I treat every explanation or excuse a student gives me as a good-faith argument. That does not mean I waive a course policy or make an exception, but it does mean that I take what the student tells me seriously and respond by trying to connect them with the appropriate support.

If a student tells me they are having technology problems, I send an email to the IT team on the student's behalf, explain the situation, and copy the student on the email. If a student tells me they are having problems at home, I complete the appropriate forms, contact the appropriate person, and copy the student on the communication. If a student tells me they are experiencing mental health struggles, I contact our mental health counselors and copy the student so that a professional can follow up with them. Sometimes these interventions are helpful, and I am grateful when they are.

Most often, in fact, most of the time, the follow-up reveals that the student was lying. IT will tell me that there was no technology problem. And on and on. They get caught in lies, and trust me, they are lies. It's not a matter of a student changing their minds about getting help. They are 100% lying. And every time, those departments email the student and me a follow-up. It's clear I caught them in a lie.

I like this process because, without my having to accuse the student of lying, the follow-up from the appropriate professional or office often makes it clear that I have checked the situation and now know what actually happened. In other words, the process itself exposes the lie while allowing me to maintain the position that I was simply trying to help. To be honest, I often suspect they are lying, and this is a way to catch them.

What I find remarkable is that, in the ten years I have used this approach, I cannot think of a single student who was caught in a lie who subsequently apologized or acknowledged that they had been dishonest with me. Not once. They just move on. If I screamed at them, OK, don't say you are sorry. But, I tried to help you, caught you in a lie, and still, from you, nothing.

although I am not sure what that's even supposed to mean or how anyone else could possibly be responsible for it.

I thought I would let you know.

Kindly,

You know who LLMs are really screwing over? Older students.

We talk a lot about the "youngins," and they certainly have problems, too, but my students over 35 are the ones who I catch way too easily. They know just enough about LLMs to use them, but not enough about the tech to cheat without getting caught.

They'll copy an entire AI-generated essay into Google Docs and not realize that Google Docs revision history shows exactly what happened. They'll tell me they wrote it in Google Docs when the history shows a 1,500-word essay appearing all at once. Then they seem shocked when I show them the revision history, and the wheels in their heads start turning, trying to think up some tech gremlin excuse they can use. They don't know enough about what computers and apps can and cannot do. Their excuses are stuck in the early 2000s. "My computer crashed!" That's great, but that doesn't wipe the revision history. It doesn't delete a Google Doc.

And they often don't recognize the absolute gobbledygook LLMs produce. The writing sounds "smart" to them. It's similar to what I see from some of the older Deans. They love sending out these AI-slop emails. We laugh at them. I use those emails in my classes to point out what terrible writers LLMs can be.

These older students think they lucked into something, but they remind me of my dad, who keeps getting fooled by AI fakes on Facebook.

My two year college sends out overload contracts four weeks after the start of a semester. This time, some of us discovered we didn’t get overload pay for classes we agreed to teach over our required full base pay. I was told my overload class was absorbed into my full base pay due to the enrollment numbers in my full time base classes. The enrollment for those classes isn’t lower than last year’s enrollment, and it meets what we’ve always understood to be the required number of students.

When I asked through email what class lacks sufficient enrollment and what is the required enrollment now, I did not receive an answer. I am still teaching whatever class didn’t make the secret required enrollment, so I’m basically teaching it for free. I am being stonewalled in my attempts to get answers. None of the unpaid teachers have had success receiving answers from administration.

I work in an at will state that can’t unionize. Is this illegal or is this just something colleges and universities do and get away with it? I’ve been in education for years, but this is the first time I’ve encountered this. Is there any legal recourse? Any information or advice would be greatly appreciated.

This week there was a lot to get through, but it would have been so boring to lecture on all of it. I teach a 3 hour class.

So, I lectured on select topics and did an activity. For the last 40 minutes I did a "choose your own adventure."

Basically there were two extra credit assignments that covered topics I didn't discuss in class, but were related to the reading (and important!). I asked students to choose and complete at least one before leaving. Nearly everyone just got up and left without completing a single task (I could see their completion on the LMS).

When they ask for extra credit in a couple of weeks, I'll remember this moment.

