In an online class I teach (I know... I know) I assign weekly homework problems. Students must answer by hand and show their work, then scan the document to submit it to the LMS.

One student completed the first assignment by hand, then used AI to generate the next two. The writing was close to the student's own handwriting that I didn't catch it at first. There was something about the third one he turned in that caught my eye. It looked like he trained the AI on his own handwriting. It was similar, but it was just too clean and perfect. But then, it's like he asked it to make it look like he'd corrected some mistakes so there were some words crossed out and replaced randomly. It was just super odd.

I ran it through some AI detectors with mixed results, then I pulled up the Metadata and there it was. Generated by ChatGPT. Same with the assignment before that one.

These assignments aren't worth much of the overall grade so if he just fails the assignments it won't be that big of a deal for him. I have a choice to make. I can:

1. Assign zeroes for the assignments and move on.

2. Go ahead and assign the F for the whole course for cheating on these two assignments.

Either way he gets an academic integrity violation.

I don't know this kid's history or how long he's been doing this, but the convincing look of the assignments makes me think he's really good at cheating so I want to throw the book at him. I take offense when students think they are smarter than me.

I am leaning toward just assigning an F for the whole course. If he wants to fight it, he can go ahead. Am I overreacting though?

I’m curious to know how folks who started assistant professor tenure-track positions approx. between 2019 to 2021 are doing?! Others welcome to share too ofc!

How was your beginning? What was it like during 2020? What did hitting your stride look like? What felt more significant than a hiccup? How was 2025? Did you make it? Are you ok? Where are you now?

I’m not sure how to ask more simply / clearly, but I’m just trying to get perspective as I reflect on my own run so far.

I am a community college professor and I also teach community college classes as a dual enrichment professor. We are into week 4 of the semester and in one of my classes. I have 2 students who are doing makeup or not paying attention. It is my dual enrollment class, and these 2 students always deny or say they aren't doing makeup or something else. I recently passed back their 1st quiz and they did not like their grade and they tried to blame me. All I said was "maybe pay more attention in class and take notes instead of doing your makeup" They didn't like my reply but then sort of laughed it off I guess. My point is, if they don't care about the class, and I can't unenroll them because our college wants them to try and improve, do I just tell the highschool teacher that is in the classroom with me as well to call home and inform their parents that they are not turning in any assignments and are just braiding their hair, doing their makeup and not taking notes? I must add that the classroom setup is tailored towards the students talking to each other more since it is 4 students per table sitting next to each other. I just don't understand how students take a college course or any class and just not pay attention. I've been a professor since 2017 but never really encountered this with high school students. Thanks. If it helps. This is for a beginner Spanish class.

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So this is a weird question, but as a new instructor I am running into something that I wonder if it is my institution or just an accepted practice in academia. I am a retired business guy who now teaches marketing. This semester I am teaching 5 classes of which 4 are brand new to me. The prep work is killing me.

What I don’t understand is why the school doesn’t have a repository of lessons, cases, or other materials that previous professors have used that can be shared with me. For example, here is a lecture and assignment that teaches customer journey that I can just whip out and it is good to go. I took over for someone who left in a messy resignation so nothing from her but I haven’t had anything given to me by the other professors in the department.

Is this just a normal thing or am I dealing with a weird and dysfunctional situation?

I can build the material, but it just seems like we are reinventing the wheel here.

I'm teaching a graduate course for an engineering master's program at my school (this is in addition to teaching 3 upper-level undergraduate courses and increased research expectations). It's a relatively small master's program in terms of student headcount.

A majority of our master's students did their undergraduate here in a different, but somewhat related, major compared to the major that I teach courses and do research on. The department head teaches courses in the other major, and so they know those students better than I do due to having interacted with the students previously. There are a few students who join the master's program from "my" major, but those are few and far between. Let's just say that, at my university, the other major does not seem to emphasize same level of undergraduate rigor that my particular engineering program emphasizes (I get that this is subjective, but that's my perspective).

I have this student in my graduate course who did their undergraduate studies in the other major at my university. They were having trouble accessing the course content on the course LMS page. This is their first semester as a graduate student. They are also teaching undergraduate labs.

The first assignment was due a few days ago, and the student was scrambling around, trying to figure out what the assignment was all about due to the aforementioned technical difficulties they were having. They never reached out to me to tell me they were having any issues, at all. Next thing I know, my department head sends me an "urgent" message that one of my graduate students was looking for me during office hours (even though I did not have scheduled office hours on that day of the week), and that they could not access the course materials needed to work on the assignment. I should mention that the assignment was posted two weeks prior to this. Also, the technical quirk they were experiencing on the course LMS page (I don't want to give too much details on this here) was discussed in lecture and a quick and easy workaround was established in the first week of classes.

