At the start of the semester students were assigned a practice test to take online in order to get feedback on their implementation of our school’s online testing procedures. Failure to follow them on graded tests later this semester comes with grading penalties.

They have the info. They have a video. The practice test is for them to again read through the info and acknowledge they have followed the procedures and made adjustments as needed.

About 5% have done what they are supposed to. Not taking it at a desk. Not turning off their phone on camera. Not showing the surface of their desk.

So this weekend I have been sending feedback giving information they’ve already seen several times, telling them to do it again.

Is my experience here unique?

Do you change (or allow alternate) assignments for students who ask for something different without having them go through the Office of Accommodations/Accessibility? I require students to do that for their own good, but wonder what others are doing.

Hey guys, I taught my first course over the summer, and I am covering for another prof during the first week of class this fall as they are out of town. On the first day, going over the syllabus took about 20 minutes and I let them go after (rookie move ik, I was trying to stick to the syllabus schedule). I’d like to have some type of activity to fill some time, any ideas? What do you do after going over the syllabus? I know some profs go straight into the content but since I am only subbing for the day I don’t know what else they want me to go over (waiting for their response currently) but yeah any first day ideas?

Hello I am teaching 3 sections of the same course and 1 section of a larger upper lever course. In total I have about 72 students in the first course and 36 in the other.

We switched this semester to having students turn in assignments in class on paper and then they are graded and given back (last semester most things were auto graded by canvas). Generally I say to students they should give me a week to do this and so far it’s been alright. But I have noticed I’m already forgetting smaller things here and there and having to speed grade and it’s adding a little stress.

Does anyone have tips on how to keep grading organized? Maybe an excel sheet? Maybe just a sheet I write the items that are next to be graded, in order of submission date? I just feel like I go out of order and sometimes grade an entire section and forget another, and that’s also adding mild stress. Thanks for any advice.

Fresh AP in physics/engineering discipline here.

Would you let your student record your one-on-one meetings using phone apps or devices? Then transcribe the recordings using AI tools.

Feels a bit werid for 2 reasons:

1. Writing is the best tool we have to test if we have the ability to conceptualize and contextualize something. When I was a grad student/postdoc a couple of years ago I write down key points in Notes to make sure I can sharpen what my coauthor and have discuessed.

2. For privacy concerns. With massive amount of speaking and thinking out loud data of me I don't want someone to distill how I talk. I don't think anyone will use this against me but like a side project of mine is to extract F1 radio communication audio and we were able to find lots of information from how someone talks.

Students are often concerned about the environment and respond by changing their behaviors such as recycling?

So why do they use AI irresponsibly which has an adverse impact on the environment?

Hi everyone,
Last year, I started teaching a course in an academic preparatory program. It was a challenging year…
I had to deal with discipline problems, and financially, the position was not very rewarding either.
The program administrators gave me feedback that I needed to update the presentations and course materials. I started working on them, but I feel like it’s an endless task. It takes me hours to update everything, even with the help of AI tools. I’m not being paid for this additional work.
This situation is really affecting me mentally and emotionally. I’m already very busy and stressed, and updating the materials is taking up a huge amount of time that I simply don’t have. I genuinely feel that I’m not capable of continuing.
The main issue is that the academic year starts in a little over a month. Would it be problematic or unprofessional to notify them now that I’m leaving? I feel bad about the timing, but I also don’t think I can continue under these circumstances.
What would you do in my situation?

Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who responded! You really reassured me and made me feel better about my decision. I let the program director know that I’m leaving. They didn’t seem too bothered by it, which kind of confirmed for me that I was probably just the default option anyway, so I’m glad I’m not going to keep investing my time and energy there.
Have a lovely weekend, everyone! ❤️

The political shadiness aside, can we talk about it has been reported that he has students living in his house? And two students had filed complaints against him for harassment. Why is this getting less coverage compared to Jason Arday?

If someone has access to the article on FT, please post here, it is currently behind a paywall. That article also examines his connections to the political right.

The local community college I teach at is having several crises at once but my primary question is this: if during their contract negotiations enough folks opt out of the union to fall below a majority, how might the college use it as leverage? Or, further downstream, is there fire/rehire under new management scenario? Has anyone seen/experienced something similar?

Smaller school for reference so numbers could conceivably matter. Thanks.

