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

[Puget]

I'm looped in to a weird email discussion.  The TA claims that the student who needed to run to their room to get long pants never came back.  The student is claiming that they did go back, but it's not clear that they went back to that lab section.  And the student has also asked if they can make up the lab later (?).
Pretty sure that the student never returned to lab and is hoping we somehow won't notice that they weren't there and didn't turn in their assignment.

Similarly-- Students are doing observations at the campus day care center for my developmental psych course this week. Most have been excited about it and behaving well according to the TAs who are supervising. But I got a report from a TA today one showed up 20 min. late (for a half hour observation slot) and left again 3 minutes later. I just dare her to turn in a fabricated "observation". It is not going to end with a 0 on the assignment, we are going to have, shall we say, a teachable moment about research misconduct.

[the_geneticist]

Mystery solved. The student returned wearing pants a few minutes late and completed the lab.  The TA thought that an appropriate consequence was to give them a 0 on the assignment and wanted the student to repeat the entire lab.
No, just no.
It's going to be a long Fall.

[paddington_bear]

If this student doesn't quit emailing me....She emailed me to say that she didn't know what she is supposed to be reading for this week and she didn't know what the name next to the chapter numbers on the syllabus schedule referred to. I emailed her back to tell her that it was the name of the author of one of the books she was supposed to have bought, the book we're starting this week. She emails me back to say that she doesn't see that name on any of the books she bought and asks for the title of the book. I email her back to tell her that the titles of all of the books are on the first page of the syllabus. Sigh.

[waterboy]

Syllabus?

[dr_evil]

Sometimes I wonder if students think that labs are optional. I had almost half of one section miss lab recently. Only one said anything about it, asking what we did. At least they've stopped asking if they can "just watch the video" to make up a lab.

[FishProf]

I have always had the occasional "I missed the lab, how can I make it up?" questions before (short answers - come to another section or you can't).

But it is now an avalanche of such queries.  And they act like asking absolves them of doing anything at all.  The prelab, the virtual dissection parts, the pre-quizzes, practice quizzes, and the actual weekly practical are ALL ONLINE.  You can't make up the f2f parts, nor the benefit of doing everything in the lab, with classmates and a professor to answer questions, but some is waaaaaaaaaaay better than nothing at all.

Covid consequence?

[the_geneticist]

I have always had the occasional "I missed the lab, how can I make it up?" questions before (short answers - come to another section or you can't).

But it is now an avalanche of such queries.  And they act like asking absolves them of doing anything at all.  The prelab, the virtual dissection parts, the pre-quizzes, practice quizzes, and the actual weekly practical are ALL ONLINE.  You can't make up the f2f parts, nor the benefit of doing everything in the lab, with classmates and a professor to answer questions, but some is waaaaaaaaaaay better than nothing at all.

Covid consequence?

I do the "go to another lab" or if they really can't (e.g. isolating due to COVID) I create an online version.

About 1/2 the students finish the online version & do very well.  A bit less than half seem to give up and turn in a not finished assignment (I warned them it would take a few hours & I accept late work with a penalty).  And there are a handful who don't even open the assignment.

Not sure if this is a pandemic thing or not since I only started the online assignment as a makeup after COVID started.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I have a student who really needs to drop and get out of my hair. Stu has missed half the labs, but DID take the midterm exam. Stu has also failed every test. But stu is TRYING!!!

Ugh.

[FishProf]

Dear student,
When you have a question you want answered via email, you need to hit the sweet spot of asking the question AND providing enough information for me to answer it.

Too little info and I have to play detective.
Too much, and it reads like a legal brief.

I won't deal with either.

Fishprof

[the_geneticist]

I have a student who really needs to drop and get out of my hair. Stu has missed half the labs, but DID take the midterm exam. Stu has also failed every test. But stu is TRYING!!!

Ugh.

I have the opposite- students that want to ADD the class 1/3 of the into Fall.  You are too far behind.  You will not be able to "work hard to catch up".  We told you that the class was full, has been full, and not everyone on the waitlist will get in.  Stop emailing me!

[onthefringe]

I have one this year who does not get one single thing we are talking about but "needs to do well in this class". She's this bizarre combination of tentative and entitled so she will apologize nine times while asking me to do something ridiculous like teach her how to use her calculator to multiply fractions or set up twice a week individual meetings to reteach the content to her (I am recording lectures and she has access to them). I frequently want to interrupt her and finish her sentence so I can get to the part where I refuse.

Today she called me over during our midterm to ask when I would be done grading it.

Luckily the vast majority of the rest of the students are lovely.

[mythbuster]

Two of my classes have exams this week. So far I'm up to 3 emails of students who think they have COVID, and one who "ate bad sushi". All looking for make ups for the exam. No make-ups per the policy- that's why I drop one exam score. The one claiming bad sushi has offered to wear a diaper if needed if I don't allow a delay. She missed the first exam entirely so she doesn't have a score to drop. While I find her story fishy (pun intended), I'll let her take it tomorrow morning just in case it's for real.

I think I need to rethink the exam make-up policy in some way. Students regard a dropped exam as a freebie, rather than as a safety net. Maybe have the comprehensive final count for the missed exam?  Other ideas?

[the_geneticist]

Replacing the lowest/missing exam score with the score from the final (assuming it's higher!) is one way. 
Reword the policy to say that the highest X of Y scores will count.
Or change the policy to allow a retake for a documented illness or emergency only.

We are having a COVID surge + a nasty head cold going around.  Lots of students are needing to isolate.

[dr_evil]

I have a student who really needs to drop and get out of my hair. Stu has missed half the labs, but DID take the midterm exam. Stu has also failed every test. But stu is TRYING!!!

I had one like that, but missed almost all the labs. Mine did drop, thankfully. I even tried to work with them so they could make up missed labs, but they only showed up to lab once. I wonder if they thought the class was totally online.

I think I need to rethink the exam make-up policy in some way. Students regard a dropped exam as a freebie, rather than as a safety net. Maybe have the comprehensive final count for the missed exam?  Other ideas?

I've been thinking similar things about dropped scores for a while now. I've even had some say when I tell them the missed quiz will be dropped, "But what if I do bad on one?" or "I already have one I want to drop."

My head banging for today: yesterday in lab, I had someone so confused about lab calculations. I'm at least glad the student stayed after collecting the data to work on the calculations, but it seemed like they were just selecting random numbers to manipulate...and they're still stuck on material from a few chapters ago, material that I warned them would keep coming up in later sections.

Sigh.

[Puget]

Two of my classes have exams this week. So far I'm up to 3 emails of students who think they have COVID, and one who "ate bad sushi". All looking for make ups for the exam. No make-ups per the policy- that's why I drop one exam score. The one claiming bad sushi has offered to wear a diaper if needed if I don't allow a delay. She missed the first exam entirely so she doesn't have a score to drop. While I find her story fishy (pun intended), I'll let her take it tomorrow morning just in case it's for real.

I think I need to rethink the exam make-up policy in some way. Students regard a dropped exam as a freebie, rather than as a safety net. Maybe have the comprehensive final count for the missed exam?  Other ideas?

I allow any student who want to to take a "second chance" exam replacing one of the first two exams during the final exam period. This also serves as the make-up exam for any missed exams. This works well because I don't have to figure out who has a legitimate excuse, or proctor make-ups at other times, and only need one other version of the exam.