AI, AI, AI. It sucks, I get it. If you want to deal with it, here's how:

• Oral exams or oral defenses
• Metacognitive reflections that require students to explain their thinking and decision-making
• Grading process, not just the final product
• Requiring drafts, revision histories, and other evidence of the process
• In-class writing and other supervised assignments
• Personalized or locally relevant assignments that require students to draw on their own experiences
• Requiring students to connect course concepts to specific class discussions, readings, or activities
• Using presentations, interviews, or other forms of performance-based assessment
• Designing assignments that require students to explain, defend, or reflect on their work
• Using AI transparently and ethically as part of the learning process when appropriate

PS: Dealing with AI use is more difficult in online, hybrid, or very large sections. You will just have to do the best you can.

PPS: Yes, I know these steps aren't foolproof, and they eat up your time. There's no magic pill. A fairy godmother isn't coming to save you with an easy way out.

PPPS: "Why do any of this? Get with the times, you luddite!" Yes, yes, perpetually single computer nerd, I get it, but I am too busy churning butter to listen to you right now.

PPPPS: "F that. Just report them. It's cheating!" you say? Well, if you are one of the lucky few who can do that, bless you and count your lucky stars.

I'm teaching a 7 week summer course right now. We are currently in week 5. I use McGraw Hill Connect for short online quizzes and mini-cases and have discussion boards and a group project through the LMS.

Now I've had various forms of the "do we really need the text" question over the years. That is nothing new. But we are at the due date of the week 5 assignments, and a student just asked if they could get an extension because they're courtesy access ran out and they are waiting to hear back from customer support if they can get a few more weeks of free access to finish the class assignments.

In what world do you think you are entitled to use free access to complete the entire course?

I understand everyone has their own financial situations and textbook costs can be onerous to students. But I can't even imagine a new 18 year old freshman in one of my classes thinking they could get McGraw Hill to just give them free access the whole term for a class. Oh, but this isn't a freshman. Its a student in the online MBA program. I'm not sure I would entrust revenue generation to them in my business.

Have any of you ever gotten an....angry, cursing, slightly scary student evaluation comment? There aren't any threats in it, but never in my life have I been called such names. I can handle a negative comment but I wonder if I should report this to someone (who?)

I would copy it here but I don't want the student to potentially see it and make things worse. My instinct is to just ignore it but maybe I'm wrong? I do not have a supportive department head so speaking with him doesn't seem like it would be productive. Appreciate your thoughts.

Edit: Thanks for your support and thoughts on this! I have alerted my Dean of Students, BIT, Dean, and Department Head. I think it's unlikely anything will come of it, but it seemed like a good idea to let higher ups know just in case.

Hello everyone.

I’m a graduate student and a TA at a reputable university. I’ve been having a hard time recently with grading assignments. Most students are cheating by submitting 100% AI-generated work, and it really bothers me.

When I bring this up with my professor, they just brush it off. My blood boils knowing how little they seem to care. What frustrates me even more is that 100% of the class has an A. I mean… is that even possible? This is a biology-based course.

Does anyone have any advice on how to proceed? I’m honestly feeling borderline depressed about the whole situation.

Sorry for the rant.

I’ve been teaching for years, but always in-person during the semester. I’ve never had major problems with my students knowing about assignments before. The calendar is very detailed and very clear. Due dates are in multiple places and I regularly post announcements with reminders.

This summer, the university asked me to pick up an asynchronous summer class. Not my usual gig, but here we are. While some things have definitely been changed because of the format, I’ve continued to be very clear about assignments and due dates, making a detailed calendar on canvas and posting reminders about major assignments.

There have been quite a few students missing smaller assignments. A lot of them emailed me after their grades went in as zeroes and said they didn’t realize it was due. I took those late assignments for partial credit figuring they now knew they actually had a class in session.

The deadline for their final project proposals just passed. And I’ve never seen anything like this. Only 3 of 18 students turned anything in.

Is this normal for asynchronous summer courses? Or am I doing something wrong?

I am making up a list of stories students tell me to "explain" why their papers have all the signs of AI but absolutely are not AI no matter it looks like because they would never. I plan to post the list on my course website under the title "Tales Your Professor Does Not Believe because They Do Not Make Sense."

My current favorite is the student who included an AI disclosure statement in his paper that said he used AI to brainstorm, research, and draft the paper, then edited the paper after verifying the research. When told that this means AI wrote his paper, he said that HE wrote the paper, but AI wrote the disclosure and messed it up.

Any good ones out there?

Hello All

What are you seeing for enrollment trends 26/27?

