Soul, playing internet detective and trying to track down a poster’s real-life identity is strictly forbidden. This is a warning not to ever do anything like this again.
Oh yeah? When I taught Speech classes I had kids who refused to give speeches! I can understand being shy and not wanting to do any public speaking…so WHY IN THE HELL DID YOU SIGN UP FOR A PUBLIC SPEAKING COURSE?!? And don’t tell me it’s so you could overcome your fear of public speaking. There’s better ways to do that than failing a high school course and not graduating because you didn’t get your fine arts credit.
And if they lack the syllabus or the wherewithal to find it, they can always call or visit the department or division (though God knows if they can locate that either), or check with a brighter classmate, or check the catalog…yet they can’t seem to think of these things on their own.
Ah crap. Let me explain, and then I’ll just step out of this thread, head hung low.
The prof I mentioned is a former instructor of mine who is infamous for designing clear-as-mud websites, then proclaiming their clarity with the same certainty one can imagine the Captain of the Titanic saying “Damn the iceberg!” It was an extremely poorly thought out joke – looking back on it, the only other people who might have found it remotely funny are those who were in the class with me two and a half years ago, and I imagine those folks are few and far between here.
Since my university is currently shifting their policies regarding instructor-run websites, there has been a well-known rash of poorly designed course webpages here as of late. I’ve had several professors whose names I could have put in the same joke, but I specifically chose the one I did because, what with her being a woman and all, I knew that she couldn’t possibly be cerberus.
In short, this thread reminded me of a class experience I had once, and it gave me a momentary chuckle to recall the ridiculously impassioned defense my former professor would present when her website was questioned. The attempt I made at sharing said chuckle was not only very badly thought out, but gave the impression that I was playing internet detective. I apologize for that, and intend to go sulk in the corner until allowed out.
[/hijack]
Ah, now I’m ready for the Pit…
So, after you little seat lumps saw I wasn’t kidding about needing to access lecture and study aids online, now, nearly a month in, you’re whining about not being able to access the websites that you all swore you had no problems with at the end of the first week of class? You want me to email you all these things individually? Tough shit–the support people hold office hours 8am-5pm, and you’d better have everything you need when the assignment comes due.
Furthermore, why can’t any of you people take three steps without emailing me for advice? Sending me six emails in two hours (at least, to the student’s credit, they were properly addressed and written in standard English) when I have repeatedly told you as a class that I teach most of the day and will not be able to reply until the evening is a good way to make me hate the sight of you.
And sister (who is college age), damn you, why the hell did you fucking leave your fucking expensive electronics visible in the car when you left it to go buy groceries? Why are you fucking surprised that they got fucking stolen? NO, I don’t know what you should do! I live 1,500 miles away; I can’t do anything for you. Aaaaaaaaargh!!!
In some classes I require students to login to Blackboard from their university accounts during the first week. I can see who logged in, which is very useful later for responding to both “I didn’t know we had to use Blackboard” and “I got in before but now I can’t.”
Which always cracks me up. I have students who make a point of showing up at my office hours the first week to bootlick-- hoping I will buy their self-identification as “good students” – and then fuck around for the rest of the term thinking I don’t notice that they’re 15 minutes late every day and sit in the front row (“good student”). . . not taking any notes at all. Sometimes making sure that you’re in the front of the prof’s mind is not a good idea.
And then there are the students in the big classes who could have gone under the radar but instead are so fabulously obnoxious in lecture that I think Who IS That?! and look them up on the class list (we have a computerized class list that shows student’s pictures from their ID cards) and assign them nicknames (“Aloha, Mister Hand”, “Prince Engineer”, “The Accountant”). Remember, we tend to know by name not one but TWO kinds of students: the good ones, AND the ones who have antagonized us. And we don’t mix up those two groups.
Yeah, Shoshana, they always freeze and look horrified about halfway through the term when I mention that Blackboard/WebCT charts their visits.
