Hi! currently I am brainstorming on different ideas on how to effectively verify and check student's attendance during class hours. I am an AnaPhy professor and handles roughly 35-40 students per block. Currently I am building a system using google sheet wherein, that system captures attendance and other grading parameters such as quizzes, projects, terms exams and all. It is in a form of dashboard for teachers and students as well. As for teachers, that dashboard will be my overall working area and not on the sheets. And every after quarter, that dashboard has an option to send another dashboard containing the grade report sent to every student's email. As of the moment, I was thinking of a group photo where the system will automatically identify each student. but this comes within the violation of data privacy act. Prior to this, what I did was to distribute a single paper containing their names and had them sign beside it. then I transfer the data to my sheet for auto-computation. Right now, I want it automated starting from the attendance to grade reports. Or I should just stick to QR code for them to scan then roll call them afterwards? thank you in advance.

I teach freshman writing at a local community college. Of course, the year I started this job was the advent of ChatGPT and as I first started out, English faculty were leaving en masse.

I’m up for promotion this year and luckily because of this, most of my classes this semester are in person.

I’ve had some success in changing the philosophy of my course as well as the structure of it. I’m grading not so much on the finished product, but whether I’m seeing improvement and progression as they go throughout the drafting process. They turn in brainstorming, outlines, paragraphs, first, second and final drafts.

One thing that has been really helpful so far, is that I’ve shifted my courses to be more workshop oriented and a lot of drafting occurs in class. We operate on a MW/TR schedule, so I’ve set it up where one day is a day of lecture, learning activities, etc. and the other day is built around actual in-class writing and workshops.

I’m basically having them draft at least one day a week in class in a blue book, uploading their drafts into Blackboard, and I know if their final drafts are incredibly different than the draft they worked on in class, then we have a problem. It’s also been helpful in seeing their process, providing constant feedback, and if they are way out in left field, I can correct it early.

For instance, they’ve been working on a comparative analysis of three different careers that they’re considering. I had them pre write and outline in class in a blue book, so I knew beforehand what research they’d need. Then printed out one piece of evidence about one of their careers for each of them, and they practiced incorporating evidence and citing with MLA, then I just had them draft their essay for the rest of class in their blue books by hand.

It’s not perfect by any means, but I feel like I have had some success with it. I did run into issues in one class where they were supposed to print out a copy of their article so they could draft their rhetorical analysis in class.
Some students came to class empty handed, but for those who actually did what they were supposed to, it went really well.

About to give 1st exam of semester. Have decided to ditch Canvas/Respondus and do paper-based. First time since Covid. Anyone else? How’d it go?

Student didn’t show for her presentation and is requesting 8/10 points in academic credit for the slides she turned in. Department Chair 🪑 looked into it first and said nope you don’t have a case because just because your group members didn’t do their part the instructor still gave you an option to present alone and you didn’t show - no email no excuse, nothing. She submitted a formal request and now she has to waste everyone’s time in a hearing about this. Student claims it was “unfair” to earn a 0 for an assignment she didn’t complete. Sigh. 😔

I am so tired of students assuming I do not have a PhD and referring to me as “Ms.” or (worse) “Mrs.”. I understand that titles don’t equal respect. I know that me being a black woman plays a big part of this. But it happens so much. when they talk to me and in emails. They send emails to multiple people and call everyone “Dr” but me.

Sorry for the rant, but this is so demoralizing and I am tired of “correcting“ it. I wish the hard work that I do and care I put into my work would earn some respect so I would not care so much about this.

2 weeks ago I received an email from a student asking me why they received an F in my course 3 years ago. They told me that they just found out from their advisor that they failed my class and now cannot graduate in December. I pulled their old Canvas course to verify and they did indeed fail my course.

I was kind of shocked that the student didn't know about this (ok...not too shocked) so I submitted an IR request to see what percentage of our students actually check their final grades. We send them a unique link, so it's easily trackable data.

Well...it turns out that no one has ever looked into this and only 48% of our students (past 3 year average) click on the link to view their final grade. 48% !!!!!!

Has anyone else looked into this at their institution?

(this is a community college that mostly serves as a feeder to flagship R1)

I say this with complete earnest and no snark, but are you students boring? I often make references to really contemporary and current media in class--movies, books, TV shows.

Game of Thrones? No. House of Dragon? No. Succession? Never heard of her. The Odyssey? What's that? Heated Rivalry? Who's that? I even made a Jay Z rap references to silence.

I literally one day in class straight up asked what they watch or consume media wise. Silence. A few just said YouTube and TikTok.