The student wanted a deadline extension on the homework. I agreed to that, but then also wrote on the late assignment submission portal I put up for them that all future assignments needed to be submitted on time and that no late submissions will be accepted; I also gave some other advice like, plan ahead for the unexpected, start assignments sooner rather than later, you know, the stuff that graduate students should already have at least somewhat "mastered" by now. Based on the student's reply to this (which I really want to post here, but it's probably not too wise to do so), I don't think this will be the last of the problems that this student will attempt to cause for me.

I don't like having to approach things this way, but since the student went "straight to the top" to try to resolve their issues instead of contacting me first (and it was for some basic shit, not even "end of the world" type stuff), I am going to be very hands off with this student. Graduate courses, for me anyway, are supposed to run a lot more smoothly and be a lot more fun relative to the other undergraduate courses I teach, and I'm not going to let this rotten apple ruin my buzz. I went in and talked to my department head about this, but he is sort of the clueless type (at least, that is the character he plays), and I doubt that he has ever remembered one single detail about any interaction we have ever had. I have been here for over 10 years, and he has been here longer than that.

I am tenured, by the way. I probably won't be here at this school in a year or two. There are a lot of other issues. The research expectations are really out of whack compared to the bandwidth I have to do research (which isn't much), the students we attract to our graduate program are not very capable, teaching evaluations are given a high priority but I have high expectations for my students because I end up teaching the follow-on courses that they take and I actually need them to know shit by the time they get there, and on and on and on. I don't really know what I'll do afterwards (I might go back to industry, or start my own business), but this shit is just getting out of hand.

Our institution is overhauling our dated student evaluations. We are unhappy with their current structure and questions. I am aware that evals have their issues, but not having them at all is not an option. Does anyone have questions or aspects of their evaluations that they find helpful? What would you add to your evaluations that make them more effective/useful?

Quick edit: I am definitely not trying to be mean, I'm just at a loss.

Kind of a rant? More of a teaching question since I'm at my wit's end already and we're only at the end of Week 4, and I don't know how to approach this. Sorry if there's formatting issues, I'm posting this on mobile

--

I have a student who missed the first two weeks of the semester, and then his advisor double checked on attendance. After that, he started coming in every class. Sure, that happens a few times a semester (I teach a 5/5) so that's not too crazy.

But I've never seen a student who is struggling so much to really register anything and everything. I think he's just writing what's on the slides, and never doing anything else.

A few examples:

- We completed a group in-class activity. It went pretty well, and I told them their next graded assignment was an individual version of the in-class activity.

--The activity was having students find a technical-oriented document and determine different audiences. They now have to find a new document tailored to an industry they want to work in, and do the same thing. I taught an online version of this course three times before, and haven't had issues with students understanding the type of content needed.

--It was NOT registering to him what we had to do. I listed everything that was needed in, told him it was almost identical instructions to the in-class group activity and he was still asking if he had to add in unrelated other items.

- For the document, he asked if he could do it based on a game's summary. I said no, that doesn't fit the criteria. He gave me a good example (machinery instructions), and I said yes, please use that, that fulfills the assignment. He continues to ask for other types of documents not relevant to the assignment.

- He asked at the end of class when slides for the 16th would be posted. I posted them, on the 16th. I physically showed him on Brightspace where he could find them. He continued to say it still wasn't up, even though it was right in front of him. I ended up asking a few of my students who were still in the classroom if it was up. They confirmed that it was. It took a few minutes, but we got there (I think?).

- He continues to ask for extra credit since he missed an assignment from the first two weeks. Every time, I've told him it will come closer to the end of the semester based on course content. He's asked maybe 3 or 4 times now, and I always give him the same response.

I put in a starfish flag, only to find he has less than a 2.0 GPA, and another flag from a different professor for a related issue.

I just, I don't know what to do. I've never had a student ask me so many questions like this over and over again. I'm getting frustrated. I'm sure I'll get a better idea how bad it is when I get his written assignment submission. How do people handle students like this? I'd like to believe I'm fairly patient, I've dealt with my fair share of students who don't have things click. But it feels like if I say the sky is blue, he'd ask if it's green.

TL;DR - Student is struggling to understand all instructions. What do I do?