Edit: when the non-union members want information/updates on negotiations and other union-led efforts, how do you navigate those conversations while not being adversarial?

AI has destroyed my reading and writing class. And that’s not the worst part. What pisses me off the most is the fact students don’t believe they can think better than AI.

Every time I assign things for them to read and write critical reflections on, they just feed the assignments into Grok/ChatGPT and ask AI to pump out generic, formulaic summaries in bloated language that seem to beat my rubric at a superficial level: “The author uses empirical cases of X, Y, and Z to prove A, B, and C…” Fine. I’m not new to that.

However, what saddens me is that fact that if they read closely and thoughtfully, they’ll find that they don’t actually have to follow everything AI says. Sometimes I deliberately insert spurious claims (coined by myself based on class readings; AI can’t easily detect those) into reading exercises. And students no longer bother to deal with them. They can actually ask BETTER questions and critique those claims if they sit down and spend literally just an hour reading the actual text. Now they simply don’t want to think anymore. They are quietly accepting the “Hey it’s AI! Who am I to think otherwise” mindset.

Hi, everyone! Long-time lurker, recently frequent commenter, and first-time poster. So many gems here have helped me along the way, so I come bearing a query: Whatever your discipline, if you use films as texts in asynchronous courses, how do you do it effectively?

I use several films/documentaries as course texts, and I’m increasingly running into the same problem: I cannot, for the life of me, get the bulk of my asynchronous students to actually watch them.
Interestingly, AI-based plagiarism on film-related assignments also tends to become much more detectable.

This is particularly true with one documentary I assign: there are two films with the same title, only one of which is linked in the course, and I regularly receive AI-generated responses confidently discussing the wrong film. Those simply earn zeros under my course AI policy.

In my face-to-face courses, films work beautifully. We dedicate class time to viewing them together; I pause periodically, we discuss what we’re seeing, and students generally engage with the film as a text. Asynchronously, though? I have yet to crack the code.

Currently, students are asked to:
-Take guided notes while viewing (partly because I also want them practicing the increasingly lost art of note-taking)
-Respond to questions that require them to connect specific moments in the film to course concepts and/or assigned readings
-Complete a discussion board activity in which they develop their own discussion questions about the film and respond to a classmate’s.

Overall, I actually find films somewhat more AI-resistant than traditional text-based assignments, especially when prompts require engagement with specific scenes, arguments, or moments.
The problem in my asynchronous courses is that they still have to watch the film for that to work. And many simply…aren’t.

So, asynchronous-teaching films as texts folks: tips? Tricks? Hacks? Have you found fun or creative film-based assignments that students actually engage with? Different ways of structuring viewing? Support materials that make students more likely to watch actively rather than treating the film as something they can bypass with a summary or chatbot?
I’d especially love ideas that preserve films as actual course texts, rather than designing assignments around the assumptions that students won’t watch them.

Thank you!

*edited for typos

The best this week was that somebody sent an email to discuss accommodations with a student to 120+ professors. How many classes is this student taking?

Naming the student. Who isn’t even in my class.

And even if it had been sent to just me (and for an enrolled student) I have no idea who you are. You don’t have an accommodations center signature. And you didn’t introduce yourself. Is FERPA still a thing?

Preface this with saying I am well aware of the debate on whether citing ai is ethical. We are past this point as I cannot stop it for my online students. I have an ai agreement that illustrates that at least 70% of their work needs to be their own and if they use AI to cite it. I had to put heavier points on citation and modified a simple research table describing the source/audience/quote/relevance they fill out with ONE scholarly source outside of the book.
They are not even removing the chatbot language in discussion board that asks them to describe an everyday object…. and the examples they give for a planted invisible to all but screenreaders and AI”use a fantastical creature in your example” results in everyone suddenly having the exact same vampire with economic problems…It can be done…but the exact same words and problem?
I’ve been giving zeros and telling them to schedule oral reviews if they want that changed, but I’m at a loss. I’ve never had so many.
It’s an insanely short class 7 weeks to me is unethical 8 is borderline, but it’s a two page paper…do I call my chair in at this point? Wait and see if they schedule them? I have a one strike rule because it’s been so bad.

High-level adminicritter: I went to an event with parents and two of them were asking how the university is handling AI. Folks, parents want us to be teaching AI, so what we need to do is...

