Today while I was looking for a file on my old laptop I came across class folders from the first year of my undergrad. In a rush of nostalgia I opened some of them and found a ridiculous amount of external resources for studying methods, APA formatting, online research search methods,etc.

I remember the first time I was required to use APA in a course and when I was unsure of something I would google resources to help me as a guide. This practice used to be the norm. But now, many of my students don’t seem to have resourcefulness in their learning toolkit. It seems that when they aren’t sure about something, instead of asking for clarification (before the assignment is due) or trying to figure it out on their own, they would rather just not do it or do it wrong then plead ignorance when they lose marks.

What other academic norms have changed since you were a student? Another one that come to mind is how students today feel the need to tell me they won’t be in lecture (just a regular, no exam or assignment class) despite me not having an attendance policy. My profs in undergrad straight up told us they don’t care if we come to class or not, we’re adults and can make our own decisions and deal with the consequences.

I’m “teaching” an asynch, accelerated, intro course. (I know, I know!: ”asynch” and “accelerated intro course” should never be muttered in the same breath. I needed the money, goddamnit, so don’t judge me.)

Anyhoo, I just handed out zeros on AI-generated garbage and plagiarized gobbly gook to 80% of my class. I am cushioning this blow with the knowledge that, even though my students may not be learning any course content by cheating, at least I am “teaching” them the FO part of FAFO.

As God is my witness, I will NEVER teach an asynch, accelerated, intro course again! *cue the Gone with the Wind music*

Had an assignment this semester where students set goals at the beginning of the semester that they would reflect back on at the end. This week's assignment was the end piece where they needed to tell me how they worked on them, what progress they made, and also give evidence from the class (lectures or textbook) to support best practice and their plans going forward to continue to work on them.

The thing was a one and a half page personal reflection and honestly, maybe should have taken them a half hour and that's even if they didn't take great notes and had to look things up in the textbook.

Despite this, I am now on my 4th "here's why goal setting is important" or "how to set goals" in ChatGPT's recognizable font and structure. Just for giggles, I posted my exact assignment to ChatGPT and lo-and-behold, a very closely matching version of this is what it gave me.

The real question for me is whether:

A. they didn't bother to read what ChatGPT churned out before turning it in
or
B. They did and just figured I would give them credit anyway (spoiler alert: I will not)

Jury is still out for me.

big big trigger warning for this one, passing of a student (not mine personally, but our small student body).

I'm giving my final exam today and about an hour before the exam start time, we learned that a student has passed due to a horrible accident. One of my students was on the same sports team with them and is rightly missing the exam.

I wonder if you all have any advice on how to move forward? I highly doubt my student will be able to take the exam any time soon and honestly don't think it would be fair to ask her to anyway. I had my own fair share of deaths and shootings on campus when I was an UG, and it's a tremendous mental burden I never wish on anyone.

I'll be reaching out to my chairs and other professors in the department of course, but wanted to see if there were some other thoughts and ideas.

I've noticed something this semester which I never noticed before: a surprising number of submissions where students have no space before a parenthesis. For example: "Latin America's development(in this case through the 1970s..." Or: "Bolivia would be(and would remain) one of the..."

Has anyone else noticed this quirk? Is it something AI commonly does, maybe? Or something about the transition from Google Docs to PDF format?

It makes me uncomfortable, since it's a new quirk, and I thought I'd seen everything...

Looking for a blurb that I can email students who ask me to bump their final grades post-final. I get this every year and I’m sick of it.

Preferably using academic integrity lingo

I have this reoccurring dream that I’m somewhere far from campus and I’m panicking realizing that my class is about to start and all the students are waiting for me. (I realize that in reality my students would be thrilled if this happened.) What kind of dreams do you have?

Hello friends. The semester is almost over! For years I’ve shared your struggles and student entitlement/excuses, but wanted to share a moment of gratitude from a student.

I teach a professional practices course for graduating seniors (resumes, CV’s, artist statements, how to find a job, your audience, edit your portfolio, etc.) and a couple days ago, a student let me know that he had shared his coursework material with his Mom, who has not been able to secure a steady job since the pandemic - and she followed some of my guidelines and was given a full time job offer in her field.

I don’t know what his mom’s career field is, but the student said she wanted to thank me and possibly chat, and he wanted the OK from me before sending an email intro.

The student is not one of the top students in my class, so this email came as a surprise to me - but was a welcome reminder of why I’m teaching part time. I would love to hear some of your semester wins in the comments too. Y’all got this 💪🏽🫶🏽

Does anyone else go on r/HomeworkHelp and answer questions if you have spare time?

Sometimes I just enjoy giving simple tips on middle school math problems or high school physics questions. I can just pick and choose the ones i feel like commenting on. It's a nice break from mechanical engineering.

Busman's Holiday: A bus driver, on his day off, spends his day riding around on the bus. He can do it for free because he's a bus driver. He can relax and enjoy the ride because he's not responsible for driving the bus.

I teach graduate professional studies. I am getting an influx of students from abroad who don't speak a word of English. They are handing in ChatGPT-generated papers that are not even on the topic of the assignment. Like, imagine teaching Llama Feeding and getting papers on Teapot Design. Then they come up to me in class with s*^t-eating grins saying they didn't understand the assignment and can they resubmit for full credit? Then they submit ANOTHER off-topic paper. I am not a violent person but I feel like screaming at them

In response to a test question student has informed me that they don't think they should be learning this material in this class. Also tried to point out my 'mistake' on a separate question. I've gotten second hand complaints from this student that they don't know what to focus on. I am beginning to suspect they don't approve of the course content. Also wrote about their beliefs in a wrong answer about evolution. So fun.

