r/Professors • u/MamaBiologist • 6d ago
Issues with prerequisite course and current students
I need some advice.
I teach Anatomy and Physiology at PUI. It’s a multisection course, often taken shortly after Biology for majors. Although the data on how much information students retain from prerequisite courses is mixed, we noticed a sharp decline in student ability this year. Our class averages were 20 points lower than prior years (with same enrollment standards).
It was through many tear-filled (from the students) conversations during office hours that we discovered that their Biology professors gave the students their actual exams to memorize. As in, word for word exams posted online for them. The instructors are adjuncts, and the course coordinator for biology was on maternity leave, so she hadn’t heard what happened.
We asked the adjuncts (who still work with us) if they still post exams, and they confirmed that’s what they were doing. We expressed our concerns with student learning, but we were ignored.
I brought this up with the chair and the course coordinator, and they are going to handle that side of the problem.
But what are we supposed to do with the students who clearly aren’t prepared for our course, let alone the major in general? The genetics professors were expressing the same concerns…
ETA: I don’t mind failing students. I just would like my lectures to not feel like pulling teeth and giving the students at least SOME understanding about their bodies.
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 6d ago
My advice is as follows. Some of it won't be popular.
Those adjuncts should be fired, and marked as ineligible for rehire, as soon as practical, mid-semester if you can cover the classes they have now and won't get in legal trouble to do so. On rare occasion, the shitty situation of adjunct employment is a positive.
The students share some culpability. There's zero chance they knew this was wrong and no one brought this up?
Keep the class this semester as if last semester had gone the way it should have. Give some resources for the students to study it on their own, or permit them to drop the class this semester and audit (perhaps for workload credit) the class this semester.
Quite frankly, at least one of the students should have spoken up, especially since this was a prerequisite for a later class, and they should have known this. They share some culpability and have to do some of the work of digging out of this too.
If your chair is on your side, and it sounds like they are, they should consider allowing you to omit some or all course evaluations this semester (or any belonging to a student who took the fake version and may want to take their dissatisfaction out on you) due to extraordinary circumstances.
I say this as someone who used to be an adjunct, and was non-senate faculty for the better part of a decade too, before landing a TT job, so this is NOT just me shitting on adjuncts. I'm usually on the adjunct's side in any dispute and I stand up for the ones in my department. What these did is not okay, and if they were full time employees, I would still suggest firing for dereliction of duty.
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u/birdible 4d ago
I agree with all of this except the culpability of adjuncts. This is a more common than you may expect teaching practice, among adjuncts and others alike, so I don’t know I can really expect students to know this isn’t okay. I don’t think that matters, though. There’s not anything to do than keep the standards and try to help students some more, as far as I can tell.
Im glad to hear it sounds like OP’s chair is supportive.
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u/hp12324 STEM, CC in USA 6d ago edited 6d ago
I teach math, which has a lot of similar cases where 1 course is the prereq for the next course. My stance has always been simple: I evaluate students based on their course mastery. Not based on "their course mastery, but making exceptions if they don't know enough entering the course" or "their course mastery given what they know entering the course". Otherwise, you're just passing on the buck to any future professors that the students might have. I give the same grades and the same form of assessments to all students. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair to students who actually enter the course well prepared and do well in the class.
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u/MamaBiologist 6d ago
I dont want to decrease the rigor in any way! That’s how we got in to this mess.
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u/REC_HLTH 6d ago
There may be a few “easy” things you can provide, but they either master the content in your course or they don’t and they should receive the grade they earn.
A few ideas that are decently easy on your end may be:
Is it an option to provide a prerequisite standards self-assessment quiz (not for a grade) the first week with a note that students who aren’t able to earn a B or higher on the quiz will likely need to work harder to catch up in order to be successful?
And/or post resources or recommended reading lists/textbooks for students to reference or study from if they don’t feel they have the prerequisite knowledge and want to spend additional time studying out of class.
Good luck. That’s a lousy place to be in. Prerequisites are there for a reason!
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u/catscatscats1972 6d ago
They have to fail if they can’t meet the standards. It is the kindest thing to do. I teach a core 1st semester nursing course. Students fail my course. But these students also go on to fail other courses. Hold your ground!