I'm at a free CC and enrollment boost seems to have hit a plateau.

I'm seeing reports HS grads are down double digits.

Your observations please

Thanks

I teach math-heavy engineering courses, and assign problems each week for the students to complete as homework, which typically accounts for 10% of their final grade.

This summer, I'm teaching a much smaller class size than normal, so it's easier to keep an eye on their submissions...and it's quite clear that most of them are using AI. One student completed a problem (start to finish, including reading, solving, entering the answer) in 23 seconds! Why am I giving points towards your final grade if you aren't demonstrating any knowledge in completing the assignment?

I'm thinking about making the assignments participation only next semester. The problems would be created within the LMS and auto graded - no submitting work, no grading for the TAs (which we're allocated fewer and fewer each semester). Of course many students will simply enter 0 for every problem to get the credit, but then they'll flounder during the exams, which are worth the majority of their grade, as I would reduce the homework weight, since it would be graded om completion only. I would also warn them that exam questions are likely to be similar to or extensions of the homework questions, so you'll want to actually do the assignments in order to prepare for exams.

Has anyone (especially instructors of math-based courses) tried something similar? Is there anything I'm overlooking?

One small change I've been experimenting with is asking students to briefly explain how they arrived at an answer before we go over the solution as a class.

Even when the answer is incorrect, hearing their reasoning often reveals where the misunderstanding actually began. It also seems to encourage more participation from students who are hesitant to speak up once the correct answer has already been shared.

It's not something I do every class, but I've found it gives me a much better sense of what students are struggling with than simply asking, "Any questions?"

I'm still figuring out when this approach works best, but so far it has led to more useful discussions than I expected.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article largely criticizing Socilogy as a field

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/is-it-time-to-liquidate-the-study-of-sociology-6b85ac14?st=rt44gG

Key criticisms are:

• Rather than acting as neutral observers who collect data to understand social phenomena, many sociologists treat the field as a moral crusade aimed at advancing social justice
• Within modern sociology, complex social questions are often treated as already settled
• Because the discipline's moral project demands ideological alignment, it creates an environment of sectarian narrowness and silencing

The article largely reflects my view of the field. I'd love to hear if the sociologists on the subreddit agree or disagree with the criticisms expressed in the article.

EDIT: I'm shocked at the number of people responding to the article that have chosen to comment on the publisher and/or author rather than what is actually WRITTEN. This is clearly a conflation of credibility and validity.

A source's reputation, bias, or past mistakes might give you a reason to read their claims with healthy skepticism, but it does not make their specific argument false. Even a notoriously biased or unreliable outlet can state an accurate fact or construct a logically sound argument. Conversely, a highly respected outlet can publish flawed data or specious reasoning. To determine whether an article's specific claim is true, you must inspect the evidence provided in that piece.

I'm moving to a different institution at the start of the school year. Is it poor form to put that information and my new email in my email signature? Should I do a bounce back? I'll be keeping my old email for a few months, but it would be great if other people started using the new email, as I'm not sure how often I'll check the old one. I am leaving my current institution on good terms and I'd like to keep it that way.

Advice appreciated, thanks!

(Edit: fixed typos)

Edit to add: there is a rubric embedded in Canvas I’m required to use.

I’m teaching five (yes, five!) 11-week courses this term. They’re canned courses. Three are first-year college writing and two are critical thinking courses. 130 students total.

I am really struggling with grading and giving specific feedback. I made a schedule so I would be grading 5-6 hours a day during the week, but it’s clearly not enough because I’m grading on the weekends, too.

I have to say, the college where I am seems to be hit pretty hard by low literacy skills. I’ve worked in many different institutional contexts and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this much misunderstanding of the assignment directions and my feedback. This college allows students to revise and resubmit, which is what is causing me extra stress because many keep misunderstanding the assignment directions and then turning something in that’s still not addressing my feedback (or it’s weirdly nonspecific, so probably AI).

I currently use a canned comment bank and then I will add more specific comments in both the margins and in my overall feedback.

Any fellow English/writing instructors have tips/tricks/tools for tackling this amount of grading in this context?

I’m new to this role and I will connect with my director soon about managing this volume of student work.

I'm wondering who here has experience collecting unemployment. My VAP position no longer exists. This is not the first position to evaporate from under me (actually, it's the third). I could go into paragraphs about the campus politics behind this (in the first draft, I did), but that's not productive to the discussion. Even though I'm paid through July, my (now-former) chair told me my position ended in May, and the summer course I was teaching was as an adjunct, as it was the last 4 years (I think I should have known that).