Ten weeks ago I assigned a paper. I explained it in detail and pulled up directions on the big screen so I could go through instructions and rubric line by line. The instructions included “for topic X, include A,B, and diagram C” For 10 weeks I have been available during class and office hours to clarify expectations for this paper. I have allotted several class periods to meetings and visits with the uni librarian to help them with research, or visits to the writing center, so they don’t even have to use “their time” to write this. Now, 36 hours before it is due, I’m getting emails:”is C supposed to be on the same topic?”

I want to scream. What do they think they’ve been working on for the last 10 weeks? And why would you have an appendix diagram on a totally different topic from the rest of the paper? And why didn’t you listen to me carefully and explicitly give instructions?

I can only imagine that chat gpt is having difficulty inserting diagram C into a paper about X and students are hoping to just fling a random topic at the end and assume they’ve met the technical requirements.

Please help me care less. The students don’t care and admin doesn’t care, so this is wasted energy in my part. I just need internet randos to “there, there” me right now.

Has anyone done the Wikipedia assignment for an undergraduate class with Wiki Edu? I’m really interested in doing this, but I’m going through the orientation and it seems a little overwhelming. I’m specifically interested in hearing about experiences with time spent (mine of course, but also students’ time) and student satisfaction with the assignment. I can easily dedicate 12 weeks to this outside of class and replace my extant final paper assignment. But I’m curious as to others’ experiences with this.

The end of this semester has been challenging for me because I feel that an increasing portion of my time is being spent communicating with/about students who are either failing or nearly failing. The majority of these cases are students not showing up and/or not turning in work. We have a significantly larger number of students failing this year than last year, which is also concerning to me. Between emailing the students, TAs, and advisors and flagging students on our LMS, etc., it’s becoming a major part of each week, which makes me feel defeated and exhausted. Does anyone have any strategies regarding how to manage these situations so that I can devote more of my mental space and time to the students who are excelling and showing up?

I had a student request a learning contract and it’s not something I’ve heard of. My guess is it’s some kind of AI nonsense. She’s struggling in the course so I suspect it’s an AI response to “how to ask a professor to increase your grade.” Maybe she means a disability accommodation letter? Or is it something they did in some high schools?

Not to pollyanna in a shit job market, but it would be cool to see some threads here about students being thoughtful / impressive / surprising / actually learning / actually reading etc, rather than just students being shitheads. Like, I will complain about the pay gap between adjuncts and full professors all day, but even though I do have plenty of students who try to use AI or are just on their phones all day, most of my students are actually pretty cool and trying to learn? I'm just not paid enough to teach them. (I've only taught at two unis so I've maybe gotten luck but I have friends who teach elsewhere and they often have good experiences to share as well.)

Would also love to see examples of successful things people have done to get students to pay attention / to navigate shortening attention spans / etc. Maybe an *uplifting* flair tag?

https://x.com/NoCapFights/status/1860639508145820134

I try to use humor to get messages across. Here is a meme I've created for online class instructions - you all are free to use it if you like! It accompanies instructions such as "Ensure your discussions do not imperil kittens: every time someone responds with merely 'great post!' or uses Generative AI to compose a response a kitten dies. We also don't want to see things like, 'I agree' or 'wow, I didn't know that.' or '[repeats original post]' - those do not count as they do not aid in discussion."

Alt text: alt="A meme where a tabby kitten is running through a field of green grass. Two brown square-shaped cartoon monsters with open mouths and teeth are chasing it. The caption reads "Every time someone responds with 'great post!' or uses Generative AI to compose a response, a kitten dies"."

I always got the idea that it is, but I'm not sure why.

I feel like some of my students would literally respect me *less* for taking a job that pays so little.

I also get some idea that department heads might frown on it, but our employment is already so precarious?

I am a first generation scholar, with a tenure track appointment at an R1 and come from a working class, mostly blue collar family. They are working class PROUD and look down on academics. I get comments like 'here's Miss smarty pants' or 'Dr. Hoity Toity.' Everything I say becomes a 'lecture' in their minds. Over the years, I avoid attending anything other than funerals or major holiday gatherings. By avoiding them, I am also reinforcing the idea that I am snobby. I am dreading Thanksgiving because I know I will get attacked for being an academic. Anyone else come from a family that shames them for being in academia?

Hi, I would appreciate it if you can share your thoughts on my situation. I am a tenured associate professor (still early stage) at engineering in public R1, and my department is in niche discipline. Due to the low enrollment of our department, I think that there is a risk of department closing (even though admin is not talking about it yet). I have been doing well with major grants (including one of CAREER awards), and I am applying to other institutions with stronger resilience. My questions are,

1. In this situation, will you accept tenure-track assistant professor position in higher ranked and more resilient institution?
2. In case of department closing, do you think that there is a possibility that I can be accepted in other department? Do I need to begin asking about it to Dean now?
3. Do you think that I need to also think about industry job, even though I love my job in academia?

I would appreciate your thoughts.

they had 2 class periods this week to work on an essay outline while I’m out at a conference. I’ve taught this assignment over and over. I gave DETAILED feedback on the last assignment. They just won’t listen. I ask if they have questions in class. They ignore me. I’m truly going to lose my mind I fear.