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

[histchick]

Very often though, students need only one warning/zero to understand the importance of reading directions and keeping track of deadlines. These are low-stakes assignments.

This. Coupled with a firm "no" when the student asks to resubmit. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Colleague-induced rather than student-induced despair:

Today I had yet another international student pop in and tell me that the reason they and their friends like my courses is that I'm friendly to them. This is, like, at least the tenth time I've heard this. WTF is going on in all their other classes, that mine stand out in this way?!


(I don't think 'friendly' means 'easy' in this case, since my grade distributions are all normal. Then again, it may well be that elsewhere in the university the distributions are really skewed.)

[mamselle]

International students often pick up, quite accurately, on instructors who demean them for various reasons. Some don't hide their "America first" attitudes, others have no patience with those who speak English as a second, third, or fifth language, others are only very thinly (or not at all) disguised racists.

I mean, you probably know this, but it sounds as if your students appreciate your open-minded, more generous spirit in this regard and want you to know they are grateful for it. I've seen struggling students in several different schools who never did as well as they might have, but were truly committed to learning for its own sake and for the values they could absorb in the situations in which they found themselves. I was glad to have them in class.

But I agree, it does make one wonder...

M. 

[kiana]

Colleague-induced rather than student-induced despair:

Today I had yet another international student pop in and tell me that the reason they and their friends like my courses is that I'm friendly to them. This is, like, at least the tenth time I've heard this. WTF is going on in all their other classes, that mine stand out in this way?!


(I don't think 'friendly' means 'easy' in this case, since my grade distributions are all normal. Then again, it may well be that elsewhere in the university the distributions are really skewed.)

I worked with a dude who literally wouldn't learn how to pronounce international students names. We're not talking about a "bless your heart, you tried" where your tongue simply won't make the sound, he wouldn't even try.

[Parasaurolophus]

International students often pick up, quite accurately, on instructors who demean them for various reasons. Some don't hide their "America first" attitudes, others have no patience with those who speak English as a second, third, or fifth language, others are only very thinly (or not at all) disguised racists.

I mean, you probably know this, but it sounds as if your students appreciate your open-minded, more generous spirit in this regard and want you to know they are grateful for it. I've seen struggling students in several different schools who never did as well as they might have, but were truly committed to learning for its own sake and for the values they could absorb in the situations in which they found themselves. I was glad to have them in class.

But I agree, it does make one wonder...

M.

Yeah, that seems right to me. I've heard some... questionable... things said in faculty-wide meetings, so I'm not entirely surprised, but still. I guess I'm starting to suspect there might be a much bigger, more widespread problem.

I mean, I'm not in love with my job, but I can't imagine my experience would be improved by being palpably unfriendly in class and to my students, or by pretending I had a different student population. Surely it would be significantly worse! *shudder*

I worked with a dude who literally wouldn't learn how to pronounce international students names. We're not talking about a "bless your heart, you tried" where your tongue simply won't make the sound, he wouldn't even try.

Ugh!

[the_geneticist]

I've had a TON of plagiarists this quarter in labs.  This wasn't a problem in face-to-face labs because students were given a hard copy of the worksheet and turned it in at the end of lab.  It was really obvious if a student was looking at their phone & copying information.

Now that everything is online, I've have 8-10 cases every week.  And it's really obvious stuff: answers to the previous versions of questions, answers that are copied & pasted from websites, answers that show another student's name on them.

Granted, with a class of more than 200, that means that most students are being honest.  But I feel like I'm playing "whack a mole" with getting my materials removed from Chegg & CourseHero.  And I'm spending way more time that I ever thought filing paperwork to deal with this.

[marshwiggle]

I worked with a dude who literally wouldn't learn how to pronounce international students names. We're not talking about a "bless your heart, you tried" where your tongue simply won't make the sound, he wouldn't even try.

Since I mostly do labs, I rarely have reason to refer to anyone by name, because I'm speaking to them face-to-face. So I have no idea how lots of names are pronounced, but it's pretty irrelevant. (And since students usually work with a partner, in many cases I don't know which student is which either.) If the later work for me as a TA, or take a small course with fewer students, then the situation will be different.

[mleok]

But I feel like I'm playing "whack a mole" with getting my materials removed from Chegg & CourseHero.  And I'm spending way more time that I ever thought filing paperwork to deal with this.

Yes, this pretty much sums up the experience of my colleagues who are teaching large lower-division classes, but even our large upper-division classes as well. It is incredibly soul draining.

[Liquidambar]

I'm teaching my remote synchronous class as a flipped class and have been working hard to plan activities for it.  One student needed a disability accommodation to be able to participate in real time in Zoom.  Our accommodations office has been working hard to arrange that.  Now, however, the student has made a last minute switch to a different section since he/she just wants to watch prerecorded lectures.  Sigh...

[Stockmann]

Cheating is probably rampant in at least one of my classes, and there's basically nothing I can reasonably do about it. The various constraints I'm operating under all basically favor cheating.
On top of that, apathy is rampant in at least one of my classes - I officially have 50 students but some of my videos have been watched as few a 10 times, and I have only 20ish students showing up for our zoom sessions. Taking tests and quizes has much higher numbers but, well, see above.

[teach_write_research]

I'm adding a copyright statement to everything this term since that's the mechanism for coursehero to take stuff down. Well, that's what they say...

But I feel like I'm playing "whack a mole" with getting my materials removed from Chegg & CourseHero.  And I'm spending way more time that I ever thought filing paperwork to deal with this.

Yes, this pretty much sums up the experience of my colleagues who are teaching large lower-division classes, but even our large upper-division classes as well. It is incredibly soul draining.

[Parasaurolophus]

Cheating is probably rampant in at least one of my classes, and there's basically nothing I can reasonably do about it. The various constraints I'm operating under all basically favor cheating.
On top of that, apathy is rampant in at least one of my classes - I officially have 50 students but some of my videos have been watched as few a 10 times, and I have only 20ish students showing up for our zoom sessions. Taking tests and quizes has much higher numbers but, well, see above.

For some of my videos (especially the ones demonstrating how to do proofs) I have about 30 views across what is, at this point, three semesters and five sections. =p

[downer]

I guess we don't have a thread for what students say in their online discussions. Maybe we should.

Student asks this question in a discussion which hadn't been going in this direction: Why would God "make the male g-spot in the prostate, inside the rectum"?

I'm not sure it will be helpful to unpack that one.

[the_geneticist]

I'm adding a copyright statement to everything this term since that's the mechanism for coursehero to take stuff down. Well, that's what they say...

But I feel like I'm playing "whack a mole" with getting my materials removed from Chegg & CourseHero.  And I'm spending way more time that I ever thought filing paperwork to deal with this.

Yes, this pretty much sums up the experience of my colleagues who are teaching large lower-division classes, but even our large upper-division classes as well. It is incredibly soul draining.

It works.  I've added a copyright statement to everything I share with the students.  And put in some boilerplate language in the syllabus that ALL course materials (readings, worksheets, quiz questions, etc.) are copyright protected.
CourseHero does remove the specific materials you request, but that doesn't stop someone else from posting it again.  Same with Chegg.
Our conduct office says Chegg will run a usage report that gives the usernames & IP addresses of who posted questions & answers & when they did it.  You just have to send them an official letter with the links to the material on their website. 

[Katrina Gulliver]

Blackboard collaborate: invented by Satan?
Has anyone NOT had a nightmare using this for teaching?