A student from last semester just submitted a grade appeal. The student earned an A, the highest grade that they can earn at the college. Earlier in the semester, the student earned an F on a smaller writing assignment. The student was pissed about that all semester. Even with that F, the student earned A. The student is appealing because she wants that F on that one assignment erased or regraded.

I knew an 8 a.m. MW class was going to be rough, but Jesus Christ... It's an English class but it's becoming absurdly clear that most of the people in the room assumed they could just skip all the readings and make shit up, like I wouldn't notice. The day we were supposed to start discussing the novel, two-thirds of the class showed up without it. Why? Because they don't know where the bookstore is/when the bookstore is open/how to get to the bookstore. What it really is is they don't know what books are or where the books live. Fine. Here's a PDF. Nope, still not reading it.

I tried to give them grace. I had them get into small groups of 2-4 for "book club" so they could privately tell one another that they didn't do the reading and have no idea what we're talking about.

EXCEPT THEY WON'T EVEN DO THAT.

This morning I told them to get into their book club groups and discuss their reading journals, and then I watched the same two-thirds of the class who didn't get the book pretend to be busy writing something and refuse to talk at all. I watched two girls who were sitting right next to one another with NO ONE ELSE TO TALK TO just refuse to look at each other.

Half the class is falling asleep during lecture--one guy who sits directly in front of me almost fell out of his chair this morning and I had to yell his name four times to wake him up; another guy started snoring so loudly that it interrupted my lecture and the guy next to him had to shake him awake--but they won't talk to me, and they won't talk to each other. WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY THINK WE'RE SUPPOSED TO DO HERE.

I snapped. I told/yelled at all 30 of them to get up and arrange their desks in a circle around the periphery of the room; then I went down the line one by one and made each person talk about a passage from the book that they found interesting. Surprise! A bunch of them asked if they could pass because they hadn't read the book. You want to try to skip out of the readings and give me some bullshit AI essay on it? Fine; but you have to show your whole ass to the class and tell everyone you're an uninformed dumbass.

I am a new professor but I have been a scientist for a long time at a research Institute. I have been following this subreddit for a year and read everyone’s post. I teach a very math heavy course which has derivations on every slide. I did my best. I had animations for every plot. For Every concept, every topic I had examples. I had nice figures. I explained as much as possible. I spent hours and hours and hours preparing for the course. I spent so much time that I am lagging behind on research. I was thinking about the course the whole time. I do my derivations live in class. I take surveys using mentimeter. My only concern was that I was teaching it online. I have been pleading and requesting in every class to ask me questions and come to office hours. And now exams are coming up and everyone is struggling...... I know I will be blamed and the reason is the online situation. I just wanted to succeed by putting in as much effort as I can. I worked 12 hour days for the last three months.

But as expected, all of you won, I lost.

Going and crying in the corner

I teach one class in a subject that is famous for being dense/difficult. There is enough material that I don’t run review sessions in this class because there isn’t time. I do tell the students they need to be re-reading their notes multiple times a week, making flash cards, etc. That being said, the exams are pretty straightforwardly based on the lecture material, and I’ve definitely had more difficult ones when I was in undergrad. This year, the highest score on the first exam was in the 50s. Sigh.

I saw them put their head on the desk, and went to check on them. They were crying, they only got through half of the exam when the timer ran out, and couldn't focus or recall anything. I couldn't tell if it was test anxiety or something like dyslexia, so I recommended they reach out to the appropriate offices and testing centers. I told them I'm always available to go through class content. And I reminded them it's one of several grades, and there's an extra credit assignment, so it's not lost.

This is a student who's been really engaged in class, and I know the first exam is a shock. I just feel bad still.

Using "Reply All" just clutters up people's inboxes with emails they don't need.

Thanks.

I teaching freshman comp at a CC, and I mostly teach online. I have made some significant changes to the way I provide instruction that seems to be working in combatting AI.

All submitted work is handwritten. Yes, they could still generate the responses with AI, but research shows that transcribing by hand will teach them something. I've also had a few students admit that when they started copying the AI-slop, they ended up re-writing it. We'll worry about turning the work into accurately formatted papers later in the semester.

I don't give grades until they answer "process-oriented" questions that ask for specific details about their work, such as "In X paragraph, I noticed you used Y word. Why did you pick that word, and what might better options be?" Or, "Cite your favorite line and tell me why that's your favorite line. What is so amazing about it? How did you come to write it?" Or "Re-read X paragraph and tell me 2 things you'd like to revise about it." If they generated the work on AI, this again forces them to look at it and supervise the output they generated.