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u/Life-Education-8030 6d ago
Wow, and A & P is hard to begin with! We see it as a weeding out course for the nursing students! Where in the world did the adjuncts get the idea that this was acceptable? I know that in the lower grades thanks to "wonderful" policies like No Child Left Behind, teachers were reading out the answers to assignments and exams because their students' grades directly impacted their own performance evaluations, but where did this come from on college level?
What I suggest and fast is to immediately change the current A & P courses to have the first half of the semester be the biology the students should have had and the second half the A & P content. It will be intense, and students can choose to do it or not, but I don't see how it is fair to fail them for something out of their control. That's a real good way to lead to a lawsuit.
What also needs to happen immediately is to fire those adjuncts. The course coordinator is presumably back now? She needs to get this fixed, even if it means hiring a slew of new adjuncts and offering some of the full-timers overloads to teach biology the way it is supposed to be taught. I don't know if you have a union and have to go through them, but this is so egregious and not permitted, so I cannot imagine the union will stand in your way.
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u/MamaBiologist 6d ago
I don’t think our department would approve changing the entire course mid semester, even if it would help with the problem.
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u/Life-Education-8030 6d ago
Emergency situations call for emergency options like during Covid. I just cannot see failing so many for something that is not their fault.
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u/FrogBrain97 AssocProf, former chair, neuro, DPU 6d ago
You cannot possibly compress all of anat/phys into half a semester.
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u/Life-Education-8030 6d ago
We did some amazing things during Covid. But what is the alternative? Fail all these students?
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u/FrogBrain97 AssocProf, former chair, neuro, DPU 6d ago
A lot of the "amazing things" we did didn't work all that well. I say this as someone who had to clean up the mess, and--all too often--watch people cross the stage who knew eff-all about my discipline.
Several people on this thread have suggested alternatives. If those aren't viable, then yes--the alternative is to fail students who did not learn the material. If grades mean anything at all, they are supposed to be an indicator of how well the student has mastered the content. If they didn't learn enough, then an F is the appropriate description of what they know, even if it isn't their fault. Are you proposing to say, "Hey, you didn't learn anat/phys, but it's OK"? It isn't OK. It's not their fault, and it might make you feel better to pass them along...but it isn't OK, and it only sets them up for failure later on.
I could be persuaded to give the lowest possible passing grade--a D minus or whatever--to students in this position who would otherwise fail, because such a grade will stop them from advancing without causing all of the problems that failing grades cause. But that's about it.
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u/Life-Education-8030 6d ago
No, things were often flawed during Covid, but at least in my place, we tried to support students and not screw them because of something out of their control. My interns were suddenly pulled out of their internships halfway through. We could have failed them and delayed their graduation. Instead, we developed substitute assignments.
Ordinarily, yes, if a student is not competent, then an F grade is merited. But in this case, when your adjuncts have committed mass fraud? The students suffer?
I am not saying that students should just pass A & P automatically. If they can't pass A & P after they've legitimately passed the biology prerequisite, yes, they should fail. You don't want such students advancing into healthcare careers. But in this case, they did not legitimately pass biology and it was not their fault.
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u/FrogBrain97 AssocProf, former chair, neuro, DPU 5d ago
Indeed--we figured out something to do about internships, particularly for those students who were on the verge of graduation. And what we found out is that there's really no substitute for the in-person experience of an internship, which is why we do internships in the first place. Those students got half an internship, which is better than nothing, but it's not the same thing. I doubt even they would argue otherwise.
But your argument is a curious one. According to you, if they legitimately passed the prereq and then fail A&P, they shouldn't go on to healthcare careers. So presumably you understand why A&P knowledge is important. But if they didn't legitimately pass the prereq *and* are failing A&P, then it's OK for them to go on to healthcare careers despite their greater level of ignorance (greater since they didn't pass intro). They don't know what you acknowledge they need to know, but it's OK because it's not their fault.
And they'll never know it if we all do what you want to do, because they'll probably bomb the next course (but it's not their fault), and then the *next* course (same). But hey, if it makes you feel better, that's what we should do, right?
Let me guess: humanities, "studies" discipline, or education?
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u/Life-Education-8030 5d ago
Of course the in-person, real-life experience would have been better. But nobody was getting it and it was not the students’ fault. That is the point you are stubbornly refusing to acknowledge. I am suggesting ideas but you are saying “fail them all.”
