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

[mbelvadi]

I set up an online discussion board so that students in the online summer course can ask questions. I'm encouraging them to post there (so others can see the answers too) rather than email me.

Student asks on the board "Hey, can we make a GroupMe for the course, so we can ask each other stuff?" "That's what this forum is for."

They'd rather ask each other questions than ask the instructor?

Apparently, the question the student wanted to ask the others on the GroupMe was "what does CST mean?" I learned this when the above student submitted his assignment 2 hours late "because no one knew that CST was about time zones."

Aren't you in CDT now?

[FishProf]

Every semester, my students have to take a syllabus quiz and get 100% in order to access the rest of the course material. 

Every semester, some students take it and get less than 100% and then stop (instead of retaking it).

This semester, I got this (in an online class): "I can't see any of the quizzes except the syllabus quiz"?  The students grade on the syllabus quiz?  NOT TAKEN.

The ONE thing you can see to do, which says you MUST do it, and you haven't bothered.

Bang!Bang!Bang!

[marshwiggle]

Every semester, my students have to take a syllabus quiz and get 100% in order to access the rest of the course material. 

Every semester, some students take it and get less than 100% and then stop (instead of retaking it).

This semester, I got this (in an online class): "I can't see any of the quizzes except the syllabus quiz"?  The students grade on the syllabus quiz?  NOT TAKEN.

The ONE thing you can see to do, which says you MUST do it, and you haven't bothered.

Bang!Bang!Bang!

This gives me an idea: Set up  a form on the web page which says:
"DO NOT CLICK THIS BUTTON! IT WILL DROP YOU FROM THE COURSE!"

And of course, the people who don't pay attention to instructions will click it and no longer be a problem!

[kiana]

Every semester, my students have to take a syllabus quiz and get 100% in order to access the rest of the course material. 

Every semester, some students take it and get less than 100% and then stop (instead of retaking it).

This semester, I got this (in an online class): "I can't see any of the quizzes except the syllabus quiz"?  The students grade on the syllabus quiz?  NOT TAKEN.

The ONE thing you can see to do, which says you MUST do it, and you haven't bothered.

Bang!Bang!Bang!

For some assignments like that I have made the actual name of the assignment "Syllabus quiz (MUST GET 100% TO CONTINUE IN COURSE)"

[FishProf]

That's BRILLIANT!!  I am so stealing that.

The same student is now insisting that the problem is that Blackboard isn't working, not that it isn't working FOR HER or ON HER COMPUTER.

I've suggested a browser change, but she insists it works on Chrome (but not for her).

I don't know how to fix a tech issue when the student won't try any of the suggestions.

[onthefringe]

Every semester, my students have to take a syllabus quiz and get 100% in order to access the rest of the course material. 

Every semester, some students take it and get less than 100% and then stop (instead of retaking it).

This semester, I got this (in an online class): "I can't see any of the quizzes except the syllabus quiz"?  The students grade on the syllabus quiz?  NOT TAKEN.

The ONE thing you can see to do, which says you MUST do it, and you haven't bothered.

Bang!Bang!Bang!

For some assignments like that I have made the actual name of the assignment "Syllabus quiz (MUST GET 100% TO CONTINUE IN COURSE)"

Heh — someone else with shouty assignment titles. I do that!

And in one of my courses that has daily readings, only some of which require a reading response, some of the reading files are called things like "Fringe et al. 2018 RESPONSE DUE BEFORE CLASS"

[mamselle]

That's BRILLIANT!!  I am so stealing that.

The same student is now insisting that the problem is that Blackboard isn't working, not that it isn't working FOR HER or ON HER COMPUTER.

I've suggested a browser change, but she insists it works on Chrome (but not for her).

I don't know how to fix a tech issue when the student won't try any of the suggestions.

Can you cc or bcc your IT department help desk on your latest exchange, or just forward your email string to them and say, " I don't know what else to tell her, can you pick this up?"

'Cause it's their job, not yours, to sort out that stuff...and it covers you when they say all the same things....

M.

[Aster]

One of my colleagues has a "system" for this type of student/situation.

When a student complains about a tech issue, he requires them to submit a cell phone picture of the computer screen that clearly shows the problem (e.g. a non-working browser). He also requires the student to submit a ticket request to the relevant tech service (e.g. IT, CMS support, publisher), and for himself to be CC'd in that ticket request along with the screen photo(s) of the problem. My colleague provides a listing of all relevant tech representatives as a reference so that students can't delay by either not being able to locate the right tech representative to contact, or to pretend that they can't locate the right tech representative to contact.