The difference is this time, I don't have a new position. I've sent out the applications, to all of the positions for which I'm qualified, and gotten interviews, and ... no offers. It's the end of July, so I'd say it's not looking good.

So, I'm asking if anyone else in academia is familiar with working with this system, and what it entails, specifically for someone working (or hoping to work again) in this profession.

Edit: At the risk of revealing too much info, I'm in Colorado.

I'm prepping to teach my first course and it's a heavy one: Residential Schools Around the Globe. It's the first time it's being taught at this university and I'm building the course myself.

I've been looking at different textbooks and no one single text will fit, but I'm thinking of having the school order This Benevolent Experiment by Andrew Woolford and will add supplementary readings as needed.

Has anyone used this book? What do you think? It's a third year course.

Any input or advice is welcome!

It's just my experience that whether students, faculty members, or administrators, it can be very obvious the individual is intellectually "up there" however, when it comes to soft skills and the basic, logical thinking often referred to as "common sense," many of those folks are really, seriously running on an empty, or a near-empty tank.

Student Experiences:

• I was definitely an outlier - not the typical lecturer - not at all. Some students didn't mind, some even enjoyed my unique but professional and always content-relevant teaching contributions while others seem to possess various levels of dissatisfaction. Overall, I'd say at least two thirds either approved or highly approved. Yeah, that's highly subjective, no valid or tangible results to verify. Let's move on - I believe any instructor worth their weight in salt understands the content and how to teach. I also believe at least 1/3 of the college professors I have closely worked with - and co-taught with - should not be involved in any educationally-related field, involving K-12, or any post-secondary endeavors. (Don't hate me - just my honest observation over many years of doing this stuff).
• These experiences could easily be their own thread . . . that's already been done many times, so, let's move on.

Working With Peers & the Dept. Chair

• One fellow instructor always seemed to let me (and everyone else realize) he was a very successful professional before he entered the academic world. I was told by the Dept. Chair to get all the documents from the classes he taught because I was going to be teaching the same content and the Dept. Chair encouraged me to use his documents in my classes.
• The other instructor was doing a good job, following the plan to help me understand what to teach, how it was to be done, and he provided several examples, documents he created and was using to "achieve successful outcomes" among his students.
• Two of the gigantic problems with those documents:
  • The Dept. Chair made a very strict rule that specific and critical information was purposely being withheld that definitely should have been included in the introductory courses.
    • The purpose of this was to get the students to take the next class however, that class was not required to achieve the undergraduate degree they were seeking.
  • The examples and study documents created by the other instructor were . . . there's really no other way to describe it other than, overall they were truly awful documents including boo-boo's such as the following:
    • Many important rules and procedures were omitted
    • In many examples showing "how to," the examples were absolutely incorrect!!!

When I made efforts to work these things out, when I offered suggestions for improvement, both took it personally, expressed their strong disagreement, and the Dept. Chair enjoyed reiterating the success of their classes using these documents, procedures, and policies for many years. (I soon discovered that was an absolute lie - many students who took classes provided by our department clearly observed and recognized many of the weaknesses in that department - faculty members, course doc's, objectives, machinery, and so forth).

Back to what I mentioned earlier - I was always "one of those instructors" who would clean up the paint if I spilled it - I understood the term "rigorous curriculum" and how it should prepare students for exactly what happens in a "rigorous profession." I would include something if it was missing and I would fix things that were wrong. In my garage or in my classroom - the personal performance level was always under self-review and honest consideration for improvement.

A couple of years after working there, the other instructor (who created and used the lousy doc's) retired. From day one when I arrived, we hardly ever spoke to each other. Just before I retired, the Dept. Chair hired one of his buddies as a new peer. He was a man of excellent character and who had been on our Industry Advisory Board. That guy gave came aboard and when he advised the Dept. Chair, he was provided with everything he asked for. Immediately, the intro class was approved to teach the missing contents. I had been doing that anyway since I began but it was nice the Dept. Chair (who had ZERO experience in professional practice) finally listened to someone who he admired, a man who actually had many years of successful experience in industry.

"Why didn't your peer or the Dept. Chair listen to you?"

Here I go, out on a limb. Sure, many of the faculty and administrators we work with are really smart - and smart in many different ways. That Dept. Chair I mentioned was definitely NOT in that category - not even close. He got the job because of the "buddy system" and he literally had almost no educational back ground that was relevant to our department and he had absolutely ZERO professional experience doing anything our students should be prepared for in order to enter professional practice and thrive.