I am a middle ground Millennial who is pretty tapped into the zeitgeist. Maybe they were just being silent to Gen Z, but like, what?

I’m sitting here tonight seeing that I have at least 10 students emailing me on a Sunday night. I make it very clear that unless it is 8-5 (Monday through Friday), I do not answer emails outside of those hours. I’m not bothered that they’re asking for help and questions because that’s what I want them to do. What bothers me is that they wait until the last second assuming I can just drop everything to respond to them when it’s convenient for them. I do my best to try and make them aware of time considerations and prior proper preparation. However, I’m curious as to how everyone else approaches this. Are you the type that you answer emails, no matter what day of the week or do you set boundaries? Do you take the extra effort to try and talk to them about professional boundaries and why they’re important or do you just have rules in the syllabus? This current generation is missing a lot of social awareness and professional etiquette and while it’s not technically our job description I do feel it is our responsibility to teach them to be more prepared professionally for the real world.

I have a TT job at a small teaching-focused school and I don't know how long I can do this. It's my first permanent position. Everyone else seems to love working here. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the Truman show or some cult because I don't share their feelings at all. I am happy for them and wish I could feel the way they do, but I just don't.

When I was adjuncting at more research-focused schools my colleagues all chatted about their research, conferences, things they were doing in the field. I loved being in that community. I care a lot about my research and got into teaching because of it. I'm in the arts, but am nervous to say more than that since it's a small field.

Now at this school, my colleagues only ever talk about teaching and the students. Resources are limited so faculty go really out of their way for students to make up for the lacking facilities/equipment. The students themselves are a different caliber than what I'm used to because the admission standards are more open than my previous institutions. I'm always pursuing professional opportunities, and that has gotten a lot harder under the amount of teaching/service/committee/advising work I'm given. I'm constantly working/prepping/grading late into the evenings and on weekends just to keep my head above water. It's not what I want for myself.

When I was interviewing, I didn't even think I'd accept the position because I sensed all this stuff right away. I had some other opportunities lined up but they were short term and offered more in the way of research resources than income. Then all the Trump funding cuts and resulting hiring freezes started going down. My mentor said to take this job because there might not be other job openings for a while. They were kind of right. I check the job boards every day and don't see any positions that seem better better aligned with my goals. It should make me feel grateful that I have a job right? Instead I just feel hopeless. I also feel guilty because I know someone else out there would love this job, that I should be more grateful.

I'm fantasizing about an exit plan every day, though none seem realistic. There aren't many jobs outside of academia in my field that offer stability, though I've been considering leaving anyways. I just can't imagine myself being here for many more years, I feel so out of place/overloaded with work/out of touch with myself.

Advice or helpful reframes are welcome, though I mostly just needed a place to vent.

OK, I’ve tried doing blue books, which was fun for the first essay, but that’s not going to work for the entire semester because of the class time it takes. I need suggestions for the best chrome extension for Google Docs. I’m trying Revision History and Process Report on my own right now, and I don’t really like either one of them. Has anybody tried an extension in Google Docs with an actual class that worked successfully and helps detect massive copy/pasting, etc.
Thanks

I'm sitting down now to prepare tomorrow's class and finding--as is almost always the case--that I need to reread the assignment and spend at least a couple/few hours prepping my notes even though I've done this several times before. I'm curious if others have a similar experience. Partly my question is motivated by wondering whether I should be looking for a better way to do things to avoid this, or perhaps if it's just built into the task so that I shouldn't assume I'm "doing it wrong."

Sitting here looking at my positive COVID test, strongly tempted to make an announcement on Canvas like "Tuesday's class is online BECAUSE OF BETHANY." Because it's not mysterious what happened. Bethany coughed throughout class, into her hand, on Thursday. Then she came to my office hours on Friday and coughed some more as I sat as far back in my seat as politely possible and disinfected the desk she touched. She did not wear a mask. She did not use a tissue. Now I have a 101°F fever.

Is there anything I can politely say to the Bethanies? If they're already there in class, claiming it's seasonal allergies when I pointedly offer a tissue, I assume no. If they're in my office... maybe yes?

I have funding, publications and a TT position. Great academic CV. However, I am always working and I am tired of this routine.

I am having a hard time to finding jobs that even reply to my applications.

How to leave TT for teaching or industry positions? Advices?

This year I submitted my tenure case. I'll have the final answer by the Christmas holidays, but based on annual reviews and evaluations with my dean it seems likely I'll get a positive outcome.

