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

[FishProf]

Spork - Yep

Marshwiggle - Ha!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I am giving my 1st Online Practical exam (we've had a dozen quizzes so far).  Three of my students couldn't find the exam (it is 20% of their grade).  Turns out, they haven't taken the syllabus quiz and earned 100% yet, so they haven't seen or done ANYTHING in the class so far.

It is the midterm point.  How can anyone be this clueless?

Grade of F is a teachable moment.

Except when they don't login to check their grade.......

That is pretty amazing. You'd think they'd have noticed the lack of course content by now.

[apl68]

Sounds like maybe a lot of students are going to be having that nightmare we talked about.  Except it's turning out all too real.

[FishProf]

That is pretty amazing. You'd think they'd have noticed the lack of course content by now.

You'd like to think that, wouldn't You?! 

It is truly mind-boggling.  The zeros keep mounting in the gradebook, and they just don't notice.

I am not a fan of having to send out mid-term failure warnings, but it is increasingly necessary just to get some students to notice the semester has started.

[arcturus]

We are about half way through our semester here and I still have two students who have never logged into the course shell. I sent them personalized email during the second week of the course and have filled out all of the various student-warning notification software in use at my school. Other students have told me that they plan to drop the course (explaining their lack of participation) but have not yet done so. My current average GPA for work completed in this class is below a C. Usually it is around a C+ at this point in the semester. This is an online course and students have always struggled to realize that online courses require them to take more responsibility for their learning; the final class GPA is usually slightly higher, as they get into the groove as the semester progresses. This year, I suspect that I will be awarding many "barely passing" grades based on the lack of participation.

Meanwhile, I am waiting in a zoom room for a student to meet with me regarding academic misconduct associated with plagiarizing a discussion post....I am starting to think that she may not show up for the mandatory conference as it has already been 40 minutes post our scheduled meeting time.

[the_geneticist]

I had a friend in grad school who had the opposite happen. He forgot to formally register for a class. He went to every class and earned an A. It was a team taught class so the instructor in charge never checked the roster until they were entering final grades. I remember the pile of paperwork to retro-actively add him in was significant!

I was co-teaching an Introductory Biology class a few years ago and had a student who attended every class, took all the exams, completed all the labs, etc.  He registered late and had to fill out a form to Add the class.  When we were submitting final course grades, we noticed he wasn't registered.  He'd filled out the paper form but DIDN'T TURN IT IN to the Registrar. 
The mind boggles.
The Dean of the College had to sign off on his "go ahead and get him registered after the final exam" paperwork.  That was an awkward conversation.

[teach_write_research]

I met with an advisee today who's been struggling. The student did not realize they were registered in a math class this term and we are half way, oh my! I had to take a moment because my grad school anxiety nightmare was having to take a final exam for a math class I never attended. oh. my.

I still get that dream!  Only now it's with the twist that I'm teaching the class.  Or that I'm both taking it AND teaching it.  Dreams are so weird.

Oh wow! I have alarms on my phone for class times. I've not missed one myself but I have heard rare first hand accounts from colleagues.

The first time I experienced a student never coming to class except for the exams I was stunned, oh, that's not just a nightmare? that can be real? ack.

[teach_write_research]

I met with an advisee today who's been struggling. The student did not realize they were registered in a math class this term and we are half way, oh my! I had to take a moment because my grad school anxiety nightmare was having to take a final exam for a math class I never attended. oh. my.

Sounds like the same anxiety dream I used to have (And still do, occasionally, some years after taking my last class of any kind).  It wasn't always a math class.  And I literally never missed a class in real life!

Amazing that this could actually happen to anybody.  Is the student's "surprise" class online?  I can sort of see how an online-only class could get lost in the shuffle.  Some of the recent stories on this thread tend to confirm my suspicion that many students really need face-to-face classes to help them stay accountable.

We are remote online. Faculty were asked to create calendar events for class meetings. So either the professor did not do that or the student missed it. But well, there still is the student's official class schedule and the fact that the student created their schedule...