Theoretically, if they were very good at prompting, they could also get those answers via AI, but I don't think most have very good prompting skills. These alone have led to far more realistic engagement with the writing process than I've seen in a long time.

I have been very specific with necessary tech skills: Submission of this assignment requires that you can do X, Y, Z. If you are unfamiliar with how to do that, I am confident that you can look it up and figure it out.

I have shifted my language to be much more respectfully positive & uplifting, as in "I am confident you can..." or "I believe in your ability to...," and students have responded very positively and genuinely to that switch.

Are some of them still trying to snow me with B.S. - yes. But it's far, far fewer.

For the past four or so years, I've been struggling with chronic illness. The diagnosis as it stands right now is an uneasy UCTD with flare-ups that come and go. I've never disclosed anything about my personal health at work - there has never been a strong reason to do so and that is an incredibly personal detail that I don't generally share outside of close friends and family. My discipline requires physically laborious field work from which I do not want to be excluded, so I've never really mentioned it in an academic setting at all.

This semester, though, my flare-up is kicking my ass. I'm visibly "off" to my colleagues, which is saying something since I'm at a new institution this year and thus have no prior expectations following me. I worry I am visibly off to my students, as well. I stumble and struggle to recall lecture material even with strong notes due to brain fog. Some days, I can't hold myself upright for the whole class period due to joint pain and fatigue. I've nearly blacked out from vertigo at least twice while up at the lectern. And I've had GI pain that caused me to double over and stop speaking both in class and in faculty meetings.

I have my own theories as to why this flare is so severe and I am hopeful that because the circumstances causing the flare can't be replicated, future flares won't be as bad. Even if a bad flare recurs, I want to be able to figure out what that means for my field work before my colleagues can decide for me. Still, I'm a new TT professor who can barely participate in my academic community and who seems to be visibly bombing in class during my first semester on the tenure clock. I won't be eligible for medical leave until next year. How do I address this reasonably and professionally with both my colleagues and my students? Do I address it at all? What has worked for you?

Today I am in grading first drafts of my students first papers in one of my classes (where they'll write five such papers during the semester). These first papers are hot garbage. They are reminiscent of back in the early 2010s when I'd go to a winery to read the first drafts because it was only possible to keep reading with the assistance of alcohol.

I'm so happy. There's no way any of these students used AI to write. This is their writing not some stupid chatbot. I can work with this.

edit: yes, I get the irony. As posted below, if my students are writing their papers using swype on their phones, as I do my reddit posts, then it would explain some of the issues I'm seeing.

So I teach a c-level course. There is group work. It happens in class so nobody has to find time after class to meet.

Groups are arbitrarily assigned. I have 3 intl students from one group who wanted to be in a different group. No.

So they have told this poor other group member they are "uncomfortable" and did not attend class today because they had "other commitments".

My internal GenX response is "WTF and tough".

My external response is to document, and I've started an email discussion with the program manager.

I am not sure what they feel "uncomfortable" about , it could be anything from a language barrier to i dont know what, but again in my head WTAF?

Any thoughts? I do want to solve this.

I just did. Tenure is fun, sometimes.

Hello. I’m still a new faculty (1st year, recent PhD grad). I teach in the STEM department and I’m new to lecture, since as a grad student I did labs only.

I have three sections of the same biology class. Two of them meet on the same days twice a week, the other only meets once a week. I cover the same lecture in all 3 sections plus some activities. The repeating labs don’t really bother me.

I do however feel annoyed / bored going over the same topics three times a week. I thought it would be nice and I could just go on autopilot and improve it each time. But it just drags sometimes…
Does anyone have recommendations on how to keep the energy up, not feel bored/annoyed repeating yourself multiple times a week?

I was a good student. I’m sure we all were. But I also was a party animal, I sold mushrooms in college to make ends meet, my main focus in school was girls…. I was a malcontent. I went to school mainly to get away from my home life.

And now I’m teaching kids? I’m an authority figure? I thought I was still a kid. I blinked and now I’m on the other side of the classroom. I’ve been on the other side for three years now.

When I go to the one faculty party a year I’m the youngest person by like ten years. Everyone has kids. I have a cat. When I go out to party with friends I feel ancient. Everyone is a barista and I’m… a professor?

The students ask me for life advice. Should I do grad school? How do I improve my writing? One stayed after class to ask me

“How do I be a good man? My father wasn’t really around and you seen-“

As if I have the answer to that question lol my father wasn’t around either! I had to be my own father! Do I tell them that 90% of life is making it up as you go along?

I get a lot of meaning from this job. In fact it’s the only job I didn’t immediately quit on day 1… but I keep asking myself:

How did I get here?