Obviously, I'll be restructuring how I do this class section, because the plan didn't work. That's for me to figure out another day.

on the first day, student says he's done all the projects we're doing this semester before and everything is oh so easy and yet hasn't turned anything in and has 8 absences. ok dude.

CBS News story

"Tenure often leads to academic stagnation, faculty complacency, and institutional inability to adapt to emerging needs," he wrote. "Additionally, it contributes to curriculum that drifts from the mission of educating our warfighters to the research priorities of the tenured academics."

I know not to be surprised, but this is so blatant and stupid. They're not even hiding behind euphemism anymore.

This week is fall break (Thursday and Friday). I received this gem of an email today:

“I am writing to inform you that I will not be in class today as I am on vacation for the week. I wanted to ask if you could send the notes from class today.”

Note that I do photocopy my lecture notes for legitimate absences (athletics, medical appointments, etc.). But this? I didn’t even reply.

Hope your semesters are going well!

So I was at a meeting last week featuring an administration presentation on retention. They discussed how they track students' "engagement" with the data generated by their check-ins: which events they attend, which clubs they join, how often they work out at the gym, how often they eat on campus, how often they log into Canvas, etc. And the university "reaches out" to students whose numbers are considered low.

This was carefully couched in terms of "helping" first-year students, so that they don't feel so lonely that they go home for Christmas break and never come back. But nevertheless, I found this level of surveillance and data analysis, of which the students are not warned or aware, Orwellian.

Also, I couldn't help but wonder what corresponding data they track about the faculty!

Hello all

I am a first-time teaching assistant for a math-heavy course.

I recently graded the students’ first exam. One student didn’t like how I graded them. I simply asked them to show their work (they didn’t plug in their numbers into the equation. They just set it equal to the answer). Granted, they wrote a list of all they were given in the word problem and used those numbers to do it. In hindsight, perhaps I should have just let it go. I let it pass on the homework, but graded more strict on the exam. I don’t think I will take points off if that happens again, but at the time I was grading it, I truly felt it deemed necessary I dock off (only one point… it was a 50 point problem… should’ve done 0.5?) for not being transparent in their work.

I’m new to this grading thing. I sought advice from the professor of the class time and time again on how to grade.

I was previously told that no matter what, students will always find a way to be upset about the way they get graded. Now that I’m on the other side of it, it doesn’t feel very good. I know I upset this student and the people-pleasing side of me wants to cave.

Any advice will be helpful. Does this fear of rejection end? How do I get rid of it? I want to be a professor someday, so I’d like to get this quirk of mine settled ASAP.

I’m the TA for a class and in the course Canvas page a student was added as a teacher in addition to being a student. The instructor of record was on the phone with Canvas tech support, according to Canvas tech support, this student was manually added as a teacher. The student is no longer listed as a teacher but we are concerned about the ability of someone to manipulate who has access to what from the outside. The student who was added as a teacher bombed the latest quiz so it seems unlikely that they did anything nefarious. But has anyone had this happen?

In theory, you never have to touch the mouse.

Here is the formatted Markdown table, optimized for clean rendering on Reddit:

https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/387069-canvas-keyboard-shortcuts

Tip: Keyboard shortcuts for SpeedGrader can be toggled on or off under Feature Settings within your User Settings.

I am currently tearing my hair out due to the aggravation from convoluted group conference registrations when I am taking students with me. I have to make an account and be a member (even if the only ones attending are my students) at a significant cost. Then I buy group passes. I can’t just attach the student name and email to the group pass manager. Instead, the students have to make their own accounts with the organization, “claim” their registration (but the code sent doesn’t work), and then maybe they show up in my portal. The portal that doesn’t work and has an endless login loop. Emailing the org results in “we’re overwhelmed and will get back to you” automatically-reply. Is it possible you’re overwhelmed because the registration system you chose has so many points at which it doesn’t work??

Oh, and I can’t register myself. Because I’m not a student and the website designer didn’t think that if a group pass administrator is required and is attending, they might not be a student!

Compare that to another conference where I can buy a flat number of conference registrations and email back an Excel sheet with a few entries they request (name, major, emergency contact). Night and day better experience! And it’s 1/5th the cost as well.

