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

[mythbuster]

Aster, that is all great in theory. But the reality hear at Compass Point State is that over half of our majors transfer in. So all that hard work you put into the intro courses may all be for nothing, since you have to re-teach it all to the other 60+%.

[nescafe]

Our university is making a switch to offering students ebook rental at a flat annual rate. As far as I can tell so far, 10 percent of students take advantage of this service to save money on textbooks, and the rest of them use it as cover for not accessing any of the books at all.

[traductio]

For nearly the entirety of an hour and a half lecture today, one guy sitting near the front had his finger so far up his nose I was afraid that the sharp-toothed snail Shel Silverstein warns about was going to bite it right off.

[fishbrains]

So a student filed a grade appeal stating that the reason she plagiarized the second Comp. II essay (she never submitted the first one) in my class last semester . . . as in didn't remove the hyperlinks from all the cutting and pasting, didn't have a single citation, and didn't have a works cited page . . . was that I hadn't taught her MLA formatting and that she hadn't learned it in Comp. I either. So it's the college's fault she didn't know what she was doing.

But wait, it gets even more stupider: Adminicritter Columbo discovered that she had attended only two times in the Comp. I class, failed it, and shouldn't have been allowed into my Comp. II class in the first place.

I've been told not to worry about it, so I'm not.   

[fishbrains]

Oops. Didn't mean to double post.

[polly_mer]

I have taught this computer art class for five years now and this was, by far, the saddest set of first projects I have ever had. I always expect a couple of stinkers as many students have not used the computer as an art tool before but holy cow. It's not so much the lack of technical ability it is the almost across the board ignoring of all the warnings I gave about the process.

Changing your idea multiple times before the project is due is a terrible idea, didn't stop a third of the class from doing it. Missing the critique is a terrible idea, didn't stop multiple students from doing it. Not doing multiple test prints to adjust your color before presenting for critique is a terrible idea. Telling me that you had the project finished at home but your laptop failed so now you don't have your file does not, in fact, make me sympathetic. I told you at the beginning of the class that losing your files was equivalent to telling me that the dog ate your homework.

I believe in giving students room to fail and boy did some of you take me up on that. I do appreciate that the majority of you had the decency to at least look embarrassed when we hung the work up.

I changed the science-for-teachers course I inherited because warnings were not nearly as effective as scaffolded do-it-this-way-to-be-on-track TODO lists.  Some people still failed spectacularly, but my conscience was clear.

[Aster]

I was watching video interviews for prospective new hires last week.

One applicant explained how he would run his class backwards. He then explained that this would be done by...

1. Not writing a syllabus until after the class had already met
2. During the first week or two of class, the students would co-create a custom curricular plan for what they wanted to get out of the class
3. Whatever the students and professor had agreed on would go into a custom-made, late syllabus
4. Repeat same process for all major exams.

Needless to say, it was obvious that this applicant had never taught at a U.S. college before, unless maybe at Weird Niche University.

[mythbuster]

Aster, what you are describing is one of the latest fads! The CHE had an article a few weeks back about people who take 3-4 WEEKS working with students to design the syllabus. The article claimed it really gave students "ownership" of the course. I've never seen so far back in my head as when I read that one.

[Parasaurolophus]

Aster, what you are describing is one of the latest fads! The CHE had an article a few weeks back about people who take 3-4 WEEKS working with students to design the syllabus. The article claimed it really gave students "ownership" of the course. I've never seen so far back in my head as when I read that one.

As a graduate student, I took a couple of logic and mathematics classes designed this way, and it worked OK. The instructor came up with a giant ur-syllabus, and we selected units and readings from that list. We had it all done by the second week.

Like I said, it was OK. No better or worse thany any other course. But what works out OK for graduate students might not work out so well for undergraduates.

[polly_mer]

Aster, what you are describing is one of the latest fads! The CHE had an article a few weeks back about people who take 3-4 WEEKS working with students to design the syllabus. The article claimed it really gave students "ownership" of the course. I've never seen so far back in my head as when I read that one.

As a graduate student, I took a couple of logic and mathematics classes designed this way, and it worked OK. The instructor came up with a giant ur-syllabus, and we selected units and readings from that list. We had it all done by the second week.

Like I said, it was OK. No better or worse thany any other course. But what works out OK for graduate students might not work out so well for undergraduates.

Yes, a graduate elective can work like that.  Even an undergraduate elective could work under specific circumstances.

However, I wouldn't try it as a regular practice at a non-elite institution where faculty are hired as experts in the field who know what students generally need in the order they likely need it.

Under no circumstances should constructing the syllabus together take more than a week of class time.  A wiki for a joint document is a good way to get a document in a timely manner.

[ciao_yall]

Aster, what you are describing is one of the latest fads! The CHE had an article a few weeks back about people who take 3-4 WEEKS working with students to design the syllabus. The article claimed it really gave students "ownership" of the course. I've never seen so far back in my head as when I read that one.

I would have been really irritated in any one of my programs had the instructor wasted that much time creating a syllabus with us. Just tell us what you want us to do and get on with the content of the course.

FFS.

[sprout]

I'm on the quarter system - 11 week terms or so.  I can't decide if the idea of spending three WEEKS agreeing on a syllabus makes me laugh hysterically or go purple with anger.  Probably depends on how important the course is to future studies.

[Aster]

Stu Dent: "I wanted to let you know that I won't be able to take the exam today."

So she didn't give a reason, and didn't even ask for a makeup exam opportunity (per policy).

I will lay down actual money that this is a snowflake who is ditching college to take a very early Spring Break.

I smell an F in the air.

[mythbuster]

Dear students,
    When the test prompt tells you that Steve contracted cholera, do NOT answer the question with a long explanation of how NO, he did not contact cholera but really got norovirus instead. Believe what you are told in the test prompt, please!

[downer]

For the first time ever, in many many years of giving tests, I had a student who answered the multiple choice test on the Scantron by giving 2 answers to a lot of the question. The student is from a distant land, so maybe there is some cultural difference, but I have never had any other students from that person's country ever do that before.