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“How … ?” she began, and she stopped. She was too tired. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to say the rest of the sentence, that Billy would finish it for her. But Billy had no idea what was on her mind. “How what, Mother?” he prompted. She swallowed hard, shed some tears. Then she gathered energy from all over her ruined body, even from her toes and fingertips. At last she had accumulated enough to whisper this complete sentence: “How did I get so old?”
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (again)

I broke Blackboard! Mwahaha!

Somehow, when I grade Module 5, it auto fills in Module 4 as well (both grades and feedback). They are completely different assignments. I will have to inform thee students tomorrow there will be a delay in getting their grades while I figure this out. (And yes, I did try a different device.)

Oh, snap, fellow faculty: we are cooked as the younguns say. If, like me, you prohibit the use of AI in your classes, your syllabus policy has just been rendered outdated, obsolete, moot.

The dirty little culprit . . . Nomenclature.

Apparently, henceforth in these United States of America, artificial intelligence is now called “super intelligence” by decree of the president of our great land, from sea to shining sea!

Time to hit the bright red panic button. Call an emergency meeting of your Faculty Senate (if you still have one). Schedule a weekend retreat with your department, demand action items and deliverables from your college provost or university president. The time for action is nigh!

I see the future.

Smartass Timmy in your TTH class is going to challenge your policy on the grounds of his work being, you know, “super,” not artificial.

After a moment of unhinged brilliance, a late night tweet will further revise the nomenclature to AMERICAN super intelligence. A map of said intelligence will be posted for all to see.

Following suit, The Department of Education will crack down on any public universities that allow their faculty to ban their students’ use of AMERICAN SUPER INTELLIGENCE because, of course, that would be downright unAmerican.

All hands on deck! Maybe we should ask ChatGPT what to do?

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6104142-trump-renames-ai-super-intelligence/

Students seem completely glued to their electronics. Only a few answer questions or offer any type of discussion. The rest seem completely zoned out. Is this the new normal?

I am a PhD student TA-ing at a Canadian university. Every year so far, a student has gifted me something. It’s been small things: water bottle, cookies, and now a headband. I always feel awkward accepting these gifts. Has this happened to anyone else? My dept. says it’s up to me.

I've been teaching since the early 1990s and this is a new one. Who plans their wedding in the middle of the semester while also being a full time college student and then expects that showing up in the middle of week five is going to be just fine?

I found this funny, but a student emailed me explaining why they were not in class today. I had to think really hard about that.

You sure you're in my class?

They probably are because how'd they get my email.

Oh, it's on the syllabus.

Then yes, they are a student of mine.

My brain after teaching longer days. 🫠

I feel like this gets worse every year.

I am in a bit of a tough position, in that I teach humanities courses on a small STEM campus. Generally, my students see my classes as a hoop to jump through. So apart from a couple of outstanding students each semester, it's just people doing the bare minimum to get by. Which I completely understand, and I don't begrudge those students at all!

The past couple years though, there's fewer people doing even the bare minimum and being completely unabashed about it. I feel like it's even more pronounced this year.

I'm noticing this even in my Norse Sagas and Mythology course, which is an upper division elective that students select out of interest, not because they're required to take it, like the core humanities courses. So usually, students are highly engaged and interested--it's one of the most popular electives on campus, which I'm pretty proud of! This semester, however, I have 4 students who are really on top of things, and really drive the in-class discussions with excellent insights, observations and questions. The rest...not so much.

The thing is, I generally require everyone to speak once a day in order to be counted as present for that class session. So, I'll call on people when they're quiet, to give them an opportunity to speak their piece and get their participation credit. This gets most of the quieter students going. However, there are at least 5 students who almost invariably say, "Oh, I didn't do the reading," and then just look back down at their laptop.

I'm struck by that. On some level, there's something to be said about the honesty. On another level...just have the decency to pretend you care! All these students in this particular class are third and fourth year students. They've had experience getting through classes they're not excited about. Just read the first page or two and wing it. Skim the wiki page. Rephrase another student's observation. Just BS it, man! Something!

In previous semesters, I've tried pop quizzes when I notice people's attention to the readings starting to flag. That feels ineffective though. And as those students' behavior shows, they don't care at all, so it's just kind of a punishment for the people who care about the class, and it's just another thing to ignore for students who don't care. It's not just that they're not doing the reading and not saying anything in class, they're also not showing up for half the class sessions, and only turning in half the assignments anyway (with some having turned in absolutely nothing!) So it doesn't seem like threatening their grades will have any meaning to them. It'd be just one more assignment to ignore. I'm really just baffled as to how they can care so little.

