the attitude that university should be limited to people who are succeeding at learning, the more I wonder whether the programs/institutions that close in the next two years will actually be the ones objective observers would chose as serving too few people who are benefiting from college versus which institutions just ran out of money first.