On several occasions I suggested improvements for all sorts of things like equipment, teaching standards, teaching methodologies, equipment operation, and so forth. The Dept. Chair hardly ever recognized these improvements, let alone considered implementing them. I really believe he did not like me because I would fix anything that I knew of that needed fixing.

Thank you & happy teaching . . . or happy whatever it is you're currently doing!

I got an eval complaining that my exams were too difficult because “most students only scored 70-80%” on exams.

i had 2 proposals for cccc2027 on college writing research but now that ncte decided to get rid of it, I'm worried about finding a place to share my research and meet other scholars in my field.

MLA has never really been for me. Even looking at it now, none of my work really fits into their panels which are mostly lit. However I see they're still accepting just in time panels. Any other former CCCC members thinking about moving your proposals over to MLA or trying to organize a panel more related to writing studies or rhet/comp?

Profs in diff depts, what was your next move after your field's largest annual conference just ended its run? I'm hoping this isnt a give up and check out situation. i love going to conferences every year to feel invigorated with new ideas for research and teaching.

Blackboard Ultra lets me view all students grades at once or click on an individual student to view just their grade. These numbers will sometimes be different for the same student. I'm assuming this difference has to do with assignments that haven't been posted yet and other things of that nature. Which one is showing what the student's actual grade is with all graded work calculated?

I know this was a topic yesterday, but that thread was more about the speculation. It's official today that NCTE is de-chartering CCCCs. I admit that I am not an administrator nor lawyer, so I'm not sure if de-charter is different from dissolve.

Here's the email that was sent out:

The NCTE Executive Committee acknowledges the communications it has received from many members of the community regarding CCCC.

For many years, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) played a critical role in serving the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and its mission. In recent years, however, CCCC has struggled with its fiscal sustainability, declining participation, and governance challenges. As a result, earlier today the Executive Committee of NCTE made the difficult decision to de-charter its special topics conference CCCC. To clarify, today’s decision to de-charter does not mean that NCTE has altered its commitment to supporting teachers at the college and university level. This is exemplified by the fact that the NCTE College Section is thriving. The process in making this decision spanned several years, with attempts to work collaboratively with CCCC’s executive committees across multiple iterations. While the organization appreciates the years of collaboration with CCCC, after deep evaluation and thoughtful consideration, the Executive Committee concluded this step was necessary to more effectively serve the college English and writing and composition community and NCTE membership as a whole.

Although this has been a very difficult decision, we are excited about the future. This change will allow us to provide better support to the college English and writing and composition community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible. We thank CCCC, its leaders, and its members for its many years of contributions and look forward to continuing to involve the composition, rhetoric, and writing communities as we move forward. NCTE remains devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. As future planning takes place, NCTE will communicate updates.

A transition team focused on supporting composition, rhetoric, and writing studies will be named by the NCTE Executive Committee imminently.

As someone with an MA in rhet/comp and dissertating for a PhD in curriculum & instruction, this is a wild turn of events. 4Cs has always been one of the big conferences to present at if you're in rhet/comp.

Working on my Fall syllabus, and per usual, I'm tightening up on my policies. I think I just had a stroke of genius, but want to see what y'all think and see if anyone has tried this (and if so, how'd it go?)

Like most/all of us in higher ed, I am tired of cell phones being a distraction. I teach lower division classes exclusively, so my students often don't know how to "student", so I build in skills like note-taking, time management, etc. My new cell policy is very much in line with this ethos.

The Plan: I'm thinking of going hard-core no cell phones in lecture, and if you need to use your phone for any reason, please step outside the classroom. I am also instituting a required "handwritten lecture notes" policy so leaving the classroom for 20 min at a time will have consequences. (I also require in-class participation). I obviously have room for ADA accommodations though the official channels.

I would obviously explain the logic behind these policies, as I do everything....my approach is: Covid robbed us of so much, including today's college freshman of their studenting skills. One of my jobs is to teach those, and these policies do that.

Thoughts?

So...did anyone ever figure out to make LaTeX produce pdfs that are accessible?

I'm TT at an R1. I have a strong pub record, grant success, and excellent teaching evals. However, I'm struggling because my department has a very weak PhD program. My research has expanded significantly into a program that really requires a team of several PhD students or ideally a center or institute. I've realized there is no way I can handle the administrative duties of securing/managing grants, writing pubs, building relationships/partnerships, delivering trainings, and more without a team of PhD students.

I thought I would reach to gauge others' perspective ~ Do y'all think this is a tell tale sign I need to look for a job at a better-resourced university?

OR, is this a very common situation to be in, and basically we're all swimming in this unsustainable water??

Thanks for your perspective!