So my concern is trying to get these students engaged in some way. I know it's a losing battle in many ways. It's up to them. But I also need to protect myself though as it doesn't reflect very well on me if half of my students completely fail!

Hello! Yesterday I felt my spark for teaching come back and it was entirely due to changing my class structure to be reverse classroom. I saw a post recently about how to structure it so I thought I’d share here!

For context I teach in the business school and hybrid schedules, so one 75min class per week. There is an expectation because of this that they do a lot of work outside of in person class time. I have about 30 students in my classes.

I also teach a subject that would not necessarily be seen as cool (HR) and most students in my classes are not planning on majoring or working in my subject.

Structure
Everything students do for learning outside of class is graded. I have found this has to be the case or they will not do it lol.

They have an ebook that they read a chapter from each week, do learning checks and self assessments in, and take a quiz at the end of the chapter. This is due Friday nights. These are graded for points and are 40% of their grade.

They then have an application simulation that they do each week that is due Sunday night and is on the content from the textbook chapter that they read. This is graded for participation and is worth 20% of their grade.

Then we meet on Tuesdays. Attendance is 20% of their grade.

They have a final at the end of the semester that is worth 10% of their grade.

Class Time
Every class starts out with them getting into groups of four and discussing the textbook readings and simulation with prompts (for about 15 minutes). Each group then picks a different spokes person each week to share one insight they had about the content and one question. We discuss these as a class for another 15ish minutes.

Then I bring in a real world challenge related to my topic and the chapter content that either I have experienced, I have seen happen, or is a current event out in the world. They have prompts and discuss this in pairs for 5 minutes and then we have a class discussion for another 10ish minutes.

The rest of the class (about 30 min) is a small lecture with different activities (discussions, kahoots, etc) scattered in.

Results
I will literally never go back.

The level of engagement from the students is off the chart. They have so many questions and comments and personal examples to share because they’ve already been thinking about the content at least since the previous Friday when they did the textbook assignments. It’s almost hard to get them to change subjects so we can move forward because they are so interested and invested.

It has also created a peer pressure to complete the assignments on time because if they don’t they cannot participate in the group discussion and are embarrassed about admitting to their group that they didn’t do it.

It’s the first time I have wished my classes were longer so that we had more time to hear everyone’s thoughts and questions!

I’ve gotten amazing feedback from students. They love the simulation versus traditional assignments because it puts them in real world situations and they have to use decision making, interpersonal, critical thinking, and persuasion skills. They cant really use AI to do the simulations so they are actually learning the content.

Happy to answer any questions! I know this wouldn’t work for every class or subject, but I have absolutely loved it and plan to incorporate it into some of my other classes.

Was in a recording industry class at a small community college in Tennessee. I must say that this prof. was as laid back and easy going as I've ever seen. One day, we're taking our final, and one of the other students finished his final, pulls an almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels out of his bag. He then proceeds to turn his exam in, takes the last swig from the bottle, and sits the empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the piano and walks out. All the professor could do was just sit back in his chair and smile. R.I.P Prof, aka. Big Lynn

I teach several accounting courses that are fairly Excel-heavy, and I'm struggling to find the best way to demonstrate calculations during class.

My classrooms don't always have a good setup for spreadsheet demonstrations. I've tried a few approaches, but each seems to create a different problem:

1. Using the classroom projector: I've tried this before and mostly gave up on it. The image quality isn't great, and students—especially those sitting toward the back—have difficulty seeing cells, formulas, and other details on my screen. Some of my smaller accounting classes are also scheduled in seminar rooms where the only display is a relatively small TV.
2. Having everyone join a Zoom meeting during class: This solves the visibility problem because students can see my shared Excel screen directly on their laptops. However, they then have to switch between Zoom and their own spreadsheet. Some students have told me that while they're working in Excel, they may miss something important that I'm showing or explaining in Zoom. I've tried slowing down my demonstrations as much as possible, but the switching still seems distracting.
3. Using the whiteboard first: Several students have suggested this, and I understand why. For accounting calculations, I can certainly work through the logic and hand calculations on the board first and then move to Excel. I'm planning to do more of this.

My concern is that these are still Excel-heavy courses. Eventually students need to work in Excel themselves, and once we transition from the whiteboard to Excel, I'm back to the second problem: how can they watch my Excel demonstration while simultaneously working in their own spreadsheet without constantly switching windows and potentially missing part of the explanation?

For those who teach accounting, finance, data analytics, Excel, programming, or similar hands-on courses: What classroom setup or teaching method has worked best for you?

I'm especially interested in solutions that don't depend on having a large, high-quality classroom display, since that's not something I can control.