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

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

"I'm worried about my grade, I really want an A in the course and I'm at 89.something, is there anything I can do."

Well, the exam tomorrow counts for twenty percent of the grade so probably study for it and stop bothering me?

Ha! I wish I could say that sometimes...

[Zeus Bird]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

[downer]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

Seems like this might deserve its own thread.

I have never been authorized to withdraw non-attending students. But I do report never-attended students early in the semester. All places I teach at have a special fail grade due to no longer attending, where you give the last date of attendance. That's one of the reasons colleges emphasize the need to take attendance.

[marshwiggle]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

Seems like this might deserve its own thread.

I have never been authorized to withdraw non-attending students. But I do report never-attended students early in the semester. All places I teach at have a special fail grade due to no longer attending, where you give the last date of attendance. That's one of the reasons colleges emphasize the need to take attendance.

I've never heard of anything like this in Canada. Unless a student chooses to withdraw, the institution can only de-register them for things like unpaid fees or lacking the required prerequisites. Profs and even departments don't have that power. (If my experience is unusual, others can chime in.)

[traductio]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

Seems like this might deserve its own thread.

I have never been authorized to withdraw non-attending students. But I do report never-attended students early in the semester. All places I teach at have a special fail grade due to no longer attending, where you give the last date of attendance. That's one of the reasons colleges emphasize the need to take attendance.

I've never heard of anything like this in Canada. Unless a student chooses to withdraw, the institution can only de-register them for things like unpaid fees or lacking the required prerequisites. Profs and even departments don't have that power. (If my experience is unusual, others can chime in.)

I work at a Canadian university -- that's certainly the case for me. (Although I don't think I could drop people from my courses at my old U.S. university either.)

[EdnaMode]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

If a student does not attend the first week of class and does not contact me at all, I can send the info to the registrar and they can be dropped so someone else can add during the first week drop/add period. After that, we are encouraged to submit progress reports a couple times during the semester and I can note their non-attendance. When final grades are entered, if a student earns a failing grade, we're required to report whether they participated the entire semester, partial semester with last date of attendance, or if they never participated at all. But aside from that first week, I cannot drop them from the course.

[mamselle]

If I recall from some old forum discussion, some of the need to track attendance and drop/not drop people (and some of the reasons they try to game this) has to do with maintaining their student loans.

There may be something like a threshold of missed classes or days of attendance before they either forfeit the loan or have to start paying on it, or something like that.

Sorry I'm vague about it, I never dealt with it personally, but I know people were taking out loans just to live on, without attending classes at all, and the loan grantors were using attendance records to catch up with them.

M.

[rhetoricae]

Yes - we have to track/report attendance within the first 10 days of the term, as it's a requirement to receive federal financial aid of any kind. If student is not attending during the first 2 weeks of classes, they are dropped and that non-attendance is reported to Dept of Ed. Students absolutely do lose their funding; this report comes prior to disbursement of funds, so the money just never gets issued if they never attend.  This has been the case (I think) for the entire decade I've been teaching, but I don't know if enforcement got ramped up at some point.

We cannot administratively drop students who stop showing up, but if they stopped attending prior to the last withdrawal date, they get a "UW" (Unofficial Withdrawal) instead of an F. We have to report the last day of attendance.  I also tend to report it for students receiving an F, so they can't contest that they should get a UW instead.  I've never had a problem with these -- it's the students who ghost for most of the term & then turn up in the last week to beg for an Incomplete that are my headache this academic year.

[mamselle]

Thanks, that's what I was thinking of.

M.

[Langue_doc]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

In New York State, we are required to report students who failed to attend classes during the first couple of weeks. This is done online, and is called "Verification of Attendance" or something similar. Depending on the institution, students who miss a certain number of classes can also be administratively dropped later on in the semester. We do have to keep track of attendance because the system requires us to enter the last date of attendance.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

In New York State, we are required to report students who failed to attend classes during the first couple of weeks. This is done online, and is called "Verification of Attendance" or something similar. Depending on the institution, students who miss a certain number of classes can also be administratively dropped later on in the semester. We do have to keep track of attendance because the system requires us to enter the last date of attendance.

We do something similar, but ghost students know to show up the first two weeks, then they fall off the face of the Earth.

[Anon1787]

Similar at my university and the computer system allows instructors to drop students for non-attendance during the first two weeks of the course (which is why attendance rates are high during those first two weeks).

[apl68]

How many of you are authorized to withdraw non-attending students from the courses you teach?  My ghost-student rate for years (before pre-COVID) has been about 15%.  Our uni talks a good game on social justice and compassion, but our admin is averse to do anything that might give these students pro-rated refunds for their courses.  These students, who apparently are not in contact with advisors or student services, are repeatedly given grades of "unofficial withdrawal" with no credit earned, and just keep forking over money for this.

In New York State, we are required to report students who failed to attend classes during the first couple of weeks. This is done online, and is called "Verification of Attendance" or something similar. Depending on the institution, students who miss a certain number of classes can also be administratively dropped later on in the semester. We do have to keep track of attendance because the system requires us to enter the last date of attendance.

This ought to be tracked by law, given how many student loan borrowers are signing up for classes on the taxpayer's dime.  This is one reason why, though I'm sympathetic to student loan forgiveness plans, I really don't believe that wholesale, no-questions-asked student loan forgiveness would be a good idea.  We seem to have enough scam artists collecting student loan money for classes they don't really intend to take as it is.

[cathwen]

One of my students last semester actually asked for an F instead of a UW (unofficial withdrawal), citing financial aid reasons.  He had done some work, but very little, such that a UW would have been appropriate. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Hello!
I am having trouble accessing the Essay Instruction and Topic file. It was sent as a file that cannot be opened using Word or even Notepad.
Can you send it as a PDF instead?

Thank you

The contents of the folder is three PDFs.

I suspect that the student is clicking fruitlessly on the 'folder' icon on Moodle, not realizing that I've set the CMS to automatically display the folder's contents on the front page...

That, or they're clicking the 'download folder' button and don't know what to do with the zipped file it generates. In which case, just click on the individual documents on the Moodle page. Sigh.