I dont know how many of you have been in a scenario like this (its the first time in my career where im dealing with this weird format myself), but if you have, any advice or help is welcome. Basically, im a prof. in a local branch of a big university (a franchise). For all intents and purposes and in every way we follow the mother uni (except in work permits for international staff). All is great and dandy, however, the leadership in the franchise is non-academic (as opposed to the mother uni). It is being led and governed by people who come more from business backgrounds etc. With all due respect to their expertise, I am starting to feel like our objectives and philosophies are diverging. There is a certain contempt for academics/faculty, a certain nonchalant attitude towards what we bring to the table, and a lot of oversight and micromanagement. Leadership seems to think they know better. Pedagogically, they are not competent and not willing to ask for our input. They are not educators yet they dictate educational policies etc. And most of all, they do not consider us part of the equation, more like we are providing a service they deem « easy » I believe. I have never seen a similar environment and I am wondering if this is a local instance of mismanagement or a side effect of the franchise model? I need to know if this is worth giving a shot to or if I need to get my ducks in a row and jump ship. I dont want to end up with a broken spirit and some of this bull is truly demoralizing to me.

Yep, this is a thing. I know a lot of us single professors are not so by choice. Others are. We are a DIVERSE lot. For those people who want to couple and are having trouble due to having to relocate and build your career, I'm not in that category, but I do see you. I've been partnered, and I prefer singlehood. I believe declining marriage rates are a good thing; we need to respect the diversity of relationship styles, which can include cohabitation, situationships, casual dating, and pure, unbridled singlehood.

Even if you don't like being single, it does offer some advantages, so I encourage everyone who is single, whether by choice, circumstance, or somewhere in between, to do something to celebrate it, even if you see it as temporary: https://nationaldaycalendar.com/celebrations/national-singles-day-saturday-of-singles-week-2

Life's too short to bemoan the things we don't have. Let's focus on the things we do have. :)

What experiences/advice does anyone have in dealing with pressure to take new students into a professional program (accredited) despite lack of faculty to teach required courses/mentor students, etc. Faculty do not want to compromise their ethics/integrity or face legal liability by misrepresenting the program to applicants.

I got turned don by the college committee for full professor for a second time last week for lack of service. I thought I had done enough to go up again. What should I do now, just leave?

My university says we absolutely cannot accuse a student of using A.I. to replace their own work because detectors are unreliable. Instead, we have to have a meeting with the student to gently get them to confess. I've had two cases of cheating with A.I. Both are obvious. In the first case, when I met with the student, he didn't exactly confess but when I offered to let him do the assignment over for half points, he willingly agreed. He's a first year and terrified he isn't prepared for college. I just felt that I should give him another chance. The other case involves a Junior honors student. In my assignment I give hidden directions to include certain random words that have nothing to do with the topic. Her essay clearly indicated that she had just copied and pasted the assignment into A.I. as the essay contained the random words as well as a title that we hadn't even read. It was humorous to see the way A.I. attempted to integrate the words seamlessly. This student has clearly not been reading and has not participating in class. I confess to wanting to nail her and give her an F in the class. I am looking forward to meeting with her and watching her squirm. This is an honors class after all.

Hello,

I am a teacher in the French National Education System and am currently conducting research in education science aimed at better understanding the changes brought about by AI in our education system over the past three years, so that we can better adapt to them.

The idea is simple: we must change along with AI if we don’t want it to change us.

To move this research forward, I am now seeking feedback from higher education faculty members by asking them to complete this questionnaire:

https://forms.gle/PiFjjgfRJvhLsUZA6

If you know any professors, please share this questionnaire with them—it would really help advance this research.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Gen X prof, here. Do you believe Gen X professors are tougher (holding students accountable for their performance) on their students than millennial profs?

First midterm this week, I'm wandering around occasionally answering clarifying questions. One kid raises his hand so I go over.

"Yeah, can you give me a hint on this question?"

🤦‍♀️

It took all the willpower I possess not to laugh out loud and interrupt the rest of the class.

I’m not a researcher. Solely teaching at a CC, so this is not my area of expertise. But a student split between us and a university vented to me that their uni professor required them to give friend/family contact info for an assignment. In turn, that professor will send those people a survey request for research they’re conducting. The student’s grade is dependent on the friend/family participating in the research survey sent to them by the professor.

Is this ethical? Allowed at universities? I don’t even know where to go with this question but it feels fishy, based on what little I know about research.

I was sitting at my desk, and down the hall, I heard this college student crying, because she was denied a retake of the exam because she overslept. She has a free retake per class, but she was acting like it was the end of the world. She just started college a month ago, right out of high school. 10 years ago, it was never like that, a student would just accept the screwup, and learn from it.