[Langue_doc]

Summer session, first day of class. Student in my Basketweaving class was quite disruptive until I realized that hu's name wasn't on my roster and sent Student to the Registrar's office to see if hu was enrolled in another section. A few days later, I happened to see Student who informed me that hu was enrolled in Bridgebuilding. Student hadn't realized that hu was in the wrong class despite spending an hour in class going over the syllabus and course-related activites that were not even remotely related to bridge building.

[teach_write_research]

I had a friend in grad school who had the opposite happen. He forgot to formally register for a class. He went to every class and earned an A. It was a team taught class so the instructor in charge never checked the roster until they were entering final grades. I remember the pile of paperwork to retro-actively add him in was significant!

Yes! The dangers of adding a student to the LMS to help them get access to the assignments while they take care of adding but then they neglect to register. And the importance of midsem grades, advising, etc.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

That is pretty amazing. You'd think they'd have noticed the lack of course content by now.

You'd like to think that, wouldn't You?! 

It is truly mind-boggling.  The zeros keep mounting in the gradebook, and they just don't notice.

I am not a fan of having to send out mid-term failure warnings, but it is increasingly necessary just to get some students to notice the semester has started.

I do a CYA (well, CMA) by having the system send auto emails when they do not turn in stuff, take quizzes, etc. on D2L. This way if they start wailing about not knowing that something was due, (besides having the information posted in a myriad of places like, I don't know- the syllabus?) I can point to these emails.

I tend to get a lot of emails that make me shake my head (literally) and pull my hair (literally, bad coping mechanism) when students ask me how to do simple tasks that are in the syllabus, like write a formal lab report (painfully detailed in the syllabus).

If someone has an answer to this question, PLEASE TELL ME.

[FishProf]

I do a CYA (well, CMA) by having the system send auto emails when they do not turn in stuff, take quizzes, etc. on D2L. This way if they start wailing about not knowing that something was due, (besides having the information posted in a myriad of places like, I don't know- the syllabus?) I can point to these emails.

Hmmm.  I usually don't deploy the due date system in Blackboard.  I might have to rethink that.

[polly_mer]

Summer session, first day of class. Student in my Basketweaving class was quite disruptive until I realized that hu's name wasn't on my roster and sent Student to the Registrar's office to see if hu was enrolled in another section. A few days later, I happened to see Student who informed me that hu was enrolled in Bridgebuilding. Student hadn't realized that hu was in the wrong class despite spending an hour in class going over the syllabus and course-related activites that were not even remotely related to bridge building.

My record on students in the wrong class on the first day was an hour and a half into the two-hour session.  Science for teachers apparently seemed like intro to psychology until we reorged into the second set of small groups for another what-do-you-know-about-the-state-k-8-science-standards activity. 

We all watched the guy exclaim "this can't be intro to psychology!" and walk all the way across the clearly physics/astronomy lab to the door.  The comments were pretty good along the lines of the announcement of the class name on the board, the handouts, the syllabus, and nearly every minute for the first ten of "In Science for Teachers this semester, we will..." should have been clues.

[Aster]

Stu Dent: "Professor, I noticed that I can't look up any of my quizzes in the online gradebook." RED FLAG #1.

Me: "Can you not click on the quizzes in your online gradebook?"

Stu Dent: "No. I mean, there's nothing there." RED FLAG #2

I check my Excel gradebook. Yup, this guy hasn't submitted anything for weeks. Let's see where this discussion goes...

Me: "Oh. If nothing is there, that means that nothing was submitted. You need to submit a quiz in order to review it later."

Stu Dent: "I'm pretty sure I took at least some of these. I'm going to contact BlackBoard support to see what happened." Pretty sure that you took some quizzes? And you're going to contact IT support *now* in the middle of the semester?? What are they going to do, conjure up some grades for you?? RED FLAG #3 and RED FLAG #4

What do you folks think are the odds that this student will even contact IT support? Myself, I call BS and give it 50/50.

[polly_mer]

What do you folks think are the odds that this student will even contact IT support? Myself, I call BS and give it 50/50.

I am a regular reader of the funny customer-service share-your-stories-here genre.  I bet he does contact IT support and generates another entry there along the lines of "Can you make it look like I took many of these quizzes and got a 6 or 8 out of 10?  Why not?!  My tuition pays your salary!"