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

[mythbuster]

I had to teach student this week what the Tab button does in Word. He did at least know how to cut and paste.

[Larimar]

My students don't know how to use it either.

[Langue_doc]

I've had to teach this every semester.

[the_geneticist]

Our campus is large and students love to ride their bicycles/scooters/skateboards.  They are supposed to yield to pedestrians (hah!) and not bring their wheels inside. And the electric-scooters are technically banned on campus since they have top speeds above a certain threshold.
Today, I had to stop two students who were riding their electric-scooters down the hallway inside the building.  Why did they think this was OK/safe/a good idea?

[Parasaurolophus]

Good afternoon sir,
This is regarding our quiz one. After reading the instructions I thought like we could do multiple attempts end the highest grade will be counted.  but right after my first submission I don't know why it's not allowing me to re-attempt the quiz.

I hope you'll understand my situation an suggest me what can I do.

The instructions explicitly state that students can open/close the quiz as many times as they like, and freely navigate between questions, but can only submit one attempt.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Feeling everyone's pain.

I have a student who asked me 'Where do I start?' Um, did you read the file titled 'Module Instructions?' It tells you exactly what to do. There is even a video that I have apparently wasted my time creating considering that, so far, only one student has watched it. This video tells them what to do, in detail, for the lab. SMDH.

[onehappyunicorn]

I am teaching a digital art class with participation assignments due each week. In addition to demonstrating in-class I also have follow-up videos in each week's module folder. Each folder has the due date in the title, and the assignment heading in blackboard also includes the due date. Each assignment has a very specific list of criteria, including the format, of what is to be submitted. When students go to submit the assignment there is a checklist all of these things.

In the past few weeks I have had:
Multiple missing files
Files submitted in the completely wrong format
Files submitted that have nothing to do with the assignment (this one is my favorite)
Files that are only half completed or are completely incorrect

About half of the class gets it right every time, I have no idea what the other half is doing sometimes. At this point the only thing that I am not doing is submitting the work for them...

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Update on the student who doesn't know where to start...

Stu told me that stu is using an ipad that stu KNOWS (we already had this discussion) doesn't show all of the materials in the course. Stu has used another laptop in the past, but insists on using this damned ipad that isn't fully compatible.

Why??????????????????????????????????????????

[cathwen]

I once had a student who tried to take the course on his cell phone.  Needless to say, he was not successful and ended up dropping. 

[ciao_yall]

I once had a student who tried to take the course on his cell phone.  Needless to say, he was not successful and ended up dropping.

Same here. Her weekly papers were screenshots of notes written on her phone. Once I pointed her to the computer lab and laid out clearer rules her work product and understanding of the class increased tremendously.

[mamselle]

Not teaching a class this term, but I'd be head-banging the desk if this had happened to me....

   https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/28/publisher-blocks-access-ebooks-students-faculty-scramble

Has anyone else been affected?

M.

[Harlow2]

I had to teach student this week what the Tab button does in Word. He did at least know how to cut and paste.

I wonder if this is because so many k-12 classrooms seem to use Google docs? My granddaughter was also flummoxed by Word.

[FishProf]

Dammit Google Drive!  If you are going to change the streaming function to "improve security", could you please just
1) TELL US you are doing it, and
2) DO it all at once, so I can fix it, once.

[Langue_doc]

I once had a student who tried to take the course on his cell phone.  Needless to say, he was not successful and ended up dropping.

I've had students using cell phones for their online composition courses, despite the first page explicitly informing them that they needed to use a computer for this course. Needless to say, they either learned fast that using a phone to write MLA or APA style assignments was not a good idea or ended up dropping the course after complaining about the "mean" professor.

[the_geneticist]

I once had a student who tried to take the course on his cell phone.  Needless to say, he was not successful and ended up dropping.

I had several of those during the pandemic. The tech support folks here said "well, they shouldn't", but you could only borrow a chrome book if you 1) could drive to campus and 2) had financial need and 3) could make a scheduled pickup time.
Way to exclude many students who don't have a car, are suddenly the sole income for their household, or live too far away.  The IT folks finally relented and would mail students the chrome book if they lived outside of the city transit range.

Now that we're back to in person classes, I have less sympathy since there are many ways to borrow computers or use computers on campus.