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

[onehappyunicorn]

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!"

We had a student who never turned in the major writing assignment for an intro class and then subsequently failed the course by a couple of points. This student's mother demanded that IT look into it as she was 100 percent certain that the student had turned it in. Turns out that not only had the student never submitted the paper the student have never even clicked on the assignment in Blackboard. IT did show that the instructor had entered the "0" after the assignment was not turned in, and that the "0" had sat there for over a month before the semester ended.

The mother then insisted that the system was broken and offered, as proof, that the student's advisor never got an email she had sent. Since email didn't work then obviously Blackboard didn't work either. The last email I received from her (several paragraphs long) accused me, among other things, of stealing money from a hard working family as their student was going to have to retake a class they should have passed.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Probably more like a, 'This is so disappointing moment.'

Student in a Physics II course does not know what the exponential function is...

[the_geneticist]

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!"

One thing I like about online assignments is that I can easily check if a student attempted an assignment, when they saved it, etc.  Sending them a screenshot of the access log is a great way to counter the "But I know I turned it in!  On time!"  or the "I didn't see the announcement" emails.
I get a lot of "Uh, maybe I was thinking of a quiz in another class" sort of apologies.

[Parasaurolophus]

In grad school, a colleague was TAing for PHIL 200: Intro to Philosophy. I was in the lounge/office when, a month in, a student who'd been diligently attending his discussion sessions dropped in with his first (failed!) test to get some help.

It quickly emerged, in the subsequent discussion, that the student was actually enrolled in PHIL 210: Intro logic, had attended the normal logic class sessions, but had been attending my colleague's discussion sessions for Intro philosophy.

I confess we had a laugh, afterwards, imagining the guy's confusion in the discussion sessions, which obviously were going over very, very different material.

The poor guy, though!

At least it got sorted early. I believe he went on to do well in  the class.

[Larimar]

Stu Dent asked me in class a couple of days ago whether he should take the feedback I had given him on his first paper and the feedback from the tutoring center and apply it to his next paper.

Sarcastic answer that I didn't actually say: No, Stu, you should ignore what you're supposed to be learning in this class and just make the same mistakes over and over.

My actual answer: Yes, absolutely!

Apparently this cohort of students has been taught not to think or breathe before asking first.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Grading these tests is... painful.

How do students with zero basic Math skills get into Calculus-based Physics? How???

[Parasaurolophus]

Grading these tests is... painful.

How do students with zero basic Math skills get into Calculus-based Physics? How???

Navigational skills?

[FishProf]

Grading these tests is... painful.

How do students with zero basic Math skills get into Calculus-based Physics? How???

We had an advisor in academic success who would regularly override the Calculus prereq because, and I quote,   "The math requirement is stupid.  No one need Calculus."

All in the name of student retention and graduation rate.

[marshwiggle]

Grading these tests is... painful.

How do students with zero basic Math skills get into Calculus-based Physics? How???

We had an advisor in academic success who would regularly override the Calculus prereq because, and I quote,   "The math requirement is stupid.  No one need Calculus."

All in the name of student retention and graduation rate.

May that administrator fly in an airplane designed by engineers who didn't need Calculus.

[FishProf]

Grading these tests is... painful.

How do students with zero basic Math skills get into Calculus-based Physics? How???

We had an advisor in academic success who would regularly override the Calculus prereq because, and I quote,   "The math requirement is stupid.  No one need Calculus."

All in the name of student retention and graduation rate.

May that administrator fly in an airplane designed by engineers who didn't need Calculus.

Indeed.  Said admin was let go after several families threatened to sue over their offsprings' delayed graduation b/c of this.

[kiana]

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.

As a grad student, we had someone who came in about 5 minutes late, sat down, and took diligent notes for the entire class. It was graduate level algebra class ... she was looking for her college algebra class. We figured it out at the end when she came up looking for a syllabus ... she was really tremendously relieved though, she said "Oh my God I was thinking I made a huge mistake not taking intermediate algebra."

[onthefringe]

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.

As a grad student, we had someone who came in about 5 minutes late, sat down, and took diligent notes for the entire class. It was graduate level algebra class ... she was looking for her college algebra class. We figured it out at the end when she came up looking for a syllabus ... she was really tremendously relieved though, she said "Oh my God I was thinking I made a huge mistake not taking intermediate algebra."

On the opposite side of this, as a senior in college, I went to the first day of an advanced science seminar course (discussion and presentation based) but decided it wasn't for me and dropped it. Since this was before computers (well, before easy things like computer access to your course schedule), I never realized the the registrar didn't process the drop until my grades came (in the mail — I'm old).

No harm no foul though, since I got an A.

I now vaguely assume the faculty member in question just gave everyone an A and didn't realize he had assigned more grades than he had students who attended?

[jimbogumbo]

Probably more like a, 'This is so disappointing moment.'

Student in a Physics II course does not know what the exponential function is...

Not unusual. We Math profs get blamed a lot, even though we cover it extensively.

Don't worry about the student. A job as a Presidential advisor awaits.

[Aster]

Someone emailed me today asking me how to solve for a simple math equation where the technique to solve it is normally taught in junior high school, or 9th grade, tops. He wanted to know if you completed math equations within parentheses before equations that weren't in parentheses.

I don't believe that in my entire 20+ years of teaching has any college student ever contacted me for help on how to do this. I'm now wondering if all of the high school seniors for 2020 were just passed diplomas carte blanche.

I mean crud, the Parentheses Rule is taught in junior high school, isn't it?

[polly_mer]

Someone emailed me today asking me how to solve for a simple math equation where the technique to solve it is normally taught in junior high school, or 9th grade, tops. He wanted to know if you completed math equations within parentheses before equations that weren't in parentheses.

I don't believe that in my entire 20+ years of teaching has any college student ever contacted me for help on how to do this. I'm now wondering if all of the high school seniors for 2020 were just passed diplomas carte blanche.

I mean crud, the Parentheses Rule is taught in junior high school, isn't it?

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally from left to right was seventh grade when I learned it.

My current seventh grader demonstrated it last week when we were reviewing his recent classwork for a different reason.