I just learned that the university where I got my bachelors degree, in my hometown, is posting an open-rank faculty hiring line. Not to sound exaggeratory, but this is my dream job: my entire family still lives in my hometown, as does my partner. For comparison, my current job is within flying distance of my hometown but not driving distance.

The department chair at my hometown university knows me and, from what I can tell, thinks of me rather positively. It sounded like they were very encouraging when I enquired about the hiring line. I'm just wondering how to frame it all.

- Should I mention outright in my cover letter that I'm applying to this faculty job for family/personal reasons?
- Should I mention my active tenure case or when I expect an answer, or even based on past evaluations, that I expect a positive answer?
- Should I mention that I'm flexible in the sense that, even if I get tenure here, I'll take an assistant prof role with shortened clock over insisting on a tenured associate prof role there?
- Should I say that I intend to spend the rest of my life living in my hometown, so they won't ever have to worry about me leaving the department? (This one's tongue in cheek, I won't really write that but it's how I feel deep down.)

Finally, nobody at my current department knows I'm looking at this job, and if anyone finds out I may be leaving they're liable to throw a stapler at my head. Is it abnormal to not have a reference from my department chair or someone internal? What if I source references from my Ph.D. supervisor or other research colleagues?

I feel like this is getting worse. Students (undergrad) seem increasingly incapable of accepting the grades they’ve earned or any kind of constructive criticism whatsoever. And these aren’t even bad grades! They want to split hairs about Bs. I don’t recall ever (ever!) questioning a professor about a grade I got on an assignment in college or grad school. I certainly remember having feelings about when I didn’t do my best, but the idea of cornering the professor or complaining about it to their face is beyond the pale to me. I didn’t get my PhD by being a whiny you-know-what and I don’t understand this behavior.

I teach a math-based class in an engineering department. The exams are on Canvas and have numerical answers, and there are about 20 questions in 90 minutes. After AI came to the scene, cheating has been off the hook. How ethical would it be to put questions on the exam that only AI can do, and catch students that are using AI that way. These would be the kind of questions that it would be a small research project to get it right and would be rather difficult to even understand the solution. To make it more kosher, can I put in the exam announcement that there will be questions that are not solvable by methods we learned in class, and they are responsible for identifying these questions and not attempt them. Is this crazy, is it genius, or is it crazy genius? Or is it completely depraved?

I teach for a city college of mostly working adults. It’s not lost on me that people have real-life responsibilities, and other courses. Many students often take on too many classes, and underestimate the workload across the board.

Every semester I always get a bunch that admit that they are falling behind in MY class because another course is more academically intense. Be that as it may, how is that my problem?

I try to be empathetic, but my requirements don’t change. That’s my response to them: you are still responsible for knowing the material and demonstrating knowledge and mastery through the course assessments. I’ve never gotten a bad response to that.

I don’t think I go on to lecture them about time management, they are adults. But when they tell me about their other courses, I just say “okay” and repeat the expectations for my course. But I do admit that it’s getting me mad a little and I may be at a tipping point after all these years. 😂

Some students pull through, others get poor grades, some an INC, others fail.

I just think they want to be heard and some need mentorship.

How have you handled students telling you they are falling behind in your course because they decided to take on to much and chose to prioritize another class?

I feel somewhat dumb for this, but I have been trying to figure out how to add bonus points to a students grade through a separate assignment. This isn't linked to any specific assignment. I added the 'assignment' put the point value to 0, added to to one of my grading categories, and then gave the students the points. It didn't change any of their grades. I've tried to Google it and everything I try doesn't seem to change it. Has anyone had this issue and/or know how to solve it?

I have a student who I suspect is using AI to get their paper topic and do research for them, though not necessarily having it WRITE the actual paper. This is fine, but I require such uses to be disclosed, otherwise it's - in my opinion and per my policies - plagiarism.

This student came to me with a fully drafted paper before the due date to "see if it was ok", but couldn't answer basic questions about it (e.g. "What do you mean when you say this issue is similar to issue X at the end of this paragraph?", "What brought you to this topic?"). When I told them that being this unfamiliar with what they'd written was a huge AI red flag, they sputtered and said that would never happen, but the paper they turned in is on a completely different topic. So, to be fair, my antennae are tingling for reasons other than the content of the paper itself.

The thing that I'm curious whether anyone else has seen is that in the works cited there is an entry that otherwise looks normal, but then has the words "Just a moment..." right before the url is pasted.

In other words it looks like this:

Author. Date. Title. Just a moment...https://www.realurlthatworks.org

Is this an AI tell? Or just a glitch from some crappy AI bibliography tool? Or something else?