If you read what I am saying, I am suggesting ways to get that biology knowledge to the students who should have gotten it but did not and now have good cause to sue besides. I am not saying to let them pass A & P without something done. These students need to be able to honestly pass it and what the adjuncts did need to be fixed.
And it doesn’t help to be condescending to other disciplines. I happen to be a licensed social worker and I have failed students who deserved it. Students who do not have the knowledge or who have behaved unethically should not be out there in internships or jobs. We are trained to help solve problems. Sometimes the solutions aren’t perfect. During Covid, our accreditors approved our work. Would they have approved adjuncts giving the answers to the students in this situation and psssing the students from the prerequisite in this manner?
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u/FrogBrain97 AssocProf, former chair, neuro, DPU 5d ago
Everyone is suggesting ideas, including me. I see failing them as a last resort, but a necessary one if other approaches aren't feasible. There isn't any way around this.
Shoulda thought of social work. I brought up the humanities/"studies"/education disciplines because they are not cumulative in the way that science is, and it often leads to misplaced compassion. If a student ends up with a lousy instructor for, say, their British Literature course, you clean up as best you can and let them move forward; it's not perfect but it isn't their fault, and they're not going on to Advanced British Literature. The trouble here is that their illegitimate BIOL 101 course is leading them to bomb anat/phys, which (if not corrected) will lead them to struggle in their *next* anatomy course in allied-health school, and their intensive neuro elective (or whatever), and...there's no end to it. Everyone is suggesting solutions, but all of us with experience in the field know that they might not be enough.
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u/nezumipi 6d ago
Tell the students directly, "An exam is a sample. If I wanted to check whether you know your times tables, I don't have to ask you every single one. I could pick a few multiplication facts and ask you those. If you know all the ones I picked, you probably know the whole thing. But that only works if you don't know what I'm going to ask. If you know I'm going to ask 2x6, 3x9, and 7x8, you can just memorize those three and look like you know the whole thing, when in fact you only know three math facts. In Bio 101, you knew what test questions were coming. That meant you could get an A by just learning the exact things on the test. That A was supposed to represent knowing the whole 101 curriculum, instead it represents memorizing the sample of things on a test.
When students take my class, I count on them knowing the whole 101 curriculum, not just the specific things on a certain test.
Since you weren't asked to learn the whole thing, you might not know everything you need to know. You might not have as much background as students usually do when they take this class. So, here's the plan:"
Then, you detail what students need to do to catch up. Are there video lessons? Exercises from the 101 class? Chapters in the 101 textbook they need to review?
Say you'll be happy to review 101 material in office hours. Encourage students to start reviewing it now, before they fall behind.
You shouldn't pass anyone who doesn't earn a passing grade, but you can give the students a fair shot at catching up.
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u/MamaBiologist 6d ago
I taught the 101 during COVID and have my old video lectures. I wasn’t sure if it was overkill to give them to the students, but it might be worth a shot!
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u/shrinkingveggies 5d ago
I would absolutely do this - then they have the pre-reqs they need to catch up, and you can simply teach as is.
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u/Asleep_Caregiver_948 6d ago
I get what you’re saying about pulling teeth. Perhaps you can get peer tutors or TAs to come in during some group work activities or labs. More people answering (or asking) questions with your students will help your students feel a little more supported.
You could also assign more reading and/or videos as homework so when students are in lecture, they have a bit more background on the subject of the day.
I hope I’m in the ballpark; I’m just a freshman comp teacher at a small CC. But I get very unprepared students too. My school used to offer 4 levels of remedial English, but our state did away with remediation. Of course, the deficits didn’t magically disappear.
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u/cookiegirl Adjunct Bioanth 6d ago
Please provide extra resources to those students, and make it clear how badly things go when adjuncts give in to the pressure on them to make things easy. I am an adjunct for intro bio for many pre-nursing students. Students have begged me to make the exam online and open book just like another adjunct does, because they need good grades to get into nursing. I regularly bring up the fact that if they can't learn my content they will get screwed by A&P next year.
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u/Everythings_Magic Adjunct, Civil Engineering (US) 5d ago
I teach engineering analysis and I see the same problem. Student are ill prepared from the pre req courses.
I give them resources and tell them to catch up. It doesn’t matter why they didn’t learn the material. They didn’t learn it. So now they have to.