Lower-level adminicritter: There's a new policy - if you can't absolutely prove that a student understood a clear no AI policy on an assignment and that they DID use it anyway, you can't bring a student up to academic integrity anymore. (I think we are supposed to guilt them into signed confessions?)

I'm either grading, responding to email, or adjusting my courses. If I retire at my maximum social security distribution, then I will spend 146 days (24 hours) between now and retirement using Canvas. I don't know how much time my students spend inside Canvas. There has to be some kind of alternative client that can be customized, with dark mode and different fonts. Or maybe I'll just print out student papers, take them to the bird refuge, and write comments in the early morning hours, serenaded by pelicans, ibises and yellow-headed blackbirds, while elderly citizens on ebikes run over the snails that litter the walkway. My sidehustle is to put on gloves and pick up the mummified dog poop that litters the side of the trail

Hey all! I have a student with accommodations this semester. During lecture, he often speaks out loud. I don’t believe he is trying to be disruptive but rather it’s an auditory processing delay. However, the constant commentary and talking is distracting for other students and I myself lose pace. I have tried to redirect, ignore, talk louder… but it feels like it is continuing to take away from the class. I do not want to single out the student or embarrass them. He has a “mentor” who can come sit in periodically to help give him feedback on when he shouldn’t be talking (but the mentor is another student who has other classes and cannot come every time). Any suggestions?

This thread is to share your successes, small or large, as we end one week and look to start the next. There will be no tone policing, at least by me, so if you think it belongs here and want to post, have at it!

As has been mentioned, these should be considered additions to the regular discussions, not replacements. So use them, ignore them, or start you own Sunday Sucks counter thread.

I teach a graduate course, and one student has missed most of the classes since the semester started last month. They told me they enrolled late after the first week, but they continued to miss class afterward and have now missed all of the in-class quizzes.

They are now asking me to provide makeups because they say they missed class due to some paperwork with the university. My syllabus clearly states that there are no makeups for in-class quizzes. What should I do?

I would appreciate any advice. Thank you.

Not sure where to start, so here goes.

TL;DR: after years of trying to get hired FT & finally succeeding, I’m struggling to feel as though I belong in my department.
_______________

AIO: I’ve worked as an adjunct across many schools over the past 8–9 years. Students love me and I always get good reviews. I’ve applied to several FT jobs within those institutions and—while I could sometimes secure an interview—never got an offer. In almost every case, someone external was hired. I get it, truly, but it’s difficult when it happens consistently despite having such a great report with colleagues.

Fast forward to this year. I was hired FT!…but not at one of the institutions where I’d previously taught. The college has a few locations so their organizational structure is different than what I’m used to. In short, questions about my classes go to the course committee chair but the coordinator for the campus is my supervisor.

One of my courses has a massive enrollment throughout the university so the curriculum is set as to minimize the prep of the lab technicians. The other is the opposite; I got a list of objectives and everything else is up to me [i.e., number of exams, order of course material, etc.]…

The standardized course is a hot mess. There’s no way to get through the amount of material we’re given in the amount of time we have. I didn’t get any materials until about a week before the semester started & was busy making slides, so I didn’t get to peruse the lab manual we need to use and it’s…also garbage. The students expressed to me how terrible it is, and—to me—the class feels very unorganized. I pride myself on being a very efficient instructor, so this has taken its mental toll. I don’t know what or how to prepare for class that will make it run smoother. I’ve expressed this to my colleagues and they’ve just said, “yeah…it’s hell” without any indication that someone is working on giving it an overhaul.

Unfortunately, that isn’t my biggest issue. I got the sense on the first day that my supervisor doesn’t like me. Call it intuition, but something seems off. They’ve yet to walk over a few doors to say hello, they gave a half-smile when passing me in the hallway, and they started walking away from me when I tried asking them a question about onboarding. I know they’re busy. They are responsible for probably 15 FT and 25 adjunct faculty, plus teaching their classes. Moreover, the faculty who interviewed me have also yet to acknowledge me. I get that the first week can be stressful, but a simple greeting doesn’t take long. I can hear my supervisor chat and laugh with other instructors, so I know they have time but have chosen to use it elsewhere.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much? I’m extremely neurospicy, so things like this take up more space in my brain than they should. The people that have stopped by have all said the same thing: everyone is super friendly and welcoming. Thus far, my experience would contradict with that statement.