Public Service Announcement:
Students, up at the podium, we can see what you’re doing. We might not always call you on it, or we might NEVER call you on it, but we know that you’re doodling/ doing sudoku/ texting/ reading Facebook/ sleeping/ glaring/ stoned/ leaving a half hour early. Just because we don’t bring class to a halt and disrupt everything by mentioning it doesn’t mean we like it.
Fair enough. As a general rule, we’re a bit jumpy whenever we see a non-celebrity someone’s real life identity discussed even if they aren’t a poster to the thread, and doubly jumpy when they are. I’ll add an epilogue to your warning, with a summary of your explanation. So unless you go on a rule-breaking rampage in the near future, it should just sink into the mists of time, forgotten.
I think there are a lot of people, especially in educational situations, who are not comfortable just being directed to a Web site for all information. There is something to be said for getting information from a live person, especially if it’s the person actually setting standards. I don’t think people are fucktards for seeing something on a Web site and then asking the instructor, “Is this really what you want?” It’s only human.
“Is this really what you want?”
What answer would you reasonably expect to such a question? How about:
“No, it’s not really what i want. I spent hours of my valuable time before the semester started, not only designing a syllabus and associated pedagogical tools, but putting them all together on a website, specifically to trick you into doing something completely different from what i asked. Congratulations! The secret to passing this course was to come up and ask me if the instructions i put on the website were what i really wanted you to do. All the other chumps in the course, the naive fools who actually follow the instructions, are going to fail; but you will receive an A thanks to your brilliant skepticism.”
Now, if they find some of my instructions confusing, or would like further clarification, or don’t understand something in particular, then i’m happy to help. But asking if the instructions that i’ve specifically told them to follow are really what i want seems rather obtuse, to say the least.
As for getting the information from a “live person,” every single instructor i know goes through virtually all this stuff in person anyway. I certainly do. The website is there to give the students a place to go if they forget something, or lose the stuff i hand out in class, or to get extra useful information. Everything important is covered in class. The website is simply there so that it only has to be covered once in class, rather than eating up valuable teaching time with multiple repetition of procedural minutiae.
And it’s not like my website has been constructed by some third party who has tried to divine, through the powers ESP, what i might want my students to do. If such were the case, the students might have some excuse for asking me to confirm my instructions. I designed the syllabus myself; i chose the readings; i wrote the assignments; and i also wrote the HTML and CSS. In terms of the content and my association with it, it’s no different than if i handed out those same instructions on a piece of paper in class (which i often do), or if a recited them in class (which i also often do).
Surely we’re past the stage, especially among people in post-secondary education, where a website is some mystical fantasyland where things are never quite what they seem. It’s merely a tool that makes it easier to provide students with information. Its whole purpose, if used properly, should be to help the learning process by reducing the amount of class time spent on basic “housekeeping” issues.
It’s not the literal question that’s necessarily important. It’s the simple human interaction. I do it all the time, especially if it’s for something important, like an expensive transaction or an HR matter or a government matter. I want to talk to someone and say, “This is what I got from your Web site. Do I understand it correctly?” I want human confirmation. I want to be told, “Yes, what you read is how I want it.” (After all, it’s the human, not the HTML code on the Web site, who’s going to be evaluating the submissions.) And I think human interaction is an important component of education.
No, the Web isn’t a fantasyland.
But I think, to some extent, this might be a kind of fantasyland. In the end, I think the ability of technology to abbreviate human interaction has limitations, simply because deep down, the human mind wants face-to-face, hand-to-eye, voice-to-ear, and, especially, redundant interactions. Redundancy, repetition … it’s a central component of learning and communication. And that’s especially the case, I think, with young (up to undergraduate age) students.
acsenray, I see where you’re coming from. I’m not saying that it’s never OK to ask me a clarifying question, and if someone is doing an advanced reading of a text or some other assignment that is really pushing them to the limit, then I’m happy to answer the “is this what you mean?” question. I think most of us here are lamenting the fact that we are generally besieged with requests that are:
–asking after the most basic information (“you mean we have to bring the text?”)