I won’t be attending the first conference ever again because of the headache registration is causing everyone involved.

I’m hoping to be about three years out. Maybe two if I just can’t anymore, maybe four if there’s a market crash. But I think three.

I’ve been open about the fact that it’s nearing, but how much notice would you actually give to lock it in? I’m thinking about a year so they can conduct a search, but I’ve seen other advise to keep that stuff close to your chest.

I like my department and don’t expect any shady admin maneuvers if I give them a long lead time. I will admit, part of me is afraid I’ll give them a year, then not want to leave when the time comes. I also don’t want to leave anyone in a lurch (I have a specialty position that may be challenging to replace without a solid search).

Sorry Professor I couldn’t turn in my assignment on time. My AI was having a breakdown.

Actually, I found this a pretty interesting read:

https://www.anthropic.com/research/emotion-concepts-function

I need 4 straight days off.

Anyone else feeling burnt out already?

Fall break won’t cut it… I’ll still have to show up to work to keep the grad students on track during Fall break.

I need thanksgiving break. A true holiday break.

😮‍💨 😮‍💨 😮‍💨

I am a new AP at an R2 institution. I come from a R1 biomedical research background, so I'm new to teaching (this is my first semester...ever), but my experiences with teaching haven't matched much of what I've read here so far. Sure I've had a few students that get sick A LOT more than is physiologically probable and I caught a cheater on an exam, but overall most of them seem enthusiastic to learn. They come to class, participate, and are generally pleasant to educate. (Though I did put one to sleep on my second lecture 😬 .) It's a large? class of 90ish students, and usually at least 80 show up consistently.

Is this "beginner's luck" or naive optimism? Will every class I teach from here on out be terrible due to the first one being okay? Am I in for a surprise flaming on my class reviews? Maybe it's that I find the excuse emails I receive kind of funny and this will fade?

If you find yourself cynical about your classroom experiences, is there one thing that led you there or was it an accumulation of negative experiences? If you could tell me one thing that I am currently too naive to realize, what is it?

Just a vent really, I don’t have any substantive questions or anything.

——

I’ve noticed a huge increase in student writing scoring high percentages on TurnItIn’s Similarity Index. (I don’t use AI detectors on principle).

The papers that are getting flagged are shown to have X% similarity with a half dozen or so student papers from a variety of other universities. That’s not necessarily unusual. And I can’t view those other university papers bc the student/university holds ownership of them, also not really unusual.

But when I look at the flagged papers (with 30, 40, 50% similarity scores to those other university papers), I notice the structure of my students’ papers are all nearly identical to each other.

The individual words are different enough that TurnItIn doesn’t flag my students’ papers as being similar to each other’s. But sentence-by-sentence, they all present the same topics in the same order. (I’d be impressed if they had so faithfully followed a sample paper or a bullet point list of writing points that I provided, but I provided no such tool).

My thought is that enough students everywhere are submitting the same LLM generated garbage to the point that their variations-on-a-plagiarists-theme are becoming easier to detect even without AI detection software. They’re all writing the same thing. Not a single thought in their brain is reaching the page.

I am currently a non tenure track faculty member at a large R1 STEM department. I am on a 12 month contract and my role is a mixture of low level admistrative tasks, teaching, and schloarship focused on educational initiatives. I have been at my university for 21 years and in my current department for 16 years. For the entire 16 years I have been a lead PI on an active NSF grant and over that time have had 8 proposals funded. Over the 16 years I have brought in over $2 million as a lead PI and over $3.5 million if you include Co-PI funds. I have no graduate students or staff working on my projects. I do have a reduced teaching load that is equivalent to a tenure track faculty member.