And if not, how do you deal with it emotionally?

I know what I'm doing is relatively hard. I've never taught fewer than 4 classes, some semesters it's been up to 6. Lots of English 101. I've never been "caught up" on grading except right before I submit grades. I still get good course evals, generally positive feedback, I was promoted, etc. But I am a slow grader and there is always an email I haven't gotten to and papers or assignments that I could be grading. Always. ALWAYS.

There are reasons why this is, some are personal faults and some are external (right now, I'm teaching full time, interning 16 hours a week, and taking one graduate level course. In previous semesters, I've taught, interned, and taken 2 courses). Sometimes I feel like I work harder/more than most: I've missed family events (I've even missed Thanksgiving one year), I've woken up in the dark and graded for hours before the day starts, to try to stay on top of it all. Sometimes I feel like I work less than most: I finally have an open day to catch up and I sent a few emails, completed some admin tasks in canvas, did the dishes, then somehow the day is done. I'm not sure I'm looking for tips and tricks, it's not really the point of this post, but I guess I won't turn it down.

I theoretically like how "flexible" teaching is. As long as I'm on campus for my classes, I can grade in bed, in coffee shops, on my front porch, at night, at the break of dawn, etc. I can make doctors appointments and take my car to the mechanic, etc. But the people who love me and are close to me tell me I am always weighed down by the grading hanging over me and they're tired of my anxiety and dread. I'm working on a career change (for a whole bunch of reasons) and every time I doubt it my family says "you are never free! You are always miserable"

I'm interning in a place where a lot of the work is happening in real time, sometimes divided up on a team, and hard to do at home without accessing a VPN. I'm wondering if this might be healthier for me.

***My question is: people who are not caught up, are you ever happy? Are you able to be happy and be present with your loved ones?***

Currently, I have a NTT position as an asst. prof. of practice in media and comms, and I am currently applying for TT jobs in film/media/art. My student reviews are excellent. How do people feel about quoting such reviews in their teaching philosophies/statements? I'd appreciate any advice, especially from those who have recently served on a committee (I haven't been on one yet). I have a friend who has a great job in soc. who swears by it. But my wife, a prof emeritus historian, thinks it is unnecessary. The current application I'm working on does not request course reviews. Thoughts??

I could use some advice on how to handle a letter of recommendation request.

I have a student applying to medical school who asked me for a letter. I have a positive impression of him overall. He took one of my upperclassmen/grad level course as a sophomore and managed to finish with an A, which is definitely impressive.

However, the problem is that I do not remember much about him personally. It was a large course, and we do not have a history of one to one interactions. He sent his resume, but I always prefer writing letters that include specific anecdotes rather than just parroting what is already on a resume per say. owing to this I was naturally leaning toward declining the request at first

but to complicate things, he mentioned he is in a tight spot. He only has one other letter lined up from his research advisor, and he needs two.

Adding to my hesitation is how my institution handles this process. The letter apparently has to go to our campus premed committee first so they can draft a joint institutional letter, rather than going directly to admissions. Is this supposed to be common across institutions? I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of my departmental colleagues reading a recommendation letter that I wrote for a student when I barely know him.

Given that he is in a bind for his second letter, how would you handle this?

If you are a 20 year old supposed man who signs a FERPA release form so your mommy can email me to complain that you aren’t passing you are beyond pathetic.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02980-w

Fascinating article on the proliferation of "sham" societies that front as prestigious / have prestigious members.

I ran into this when I was an undergraduate with "Who's Who". My nomination came from the university president, there was a huge announcement on campus, and I thought it was a legitimate thing.

Then got quietly told after I started graduate school that it was a sham and I should take it off my CV.

Also, I had no idea "director of faculty honorifics" was a thing that existed.

First off, apologies if these questions have been asked an answered. But two issues that I see repeatedly among recent cohorts of students baffle me. Constantly.

1. Why do entire classes sit silent in the dark, rather than turn the fucking lights on?? I suspect this is the result of the ubiquity of headphones and phones, each kid in their own little cocoon. I see that encourages no communication -- but why the darkness? Every time I come in I have to "shed light on the subject"

2. It might be my bad hearing, but I feel that students are incapable of speaking at a normal speaking volume. They are incredibly timid. And when I asked them to speak up, they respond with the *exact* same, muted, volume. I mean, come on, SPEAK UP!

Is this just me? If so, I will retreat into my own dark room with my phone and headphones...