–asking about things that they would be able to find out on their own if they would demonstrate the tiniest bit of initiative
–seeking our (pre)approval for everything they do because they do not have the ability or desire to be independent–whenever college students find their “freedom” challenged by course attendance requirements, pop quizzes or otherwise, they are fond of claiming that they are adults…well, if they are adults, then there are some basic intellectual tasks they need to be able to perform on their own
(Furthermore, for it to be a “human interaction,” there has to be acknowledgment of humanity on both sides, and I find that when I am asked questions in the preceding three categories, the student doing the asking generally has no regard whatsoever for me as a human being and simply regards me as an easier type of search engine that can be pestered until it spits out the desired response.)
It’s the independence issue that drives me nuts. If I wanted to teach students who were still at the level where they were unsure how to recognize how to construct a basic argument using simple, correct sentences or how to reasonably support a position, I’d teach high school English where I would help students do these things again and again and again until they developed a sense of independent discretion and could do it on their own. I have nothing but the highest respect for people who are called to do this and do it well; I just don’t have the temperament for it.
I signed up to teach legal adults who have freedom over their time and important privacy protections that even apply to their parents. I know that they haven’t all fully developed their sense of judgment about time management, what sorts of causes they want to support, what sort of stances they want to argue for, what they judge a career and a life should be measured by–that’s why they are in my charge. I want to help them confront these tough questions and provide them with advanced analytical skills that help them develop a sense of judgment, that teach them how to ask the right questions, that provide them with a sense of the complexity of this world and force them to confront the many different and bizarre consequences that their simple choices may have. All these things contribute to the development of a coherent world-view and more interesting, enjoyable people. There are no words for how rewarding this process is, and it is a joy to me when I can take a student through these steps. However, I cannot do this if they fail to demonstrate the most basic sense of independence. Most of them, as evidenced by all the questions and demands that you see listed in this thread, are not there yet. This is what makes me angry–that I am swamped by students who prevent me from going about my duty and fulfilling the strong calling I feel as a college educator in the humanities.
There is no abbreviation of human interaction in our model. It’s simply that the human interaction should, as much as possible, be used to teach students actual content, not just procedural minutiae. The students get just as much face-to-face, hand-to-eye, voice-to-ear contact as they would in a world with no internet. It’s simply that i try to devote as much time as possible to actually teaching them something, rather than going over and over details that are not part of the intellectual content of the course.
You are right that redundancy and repetition are a part of learning and some types of communication. I can’t tell you how many times i repeat the definition of “Antinomianism” and “Arminianism” for the students in my American Intellectual History course. I do this because those are difficult concepts, ones that most of them haven’t heard before, and that are crucial to an understanding of the Puritan worldview.
But there are some things that everyone except a shit-flinging monkey should get without incessant repetition. I’m sorry, but if you cannot glean, after a detailed explanation in class and a look at the website, that i want your papers to be double spaced with wide margins, and that i want you to use footnotes rather than in-text referencing for your work, then you’re a moron. I’m not going to go over those requirements time and again, when i could be using that time giving more detailed explanations of what antinomianism is and why it’s important.
Not only that, but the students we get in the classroom nowdays are increasingly web-literate. They know how to interact online, they all have MySpace pages, they all text the shit out each other at every possible opportunity, and they all carry on extensive social networking electronically. If they can do all that from a computer screen or a phone, they should be able to read and understand the fucking instructions on how to write a paper.
And, i might add, most of them can and do. Despite my ranting here, my own students have generally been great. In my experience, it’s generally only a small minority that fucks this stuff up, and, probably not coincidentally, those are often the same students who persistently turn up late for class, and make little or no effort to engage themselves in class discussions.
This is one of my favorite things about teaching high school. If you can’t manage to at least follow directions, not cheat, and have a modicum of self-starterism, I just don’t have much sympathy. I hope you have fun laying asphalt or answering phones.