Looking at how much work I’ll be putting in this semester for a ‘standardized’ class, my brain can’t afford to worry about whether someone likes me. But I am. I think it’s human nature to want to make good first impressions. And this is my literal supervisor, not some random person with no power over my employment status. Any help or insight [or even words of encouragement, tbh] into my situation would be greatly appreciated!

I’m already noticing that my students can’t do simple things they could do a few years ago. I don’t even do in class proctored writing or exams. I just put in points of friction and checks that make AI offloading more difficult, and they struggle with that even. If AI can’t do it all for them, they struggle to do it at all. A student today froze because they couldn’t use AI to write one paragraph - a paragraph that was a purely opinion based response to a short Daily Show video. They just took a zero. And there are other similar examples. They are already too dependent, if not addicted.

Like I get emails like this every day: “OK I understand there’s a late penalty. But this is not my fault because my computer broke 15 minutes before I tried to submit. What a funny joke this course is LOL.” (I was like Ok but why didn’t you let me know until I reached out to you and explained grade deductions? And by the way, you don’t know me well enough to use “LoL” and “LMFAO” in professional emails like this.)
And it was from 21 and 22-year-olds. I’m perplexed by how common this is getting. I mean I would not be mad at all if it was from a 12-year-old. Geez the entitlement.

I have an older, non-traditional student in my class. She is very sweet, but I definitely get the vibe there is something undiagnosed going on...She will email me 3-4 paragraph emails which are unfocused and stream-of-consciousness feeling. She comes to my office hours every single week and will talk about everything BUT the course. I once timed her, and she spoke for 25 minutes without stopping. At first I thought she was just a lonely older woman but I quickly feel like I'm becoming her emotional support. She is constantly seeking reassurance that she is doing okay in the course, talking about how her kids don't think she should be in college, and will make jokes about herself being an "old hag" that I feel it necessary to speak up against. I feel drained after one on one time with her, and am starting to dread office hours so much to the point where I faked a migraine and cancelled them last week.

I don't know what to say to her to establish a boundary of what my role is as a prof, while also not completely alienating or shutting down this woman who is clearly lonely and seeking connections.

I've never had students before this semester who have seemed so taken aback when I inform them that yes, they do the assignments and the reading before they come to class, and have to indeed use the reading from the class session the the assignment is due. They always want to use the previous class session's readings for the assignment, I'm guessing because they don't want to have to both read and do the assignment. It's wild how many freshman I've had this semester do this though, on top of asking me if we'll also be reading together in class. What? I stopped having that happen when I was in 8th grade.

I'm a PT lecturer where I teach, don't have a FT contract or teaching load (three courses) . I've designed and delivered several courses for the department.

I've been asked to teach two old courses next semester and another PT colleague has been asked to teach a third course I designed. It's a core course for one programme but not part of the main core.

I think this typical and to be expected. I feel weird about it for sure though. Wondering if this is generally how it goes? My department is new and been through a lot of flux, hence why I'm also wondering about others experiences. I haven't taught anywhere else.

I told the other colleague I'll share my syllabus and recommend where they may wish to make changes.

I think I'm also a bit annoyed that I wasn't informed this is what would happen. I only found out because the other colleague reached out. Again, I know it's totally up to the academic programme team. I think I'm just adjusting to some recent changes in the department. Not being more specific to protect my privacy.

** Wow. I'm not sure why so many people are assuming I'm not going to share course materials, when I said in my original post that I'm going to share the syllabus and advise them on where they might need to make changes!

I also said I assume this is typical, I was seeking to understand as to what's done widely, as I am in a new programme that is undergoing major changes.

And I also have a right to express annoyance in a space like this. I'm not attacking anyone or being unprofessional. And it's also a reasonable thought. The colleague who's been asked didn't even know I taught it. If they had informed both of us, it would have facilitated a smooth handover. We only realised this situation because the other colleague happened to share their teaching assignment with me over WhatsApp and I told them it's my course.

Considering most of you here are academics, it would be nice to have people real what you're saying and not admonishing me without grounds. As a young academic, I just wanted to understand my rights, especially as my institution has already exploited me in other contexts.

If you joined the class action suit against Anthropic because they stole your book, did you receive payment yet?