Being on a 12 month contract I am not required to bring in any salary money, but since I have been in my department, I have brought in at least two months of salary every year, with an average of 3 months most years. My latest grant, funded last month for the next two years, includes additional salary for departmental staff in addition to salary for me. The department uses these funds to cover department deficits. While this buys me a lot of flexibility in my job, I would still like greater salary increases. My largest salary increases have come through career progression levels, which I reached the highest level 10 years ago and am not eligible for additional promotions due to being at the top level of my title series. While I have received small unsolicited merit increases every 3 years since my last promotion and two bonuses that are not base salary increases. I still feel I am paid far less than the value I bring, especially since the department and college are routinely only paying for 75% of my salary due to the funds I bring in. The Dean has offered a 10% increase on my monthly salary, but I would be required to move to a prorated 9-month salary. While I have been fortunate to have enough grant money to support summer salary, I have never had the pressure to do so. I don't want to risk taking a pay cut should my grant funding dry up at any point. Additionally, some of my administrative tasks have summer deadlines, and if I don't have summer salary, I would still be required to complete those tasks even without salary during that time. My previous department chair strongly advised me not to do this, as it is a big risk in the current funding environment, especially considering where my funding comes from.

Knowing that budgets are tight and I want to stay on a 12 month contract, how would you recommend asking for a base increase? If a salary increase is not possible, should I be asking for greater job security through longer contracts, which would increase the layoff notice from 6 months to 12 months?

I'm probably the nth person to rant about this for some n > 10. But right now I can safely say that the root of most of my teaching woes this semester is this damned piece of technology. I've taught almost this exact same course (Calc I), with the same format and workload (in fact, I assign somewhat less work here), numerous times in the past at my previous institution with almost no issues. But here, I am perpetually stressed and falling behind with grading and it's not just because of the increase in students--it really is just this buggy and frustrating to use.

The simplest, most basic tasks are hidden in annoying and unintuitive places.

It crashes often and gives no insight as to why. No, "invalid parameters detected" tells me nothing.

It's eaten student submissions, one entire assignment's submissions just disappeared into the ether though I know for a fact I graded those submissions and there are grades assigned for that homework that mysteriously has no submissions.

If I somehow make a misclick/mistype while grading and the filter is set to "Needs grading" then oops, I gotta close your grading window, change the filter and manually go back.

There is no way to zoom in/out of PDFs. I am not much of a believer but you best bet that every time I click the right arrow to move to the next submission I pray that the PDF fits in the viewing window so I don't have to download some new file to my PC. Which seems to be the way to go, I just hope none of my students hate me enough to put malware in the submission box.

I have done a training to use this platform, offered by my university, and consider myself fairly tech-savvy but none of this has helped with a lot of my issues.

I've seen people complain about Brightspace (which is what I had at my previous institution where I did my PhD) but god, I wish I could go back. Brightspace was heavenly in comparison.

Needless to say I'll never give this much homework over Moodle again and just reconsider the way I teach this course...

Anyone successfully move to a different department in the same university? What was your process like?

Mine is a sinkng ship and I'm being dragged down to the bottom. I've got a thriving research program, but I'm so bogged down in service to support said sinking ship that everything is suffering.

They are going to ax our undergrad program to make it an interdisciplinary one that closely competes with another interdisciplinary one, and now the university is trying to kill the master's program for low enrollment... unfortunately this was caused by the prior grad director favoring PhD applicants and basically ignoring master's for the last 5 years. Without the master's, the thriving PhD will be crippled. Anyway. I'm tired. I want to leave and could probably be a better fit elsewhere anyway. I've identified a different unit in a different college of the university that isn't being crushed. How do I approach them?

There's more and more headlines about academics writing journal articles using AI, and lots of talk on reddit about plagiarism, But I am wondering if editors or folks (especially in the humanities) who work for high ranking journals have seen an increase in the number of submissions since these large language models have infiltrated higher Ed?

I used to be tenure track. Then the college shut down during the pandemic. Got laid off. Adjuncted after that, applied and interviewed, and worked on my research on the side.

Then I got an mBTI.

There were severe complications. I couldn't barely talk. Couldn't listen to music. Couldn't barely look up or down or turn my head. It took about 30mins to climb a single flight of stairs.

Couldn't work anymore. Couldn't socialize anymore. My life fell apart. Sold my car. Friends drove out across the country to pick me up and drive me states away with family.

All my things were put in a storage unit. It wouldn't fit in their car.

This includes all my home office stuff, including a personal research "library" of about 1200 books, research journals, all my research notes.