I just had the greatest experience in class. The prof doesn’t allow texting at all, and is adamant that we don’t even try to sneak it. So, of course, one kid HAD to try it because he’s too cool and in touch to follow the rules for 75 minutes straight. The prof took the phone away and it sat on the desk. The student piped up, “Hey! You can’t take the phone!” So the prof said, “You’re right, but I’m taking the battery, and you’ll get it back when you complete a paper on today’s lecture. Judging by how fast you text, you should be done by the end of me classes tonight.”
Awesome.
I’m always willing to give things another look based on your opinion, mhendo. It’s good to “see” you again.
It may be that I’m old enough to be wrong in thinking of professors’ websites as ancillary tools that may not be equally available to all students because of differences in access to computers. But even if I am, there was nothing in the OP to indicate that it was class time of which s/he was jealous, rather than his/her own office hours and other time. Wasting the former justifies some harshness on the part of the instructor, but it strikes me that infractions of this sort could be fairly easily deflected. In his office, unless s/he’s hopelessly overbooked, the only crime is that, in the time reserved for them, the students are boring her/him. In any event, if asking for information available elsewhere were forbidden, no one would ever have to importune the OP again on any topic (or take the damn class, for that matter). I viewed “my fucking fucktard students” as a collective noun: it didn’t seem as though cerberus was drawing too many distinctions in his/her zeal. And I’ll stand by “contempt” as characterizing the attitudes expressed in the OP.
If class time is being wasted, the OP has more of a point but is also the one most responsible for forestalling such behavior. If the OP’s personal time is being wasted, s/he has a simple recourse: to not be available to students then. If his office time reserved for students is being devoted to those “fucktards” who are also taking their own free time to make sure they understand his/her rules, well, it’s clear they’re paying a heavy price for it.
Because of your comments, though, I’ll concede that I should withdraw my harsher-than-necessary assessment and have more sympathy for a professor’s frustration. I don’t like college students either.
Nice strawmen, really.
Do you just respond to your own projections, or does anything actually get through that neutronium-thick skull of yours?“Gee, I’ll just respond to what my reality-addled brain thinks the OP is going on about.”
If you view websites as being mere ancilliaries, then you are woefully malinformed. Old? Don’t know about that, and I decline to project on you demographically, since I already projected the bit about your skull being thick. And composed of neutronium.
My website is the de facto course deck: Syllabus, Textbook, Common Notebook, Planning Calendar, Old Test Bank. Everything is up there, and it is one of the best-regarded features of my course. Even the students who absolutely hate me, love my website.
As for access, that’s been dealt with. Even the students who can’t be bothered to tech-up have access to student labs. On campus. There’s also free access - in public libraries. There’s also internet cafes. The vast super-majority of my students are freaking hyper-literate, tech-wise. They can bank online, hook-up online. IM each other, steal music, role-play online. They can download movies and porn, and also free! insipid ringtones too!
And they can certainly be expected to navigate the page when they’ve seen me navigate that page, every day, in real time, in the classroom.
Here’s a clue: these modern campuses? They’ve been wired. For a good twenty years or so. Even the Luddite campuses have been wired for about ten years or so. Even my back-water institution was wired and teched-up since the late nineties.
If they’re too lazy or careless to look up the mundane details of the course, fuck’em. Class time is reserved for the fucking subject matter - they’re there to learn the subject matter.
If it’s a subject matter question, grrrrrrreat. I’m all over that. If it’s about when the second test is, look that shit up. If it’s an equally-insipid mind-fuck like “What will be on the test?”, when the old tests for the last fucking five years or so are posted? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that.
There’s curious, then there’s malignantly stupid.
I respect my students enough to use modern methods, and enough to expect them to use the most up-to-date resources. I respect my students enough to expect them to stick to the subject matter, and to not waste their fellow students’ time and energy with mundane queries that can be resolved out of class.
It’s not a matter of being bored, or of hating college students, fuckwit. If I were to enable the stupid, lazy careless wasting of class time, then I’d be showing contempt for my students.
On the other hand, to those teachers who don’t put anything on a website:
When I forget to write down the homework assignment, and email you later to ask you what it was, I’d really appreciate if you, ya know, sent me something back or at least acknowledged that you got it. Especially when I put in a decent effort to write you a grammatically-sound request in your native language.