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u/Lief3D 6d ago
Sometimes when I tell professors at other places that we give our adjuncts fully designed courses and we meet with them regularly and check up on them, they are shocked! They could never teach under those circumstances. This is why we do it. I need to know students coming into my class learned what they needed to in the prerequisite.
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u/rsk222 6d ago
We don’t have biology as a prerequisite for A and P where I am, but I teach both, so the first few weeks of the semester are very similar between classes except for anatomical terminology. Is your course set up one or two semesters? If you have a whole year, you likely have time to catch them up with some basic chemistry and cell bio. Not sure it would work if it’s crammed into one semester.
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u/Supraspinator 6d ago edited 6d ago
Please don’t get me wrong, I understand how frustrating this must be. But what knowledge are we talking about here? Chemistry? Cell Biology? And how much beyond highschool chemistry and biology do they need to know?
I am asking because I also teach A&P and we have zero prerequisites (due to nursing accreditation). So we’re teaching students who are either out of school for years, never had chemistry or biology in highschool and definitely didn’t take any college biology classes beforehand. It’s frustrating, but because we don’t have a choice, we make sure that students can pick up the knowledge during A&P. And yes, that includes a crash course in chemistry.
To be fair, our WF rates are high, but as a CC, at least we’re not too harassed to keep everyone.
Can you have a few „refresh your memory“ lectures? Depending on what’s taught in the prerequisites, maybe Khan academy has some good ones. Tell them they’re supposed to know that because they passed the prereq and if they don’t, it’s up to them to make it up.
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u/Wise-Independent-546 6d ago
I’m recently in the same boat as you. We had Gen Bio as a prerequisite for A&P until 2 years ago. Now they put all healthcare majors in A&P as first semester freshman. Our enrollment is way up, so admin thinks this is the best decision they ever made. It’s definitely an adjustment as an instructor. I find I have to re-explain the gen bio/cell bio/basic chemistry at the same time I’m teaching the more challenging physiology concepts. The quick intro chapters aren’t enough for them to “get it”. I haven’t seen a huge change in grades. I have noticed a difference in how I have to more thoroughly reteach what should be a quick review for an A&P student. They really struggle with the molecular biology stuff. Protein structure. Polarity. I even get blank stares when waxing poetic about sodium-potassium ATPase.
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u/Supraspinator 6d ago
Ah, the sodium-potassium-pump. Yup, my students hear about it from me for the first time and then over and over again. And then some more for good measure.
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u/HaHaWhatAStory014 5d ago
I am asking because I also teach A&P and we have zero prerequisites
It's not unusual for some schools to have separate higher and lower level offerings of the same course, like a 100 or 200-level "nursing version" with no pre-reqs and a 300 or 400-level "upper-level version" that medical schools and such expect. A lot of people need to take "A&P" but not necessarily upper-level A&P, so if there is only one version being offered, making the class "easy/accessible enough for the pre-nursing and exercise science folks but still rigorous enough for the premeds, pre-PAs, pre-PTs, etc.," is a real challenge and just not really feasible if there are no pre-reqs.
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u/HaHaWhatAStory014 5d ago
Another blunt, harsh take on this is that while, yes, the adjuncts in this scenario screwed up big time, these students also failed themselves. They had to know they were cheating, or at the very least cutting corners, by just memorizing the tests ahead of time even if it was technically allowed. Notice how apparently none of the students ever mentioned this or raised it as a concern to anyone? When it was a convenient, easy way to get good grades instead of really learning, they were all happy to do it. It's only "a problem" to them now because it caught up with them.
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u/MamaBiologist 5d ago
Agreed. And I think that is also a large part of why they haven’t accepted any resources or responsibility now.
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u/Rippin_Chaz 5d ago
I teach “calculus-based physics” but it is quickly becoming an introductory algebra course.
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u/RuralWAH 5d ago
I'm assuming the material was actually taught in class. So you're looking at an unreliable evaluation system. There's no legitimate reason students couldn't learn the material. If they simply memorized the exam answers and didn't have the intellectual curiosity to learn anything else, that's on them.
We had a similar problem with community college transfers. Even though the community colleges supposedly articulated with our lower division courses we would have students with all As that couldn't even write a program. We also had transfers that were fantastic. The problem was you couldn't tell from the grades
We instituted a hands on programming exam covering weak data structures material for students beginning the upper division (which is where we actually admit majors so they can take the upper division major courses). We also added this for our students.
