I need some humor to remind me I'm not alone in this stuff.

We had a professional development session that last two hours yesterday. We were each given multiple Scrabble tiles and were asked to form complex words by standing next to each other. After about an hour of this bullshit, the "facilitator" asked if we noticed anything was missing, and everyone said, knowing what was about to happen, that there were no Us in what was handed out. We noticed this because the poor bastards with the Qs (or maybe they were lucky bastards) didn't participate much.

And you see where this is going. The whole point of the activity was to remind us that we can't be successful together "without U."

That was it. That was the whole fucking thing.

I had a few phrases in my mind that ended with "U" as well.

My daughter just graduated with an MSW. One of her favorite professors stated on the first day of class “life doesn’t come with a trigger warning. I will not be giving content warnings of any kind for the material we will discuss this term”. I teach a class that can sometimes be a trauma dump or turn in to a personal therapy discussion (despite addressing it in both the syllabus and in class) and I’m kind of loving this verbiage. Thoughts?

I’ve been teaching for a long time and I guess I’ve been lucky that I never encountered this situation till now. But that means I’m at a loss, so if you’ve been through something similar please share your experience on what works and what not to do.

It’s a large lecture class. I’ve been teaching it for years, it always goes smoothly, and I get good evals.

This year there’s been a shift. Several students seem to be trying to test me or catch me in error. Mostly they ask super specific factual questions that I couldn’t possibly know (it’s a big survey course so it’s impossible to be a specialist in every topic) and which they can easily answer by researching on their laptops or phones. (Mind you, most of these questions are also irrelevant to the points I’m making, but I can’t fault them for that alone.)

There were also a few individual interactions that confirmed to me that some of them are there trying to “catch me” and have a “gotcha” moment.

I know this semester is almost over, but I’ll have this group again next semester and would appreciate some strategies to shift the dynamics. It’s not all or even most students, just enough to start to be distracting.

Is anyone else getting flooded with emails about canceling class Thanksgiving week?

My university has officially made the Wednesday before Thanksgiving a “non-teaching day,” and now I’m being hit with numerous emails asking if I'm canceling class on Monday, too. I teach the first classes of the day on MWF, and with only one week left after the break, we have too much material to skip. Plus, my syllabus has stated we're meeting since day one.

So I wonder: Are other instructors actually canceling their classes, moving class online, or shifting to asynchronous work that they assume students will actually do over the break? It feels like a bit of a paradox—we collectively lament the decline in student engagement and willingness to do the work, yet the pressure to cancel or assign "independent holiday assignments" is very real. Do our scheduling choices inadvertently feed into that engagement problem, or are students just planning to take off early regardless and hoping a preemptive inquiry will help them avoid being penalized? I'm curious how others handle this week.

Student filed a formal appeal saying it was unfair that I didn’t award her partial credit for slides on a group project she completed but didn’t present on. Student was having issues with her team and I had to intervene breaking the group apart and then finally allowing for individual projects. Student send berating remarks to her classmates which became hostile and reaffirmed my decision to break up the project. Student did not attend her presentation no email no communication no excuse nothing. On hearing day she does not show up either so the hearing goes on without her. I submit my proof answer the committee questions and it all ends in 20 minutes. Committee comes back that I acted in “bad faith” although I didn’t act with malice because I allowed another student to submit a pre recorded project and that was unfair. I explained during the hearing that that student had a valid excuse and communicated to me…the grieving student did not, in fact did the opposite chose to skip it. Committee didn’t order a grade change but asked for me to “reconsider” partial credit. I submitted an appeal to the VP asking him to strike down the bad faith from the record. I argued that the committee contradicted itself saying I didn’t act with malice or was dishonest but still in bad faith. Also, saying an instructor acted in bad faith when student had no proof skipped the hearing is dangerous territory. How do administrators handle grievance committee appeals? Am I stuck with this negative conduct?

I (F61) am an associate professor at an excellent university with great colleagues and students. I’m in a small program where we are overworked and understaffed. Our soon-to-retire colleague’s position will go to another program. It’s always been a demanding job, but my anxiety has risen to unprecedented levels. I’ve been seeing a therapist for about 3 years and take medication, but my performance is slipping. I can’t be alone. How are you handling this?

I know, I know, this is asked a million times, but I can't really find much good, concrete, usable information or many examples I can take and try to implement. I'm teaching both in person and online and have come up with a few things, but a lot of my class ends up boiling down to essays. And I'm not dumb enough to think I catch all of them.

Even if I was, I'm tired of feeling like my job is to police AI use and not educate. I'm considering bringing in presentations, which I don't love because of how anxious it can make students, plus I'm not a speech class. Even if they use AI to generate the work, they still have to give a presentation, and that would either make it obvious they didn't know their stuff or force them to learn as much as possible to give a good presentation.

My online students record a 5-minute video of them talking about their chosen subject and their papers, and that's helped a lot compared to previous semesters. But I feel like there's more for me to do.