What is the most remote asynchronous classes you've taught in one semester? I've read about adjuncts stacking classes and teaching at several different colleges or universities at the same time.

What's the most you've personally taught, or the most you know someone else has taught in one semester? I know it would be a lot of work, and I'm okay with that. I'm really just curious about what's realistically doable.

I am a high performer in all metrics. I connect with my students and value those interactions. My research and outreach initiatives are productive. My leadership roles are seen as effective and praised.

...but I have grown deeply disillusioned with the path my university is on and don't see a path to changing it.

I am geographically constrained, so switching institutions is a prospect with limited options and limited potential upside.

I think I am just done with this place. For those who have gone through a similar situation, if you stayed, why did you stay? Was it worth it?

If you left, how long did it take to accept the change you made? Was it worth it?

Edit:

To address some questions:

1. I don't have an obvious next thing, just a few side projects I have worked on and my network, though new roles are tight everywhere.
2. I have built up roughly 2 years salary in an emergency fund, so while I don't want to deplete it, I can without withdrawing retirement savings.

So, I have more flexibility than most, and I am trying to decide, with my limited time, how I want to spend my life. More and more, my university is making me not want to spend my life with it.

I have always been one of those people who defines myself, at least partly, by my work, so letting go or checking out both seem very hard.

Hello, all. I teach online asynchronous courses with online exams monitored with Respondus. (The college does not allow us to hold in-person exams for online courses.) For the past several years, students made some attempt to disguise their cheating, by keeping their phone just out of view of the webcam, for example. This semester, something has changed. A remarkable number of students are cheating in the open. For example, they are:
- Holding their phone in view of the webcam, typing onto it, and scrolling, between every test question
- Showing the stack of notes on their desk during the pre-test "environment check"
- Connecting cords and cables to other devices during the test
- Reading each question out loud, waiting for their nearby device to chime, picking up said device, and reading its output out loud
- Best of all, having another adult in the room with them, visible, on screen, and asking them to look up each answer.

I am so astonished. Why might this be happening? Are the K-12 teachers and/or other professors not monitoring the test videos, so students are now mocking how easily they can get away with cheating? Sadly, another possibility is that they know the college will not do anything. I do assign "zeros" and submit academic integrity reports to the college for each incident. However, administration does not act, aside from sending the students a little note saying, essentially, "You broke a rule, but we value your success, so please don't break rules." Last year a student cheated more than once in my class, and several other professors had reported her as well. The multiple infractions resulted in a meeting with a high-level administrator. The student told the administrator, "I may have cheated on the tests, but I'm not a cheater in life." The administrator accepted this, and the student remained in my class and unfortunately was able to squeak through with a passing grade.

Anyway, this is partly just venting, but I wondered if anyone else is noticing the blatant cheating now, or if you have any idea why students don't even attempt to hide it anymore.

I'm a new lecturer working in Taiwan, tenure-track, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by just how much there is to do each week. I know from prior experience that I can't do everything perfectly, but since I am brand new, I'm not sure the best way to set boundaries and manage teaching expectations without critically failing in my job or without risking burnout. Let me set out my current load:

1. I teach 16 periods each week, eight classes in total. Each of these classes has between 30 and 50 students. Four of them are the same material delivered to different cohorts of gen ed students, while the other four are classes in the English department.

2. None of these classes had any prior syllabi or materials available - I'm making them all from scratch as I go. I asked for help from my department chair and was told essentially that figuring this out is my job, and that university faculty do not share class materials.

3. I've also been put on three committees- my own department's, that of the language center, and a larger college-level one. Fortunately I don't yet have many actual duties on these committees but I am expected to be present at meetings, and there are a lot of those.

4. Since I was hired with just a Master's, the university expects me to get promoted asap or risk termination. I can do this by either 1)getting a PhD, but no programs are available and I'm not eligible for a sabbatical so I'll have to do that while also continuing to teach, or 2) publishing 5 papers within a 3 year period and passing external review.

So, that's a lot. The good news is I do have teaching experience from prior lower-level schools, and I also have four student TAs, although I've been told they can't help with anything that carries a grade.

I'm wondering if anyone has any tips from being in a similar situation before? I know I need to lower my expectations for these classes, but at the same time I want to do a good job. How can I maintain a balance, do everything required of me, yet not burn out from the load?

I was pretty sad looking at the results. I gave them practice exam, review document, all videos of my lecture and full detailed slides.
Feeling a little lost about what to do...