In my public speaking class, our teacher told us to show up on our speech day dressed professionally, which she defined as “how you would dress for an job interview after college if you want the job”. Some douchebag in shorts and a baseball cap turned 40 degrees to one side raised his hand and asked if we had to wear pants. To her credit, she handled that question just about as well as you could expect anyone to. I’m not sure I would have handled it professionally.
Then the dumbass still showed up on his speech day with a half-sideways baseball cap on, and his lip ring in.
This is actually one of my major pet peeves. I finally got a teacher this semester–for the first time–who didn’t read the syllabus word for word on day one, and expected us to read it ourselves. AFAICT it’s worked. I believe that it is completely impossible to pay a modicum of attention during the Syllabus Read-Off, unless the teacher has enlisted a vaudeville troup in blackface and is actually smashing watermelons during The ESU Guide to Not Plagiarizing, which each student has heard and read approximately 8,000 times.
What, do you teach self-defense through the all-important Eye Poke Method?
I doubt there’s a single university or community college in the 50 states and outlying U.S. territories that doesn’t have a number of computers all over the campus with fast internet connections, available long after classes get out on any given day.
Gee, cerberus, you must be very, very angry, to pit a few nameless students’ waste of your time (they must be very unimportant to warrant the pitting) and then take still more of your time to rebuke a pseudonymous message board poster like me (who must be somehow very important to justify your time). I’ll leave it to others (especially SDMB academics) to diagnose the problem here, but since it isn’t a rock-hard certainty that the folks you’re abusing actually have equal access to your website (and you pretty much admit that they don’t), there may be room for the theory that some of the people you’re pitting don’t quite deserve it.
Meanwhile, if
(Emphasis added)
this tells you nothing about your future as a teacher, nothing will. Especially
I apologized for thinking you left everything on the web page. Now I’m wondering why, if your class time is spent reciting from and pointing to it, you think it shouldn’t be the focus of students’ questions…
mhendo managed to buy you a bagful of benefit of the doubt. You squandered it right quick, professor. It doesn’t help that none of your posts seem to reveal a topic of which you might be might be considered an authority.
I mean, good God, “reality-addled?” Do you even read what you write? I don’t blame you.
Remarkable, Soup, really.
First, I’ve been teaching for twenty+ years, so your absolutely incorrect inference about my “future as a teacher” is horseshit.
Second, you’re inferring that the majority of my reviews are negative. Wrong! Again! What I said, fuckwit, was that even the students that hated me still looooooovved my website. The vaaaaaaaaaast majority of my reviews are positive. Fuckwit. Did I state the relative frequency of my negative student reviews? Perhaps 3 out of 100, and that’s in a bad term.
Third, you infer that all I do is “recite the website”. Wrong again, fuckwit. What I do is take all the stuff that normally ends up scattered across textbooks, notebooks, handouts and the like, and compile it as a single source. That my students can access. See, we work stuff out in the classroom, see? And then I go over what they did, in the classroom. And then I summarize it, and post it. Everything I present is after the fact, after they’ve attempted it.
As for access, fuckwit, in this brave, 21st century? All of my students have access to the mighty interweb tubules. This isn’t 1979, fuckwit, a significant chunk of my students bring their own laptops with them. And they can network in my classroom, ‘cos the classroom’s, that’s right, fuckwit, technologically current. And has been for many years. Hell, most of them can fucking browse on their own cellphones. My students have web access in at least three modes: Personal, Campus Lab, their friends’ computers, Public library labs, internet cafes.
In fact, fuckwit, the university absolutely assumes and requires students to use this technology, and they strongly encourage faculty to use this technology. A student enrolled now in any reasonable college would find it difficult to succeed without a personal computer. Never mind the utter lack of marketability that a student has without computer literacy.
As for imputing excessive anger, fuckwit, let me attempt to educate you: this is the fucking Pit, where we are wont to vent. The threads in the Pit, fuckwit, are supposed to be a bit heated.