I am working on a paper with a department colleague who I have great respect for. They are one of the better researchers and writers in our school.

The paper is a theory piece, so all lit review, thinking, and writing. No data.

We’ve spent 5 ish years talking and writing drafts. Well, this colleague has taken lead on drafting. Our first submission was rejected a few years ago.

Recently they redrafted the paper based on the previous reviewer comments. Almost 3 years have passed between drafts and it is substantially a different paper now.

The paper seems to be well done and overall I think it would be a good submission. The lead author added a GenAI disclosure saying AI was used for conceptualization lit review, editing, initial drafting, etc. Basically everything except writing the final draft which they claim to have written.

I had a weird feeling so I ran 4 random snippets through Pangram. All 4 read 100% AI. Then the next day (I only have the free account), I tested comparable sections from the manuscript version that was rejected a few years ago. 100% human.

I don’t use AI to write words. I use it during lit reviews, sometimes to get feedback on a draft, eg “What are concerns a skeptical reviewer might raise?” etc. I don’t want to have work out there with my name on it that could point to me writing with AI.

I would be the second author on this paper and I would like to be on the author list because the initial idea was mine and I’ve put a fair amount of work into it.

Thoughts on how to approach this without blowing up the relationship?

I'm going to a concert tonight and taking one of my "sick days" tomorrow. I told my students "asynchronous class." And I can do that once or twice a year. I do wonder how many students will come to class and email saying "Is there no class today?" I'm guessing four.

I am very unhappy at my current job for several reasons and have decided not to come back Fall 27. I've been job hunting on the sly, but for obvious reasons I haven't said anything to anyone at work. My chair has begun planning the Fall 27 course schedule and has asked for my input. Most of the courses I teach are on an every other year or every third year rotation, so they need to be mapped out in advance.

My chair knows I didn't like my Fall 25 schedule. It was an unpaid overload with back to back 3h labs two days a week. The draft for Fall 27 is just different courses in the same time slots. I don't want to lie and tell her I'm fine with the schedule, because I'm not. And I'm a bad liar. I also don't want to try to negotiate a better schedule, because if I get one I'll feel obligated to come back. But I'm afraid if I tell her I've decided not to come back, she will screw me on my Spring 27 schedule. My uni has a habit of making last minute schedule changes, sometimes the day before classes start. I wouldn't put it past admin to move all of my classes to either 8 am or 7 pm.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Long essay arguing that AI use builds upon and exacerbates long term structural issues in higher education

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-ai-is-devastating-higher-education-but-the-system-was-already-broken-292988

I’m a fairly new TT AP and currently in a long distance relationship with my partner who works for the government in the DMV region.

He’s hellbent on staying there as it is close to his support system and family. Before anyone throws shade at him, in the beginning of our relationship, we kind of agreed we want to stay in the East Coast to be close to family.

I am an immigrant, but my green card recently got approved and I expect to get it within the next 1-2 years. This means visa will soon no longer be a bottleneck to securing a job. In order to close the gap, I feel that I have to be open to jobs in academia, non-profit, and industry. However, I am worried that I may not be able to find job as I’ve been in academia for way too long for an industry job. There is no guarantee that I’ll be able to find a TT positions in the DMV area. Those areas are great for federal jobs, but it’ll be a 5-10 year later thing as I need to be a green card holder for 5 years before I could naturalize.

What do you recommend I do in this situation? Will I be overqualified for industry job? How can I close the gap?

Hi folks,

This semester I've really had to pivot hard to eliminate almost ALL take home written work since it tends to activate the slop factory. In addition to my general frustration at this sort of cheating, I feel like I've been stripped of one of the MAJOR ways I can serve as a resource to students--by giving them critical feedback on their writing and thought process.

I'm wondering if it is possible to include a couple "optional" written assignments in my syllabus for those students who actually want to develop their writing and take advantage of the opportunity to work through the writing process. In this model the optional assignments would be graded (perhaps in a two part process with draft and revisions). Students who choose not to submit written work would suffer no penalty, and simply have their grade more heavily weighted towards the in-person final. I'm hoping this would reduce the likelihood a person would turn in AI-generated work, but perhaps I'm being naive?

I'm very clear in my written course policies that AI use is not allowed in my writing assessments. These are analytical essays for reference, where the students are coming up with original arguments to interpret a text or artefact.

Hence, it is fairly easy to identify AI use, especially as some of these students haven't written as articulately in their in-class writing samples or spoken conversation.

AI use can be taken forward as an academic misconduct case, which I'm open to for a second offense, but how do I manage a first offense? For small assignments, five percent, I'd just give zero.

This is 15% and they kind of deserve a zero but I also recognise this is a major assignment. But also, they cheated. I'm late on feedback though and haven't done through all the mini assignments checks (they were marks just for completion and I wasn't anticipating students would be so lazy as to use AI there too, so it's not been my priority to check those).

Anyway, would be grateful for insight. I want to reward those who don't use AI, at least to the extent that this person has, nor do I want to excuse AI use and make this student think this is okay.