My colleague says his procedure works almost every time in either helping the student quickly get the tech problem corrected, or outing students who don't really have a problem but are just being whiny butts about doing their work.

[mamselle]

That belongs on the Jedi Mind Tricks thread.

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

A number of students in my quantitative reasoning course are asking for my lectures "notes". I narrate PowerPoint slides and make them short videos demonstrating various principles. They have access to all of that.

What on earth do they mean by my "notes"? There are no notes. The lectures are the notes. What other notes could there be?

[Thursday's_Child]

A number of students in my quantitative reasoning course are asking for my lectures "notes". I narrate PowerPoint slides and make them short videos demonstrating various principles. They have access to all of that.

What on earth do they mean by my "notes"? There are no notes. The lectures are the notes. What other notes could there be?

The mythical ones!  Those that list the really important points that will be on the test, have the important vocabulary highlighted, and generally allow them to distinguish the wheat of the course from the chaff.  This is vitally important because it allows them to focus their studies on learning how to excel in the class without bothering to learn all the useless stuff you cover, too.

[arcturus]

A number of students in my quantitative reasoning course are asking for my lectures "notes". I narrate PowerPoint slides and make them short videos demonstrating various principles. They have access to all of that.

What on earth do they mean by my "notes"? There are no notes. The lectures are the notes. What other notes could there be?

Is this the same class where they are not viewing the videos (reported up-thread)? There may be a technical issue here, as I have had students report that they did not even know there were videos associated with my on-line class because they had not flipped some widget that allowed the videos to show in Canvas (I think it was a preference in their web browser, as opposed to something in Canvas). If not technical in the technical sense, it is probably "technical" insofar as they are not seeing your "notes" because they are not watching the videos. You might send a class-wide announcement with the positive spin that you are looking forward to reading the class discussion that expounds upon xyz from this week's video (and, of course, follow-up with an actual discussion question based on ideas in the video).

[polly_mer]

What on earth do they mean by my "notes"? There are no notes. The lectures are the notes. What other notes could there be?

Students do so little public speaking that they cannot fathom people knowing the material enough to just talk.

Students do so little public speaking on topics they know that they can't fathom just putting together slides from memory instead of having pages and pages of recent reading with highlighting.

I've handed students my lecture notes and they've been surprised at how little is there other than worked problems with a reminder like 'pause here and reemphasize what the problem statement has'. 

Yep, because I know what 'tell the four rules joke' means.

I can also do the problems without the notes, but the step-by-step reminders to show every single step is to the benefit of the students since then I pause and go slowly while writing on the board or equivalent.

[Parasaurolophus]

Is this the same class where they are not viewing the videos (reported up-thread)? There may be a technical issue here, as I have had students report that they did not even know there were videos associated with my on-line class because they had not flipped some widget that allowed the videos to show in Canvas (I think it was a preference in their web browser, as opposed to something in Canvas). If not technical in the technical sense, it is probably "technical" insofar as they are not seeing your "notes" because they are not watching the videos. You might send a class-wide announcement with the positive spin that you are looking forward to reading the class discussion that expounds upon xyz from this week's video (and, of course, follow-up with an actual discussion question based on ideas in the video).

This might well be the issue (although I've uploaded things to YouTube, so there's really no LMS-based reason they can't see it all). I'm going to make some inquiries to try to ascertain if that's the problem, then follow up with a gentle announcement, as you suggest.

What on earth do they mean by my "notes"? There are no notes. The lectures are the notes. What other notes could there be?

Students do so little public speaking that they cannot fathom people knowing the material enough to just talk.

Students do so little public speaking on topics they know that they can't fathom just putting together slides from memory instead of having pages and pages of recent reading with highlighting.

I've handed students my lecture notes and they've been surprised at how little is there other than worked problems with a reminder like 'pause here and reemphasize what the problem statement has'. 

Yep, because I know what 'tell the four rules joke' means.

I can also do the problems without the notes, but the step-by-step reminders to show every single step is to the benefit of the students since then I pause and go slowly while writing on the board or equivalent.

I don't want to believe that this is what's happening, but I confess that I've been thinking along the same lines.

[Aster]

A number of students in my quantitative reasoning course are asking for my lectures "notes". I narrate PowerPoint slides and make them short videos demonstrating various principles. They have access to all of that.

What on earth do they mean by my "notes"? There are no notes. The lectures are the notes. What other notes could there be?

I always have a few people who never come to class, and blindly ask for "class notes" near exam times. Asking for "class notes" seems to be a default behavior for a subset of students who have no idea what's happening in a course and have no interest in finding out what's happening in a course, but they'll ask for "class notes" as a Hail Mary.