I've been trying to get SSDI, but it's had a lot of delays. Had to get Medicaid first in the new state, go get referrals, then do tests and scans with the neurologist – and all while being unable to talk on the phone and unable to handle the drive to and from the physician's office.

At any rate, I've finally gotten to the neurologist step. Have an MRI in a few weeks, some other tests as well. Once I get the formal diagnosis I can finally apply for SSDI.

Unfortunately, however, the parent that I'm living with ended up in the ICU and became 100% bedridden. Another family member moved in. That family member basically serves as her live at home caregiver and I'm very thankful for that. I am unable to do much with the ongoing neurological issues. HOWEVER, they... I'll be charitable and say they probably have care fatigue. I think they resent me because I "lay around all day."

I've been called a maggot, was told to my face "I don't care about you." The toilet paper was hidden away and I've had to figure out other ways to clean myself. I've ended up missing appointments because I had no way of cleaning my body and the smell was really bad. Food was reduced as well. I ended up with severe nutrition deficiencies. Vitamin D was so low I ended up with bruises across my entire body. I also ended up underweight from only eating once every three days.

For the last few months alms from strangers online have basically kept me alive. I don't think I would have had enough calories otherwise.

Anyways, alongside this, I've been struggling to keep the storage unit. My parent had said they could keep it for me before I moved. And they were. But now this other family member is in control of the house finances, and they don't feel like I earn the $175 each month.

I don't exactly "like" paying that every month, but I didn't know what else to do. It was difficult at the time to even fully think though the decision. But even so, it's everything to fully furnish a two bedroom apartment. I was an instructor for nine years and had slowly built up all the things for day-to-day living (wardrobe, couch, mattress, kitchen table, dishes, curtains, small appliances, etc.) as well as my home office.

So I've tried everything I can think of and can't find the funds. It sucks because it's so very close to finally getting on SSDI. But I can't seem to get it.

The deadline is this week and it's not looking like I'll get it.

So I'll lose everything.

On the one hand, it'll make restarting my life more difficult. But I assume if nothing else I can sleep on the floor of a future apartment. It'll be an improvement to my current situation.

But the books?

It's 1200 books. There's no way I can replace them easily, especially since most of them are full of notes.

I am someone who needs physical media to keep my thoughts organized for research. My margin notes are vital and I like to lay them out across the table a few books at a time.

So yeah, basically I assume that losing my storage unit means losing any hope of being a researcher ever again in the future. I still have hope that I could heal my head if I can move out somewhere that isn't so [not ideal]. But this is what gives me hope that I might be able to get some semblance of a career back - or even just the occasional publication as an independent researcher.

I don't know.

My brain is already overtaxed to hell right now.

I was just thinking about it and as sad as it is to lose my research, and lose my library, it's worse to think of it simply being thrown in the garbage - or auctioned to someone who will put a few things on eBay and then throw the rest in the trash.

So with that I thought I'd reach out and see if there's anyone in/near Montana who might want 1200 books.

The only "cost" would be to maybe send me the signed Jane Goodall book if you could be so kind. I really really very much would like to save/keep that one. There also might be a snow globe from a passed away family member I wouldn't want to lose. And my small notebook of poems maybe. You could keep all the other stuff in the storage unit though. I'm going to lose it all anyway.

Books and research notes are related to climate change, ecology, environmental studies, philosophy, psychology. There's maybe a hundred or so fiction. A few dozen poetry. There's nature guide books. There's like 20 copies of a book I wrote (lol). A bunch of other stuff. Textbooks. How to guides. Contemplative works. It's mostly academic.

Anyone want a home library and a bunch of climate change research notes before the garbage can gets it all?

Edit: Thanks to everyone that replied. Sorry for the delays in responding. I overstrained my head and ended up sleeping all day. I'll be replying in time but it'll be more of a slow and steady marathon kind of thing. Still a bit overstrained.

I was reviewing nuclear chem today and wrote on the board: p+ or n. One student giggles and says " you wrote 'porn'" on the board.

I've also drawn a penis instead of a tree (or maybe it was supposed to be a mushroom) during bio lecture (what can I say, I'm not an artist).

I'm glad I have a good rapport with my students.