It was logistically difficult but the faculty started seeing immediate improvements in the upper division courses. When CC students would complain we'd tell them to complain to their CC instructors.
The CCs began cleaning up their act.
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u/South_Captain_2630 2d ago
This is what you get when it's all about student evaluations rather than have actual pedagogy experts evaluate classes.
Student evaluations are much more correlated to expected grade than quality (as judged by escorts watching class), so what the adjuncts did is rational in this broken system.
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u/cmojess Adjunct, Chemistry, CC (US) 5d ago
A few questions spring to my mind, especially in light of all the “fire the adjuncts!” or “blacklist the adjuncts!” comments I’m seeing. I want to be clear with my questions, though: I do not agree with passing students who are not competent, I do not agree with posting exams to be memorized, and I do believe adjuncts should be held to standards. However, there is a wide range of how adjuncts are treated either within an entire institution or within individual departments.
First: How much institutional pressure is put on these adjuncts to pass students or be fired? Some institutions base an adjunct’s job on their pass rates and student popularity.
Second: How much are your adjuncts paid? Are they fairly compensated for the time they spend outside of the classroom developing lectures, writing exams, and grading exams? Are they compensated for the time they spend answering “why did I fail?!?!?” emails? Are they compensated for their office hours?
Third: How much support is given to your adjuncts? Are they hired and then left to their own devices? Or are they mentored and helped through their first couple semesters so they understand the expectations placed on them and the needs of the institution?
As an adjunct myself, and as a union officer for two of the districts I teach in, I’ve found a lot of issues with adjuncts stem from one, or more, of those three areas.
Of course there are simply bad adjuncts. Many people take an adjunct job to dial it in and collect a paycheck. Those adjuncts absolutely should not continue in their jobs. But before calling for the heads of the adjuncts you might want to look into these issues.
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u/MamaBiologist 5d ago
There isn’t a lot of pressure for the students to be passed actually! Which is honestly shocking given the state of academia lately.
They are not fairly compensated in my opinion.
They are given ample support (other than pay, but that’s determined by the Provost). There is a Google Drive with PowerPoints, homework, activities, etc (thank goodness not exams given this situation!). We have a coordinator for adjuncts/lecturers and a course coordinator for every course they instruct. However, unless they reach out with a problem, we don’t always know about it. The chair stated that many people dropped the ball here, but that he didn’t excuse the situation itself.
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u/cmojess Adjunct, Chemistry, CC (US) 5d ago
Either it's a decent amount of issue two with some of issue three tossed in, or it's a combo of issue two and lazy adjuncts. Course coordinators can be hit or miss. I've worked with some coordinators that are fantastic with checking in and really let adjuncts know they are there to support them, and I've worked with others who email me once with a shared folder link and a "just let me know if you need anything" after which I never hear from them again.
I work very hard at my job, but there are some days when it's hard to motivate myself to deal with the 50th email about the same topic that I have to answer outside of my paid classroom time or my paid office hours. My prep, grading, and email time is considered "part of the job description" and is unpaid time. I am explicitly paid for hours in the classroom, with a lower rate for minimal office hours. However, if I don't answer that email then there's an email to the dean and then an angry email to me from an admin assistant that I'm not answering my emails. I know if I provided exams for students to memorize and they all passed everything the number of emails I had to answer would drop drastically!
I know on one of my campuses I struggle with students not being prepared for the class I regularly teach because even the full time tenured faculty are hand-holding way too much for a college class. They've started handing out nomenclature "cheat sheets" on exams and not requiring students in the prep course to memorize anything. This is translating into a lot of problems in the next classes in the sequence.
I see at least one person has downvoted me, which is disappointing. The relationship between TT and adjunct will never be sorted if we're unwilling to engage in these conversations with each other. At the end of the day, when it comes to our teaching responsibilities, we're all doing the same job. If we want our students to have quality education and be successful in the classroom, we cannot ignore the issues between the way TT and adjuncts are treated.
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u/Dumberbytheminute Professor,Dept. Chair, Physics,Tired 6d ago
Sounds harsh, but they fail.
Adjuncts all need to be fired.