All my classes are online this semester. For the most part, it’s not a problem. I’m mostly capable of learning this stuff on my own. I write my papers and I solve my math problems.
However, a fairly large part of the grade for 3 of my 5 classes is based on participation. Since the classes are online, participation takes the form of discussion boards. Our professors give us questions to answer. Not only do we have to answer the questions, we have to reply to at least 2 of our classmates. These replies are supposed to be coherent and well thought out.
Every week I have to struggle to find 2 people to respond to.
In one class this week, we’re supposed to address the 3 ballot questions for election day. I had to research each of them before writing my answers and then I went searching for other answers to respond to.
How many different ways can people find to write, “I don’t really give a shit”. Seriously now, the whole point of this class is to LEARN SOMETHING!! Don’t state your opinion on a ballot question as, “I don’t really understand the issue but I think it needs to be changed”. If you don’t understand the issue, how can you know whether or not it needs to be changed? Don’t you understand that the first step in answering this question is to RESEARCH?
Now, I really don’t give a shit what kind of damage they’re doing to their own grades and I have no idea if they get full credit for answers like that.
BUT, my ability to get full credit is directly related to my ability to respond to them. Every week I have to restrain myself from sending an email to my professor which states that I will not be completing my assignment this week because it shouldn’t be my responsibility to coax enough give-a-shit out of them to form a real discussion.
I’m not sure what is more annoying; Complete crap answers that don’t open themselves to discussion, or the people who don’t post their answers until half an hour before the deadline. We have an entire week to post our answers and to respond to others but all our posting is supposed to be done before the deadline. If half the class doesn’t post until just before the deadline, how are the rest of us supposed to reply to them?
On the second issue, I would suggest that you politely draw you professor’s attention to this problem (not the problem of stupid, content-free posts, the problem of posts that are made too late to be commented on) and suggest that there ought to be separate deadlines, an earlier one for original posts and another later one (perhaps at the original deadline time) for comments. The situation as you describe it does indeed seem unreasonable, but it is a structural issue that is more the fault of the professor than the students. It may well be that the professor has simply not realized that this problem will arise, and the solution seems fairly simple to institute.
As for the first problem, why not treat posts along the lines of “I don’t give a shit about X” as an opportunity to explain, in your comment, why they ought to give a shit, i.e., why the issue actually matters. That way, you will almost certainly deserve an A, and they most certainly won’t. (Whether or not either of you will actually get the grades you deserve is, of course, another matter.)
Well, at least half the problem should be easy to fix. If your professor is amenable to ideas, at least. Just require students to post their OP by date X and their replies by date X+1. Then you’ll have at least a day to respond to others.
I came to the realization last night that I spend too much time worrying about offending people. I got my 2 responses last night (plus another one for good measure) but I may have also pissed off a couple people. I just checked the boards. No one has responded to me yet. I almost hope I pissed someone off because then at least we can get a discussion going.
I’ve remembered the other 2 issues I had that I wanted to complain about.
Responding to a post with, “Oh yes, I completely agree with everything you say” is not a discussion. It’s okay if you do completely agree and wont feel better until you make it known; but, it’s still not a discussion.
This is not a chat room. Please use full sentences, proper punctuation, proper grammar, and STOP ENDING SENTENCES WITH “HAHA”!! By the way, there’s this awesome new invention. It’s called a spell checker. You might want to try using it. One more thing, the plural of casino is not casino’s.**
Plato was a ver ysmrt man haha.
Dogfihgting is bad haha.
We need casino’s haha. AAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
When I was taking an online class last year, the discussion deadlines were staggered as people here have suggested, so first posts were due on Wednesday and responses were due on Sunday. It made it much easier.
Congo, perhaps it is best that this is a on-line class, less chance we would need to take up a collection for bail money.
I can see they might be hazy on the whole Developer-busts-zoneing-low-income-houseing thing, but the boosted sales tax rollbacks would seem like no-brainers.
Or do they all drive to NH for anything? (next door state with no sales tax. We have a new 6.25% tax, up from 5%) [note, if rollbacks pass, Beacon Hill will probably ignore vote, again, anyway]
Only my government class really has this problem. Liberal Arts OPs are due Monday night but the responses have an additional 24 hours. My Sociology professor gives us 4 or 5 weeks to make responses because he has a much more flexible syllabus.
No one is even bothering to research Question 2, Vorlon. They’re all saying, I don’t really understand the issue but it needs to be updated. How do they know?
As far as the tax goes, the same people who insist we need the sales tax on alcohol are the people who insist that lowering the sales tax is good. Their reasoning is this:
Alcohol taxes are good because they fund all kinds of wonderful programs. Sales tax is bad because it stops us from buying expensive stuff.
The alcohol tax IS sales tax!!! If we keep the alcohol tax because it’s oh so valuable but then reduce it to 3%, it becomes half as valuable!
I don’t think I’d need bail money if we were in an actual classroom. It’s easier to force people into a discussion when they’re in the same room.
I think your professor has dropped the ball in this class, and i say that as someone who teaches college, and is more inclined to blame students first.
The prof should have made very clear to you in the syllabus what does and does not constitute an appropriate entry in the online discussions. “Me too” answers should have been discouraged, and students should have been told that they would be expected to back up their opinions with evidence and coherent argument.
“I don’t care about this issue” is never an appropriate response when you’re being asked to evaluate something; you don’t have to care about it to address questions like whether or not it will be effective. Most of my students probably don’t care, in any meaningful sense, about the impact of the Wright Irrigation Act on California water use in the nineteenth century. But if, on the exam, they say “I don’t care about this” instead of explaining why it was important, they’ll get an F for that question.
Your prof should also have been monitoring the online discussions, and when this sort of thing started to happen, he should have posted some class-wide announcements or emails telling people what constitutes an appropriate level of participation. He should also have made clear that proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence construction would be required, because communicating ideas effectively is part of what academia is (or should be) about.
I think it’s good that you’ve decided to plough ahead and make your responses, and i don’t think you should worry about offending people. If they’re not going to produce work of a reasonable standard, it’s not your responsibility to nod and smile at their inanities. And academia is also about discussion and debate, so i think it’s good if you challenge their generalizations and their blanket statements. If you deal some good, well-argued, abuse-free academic smackdown, i can almost guarantee that your teacher will be very happy to read it.
I’ve taken a number of online classes, too, and I share some of your experiences.
It seems to me that people assume that a message board that is part of a class is the same thing as a regular message board. Someone posts an OP and the others are free to say what they choose. The difference on the SDMB, of course, is that we have a culture of challenging perceived nonsense. In fact, the culture here has helped me immensely in my online classes because it’s taught me that I should expect my assertions to be challenged, and it’s taught me to challenge others. It’s also taught me to back up my assertions with legitimate citations, and to ask others to do the same. I know some of my classmates think I’m a bit of a bitch, but I don’t care. I’m paying for an education, not to read touchy-feely nonsense.
The syllabus is actually perfect. But, you’re right. He dropped the ball. He isn’t backing up the syllabus and now that we’re 8 weeks in, it is probably too late to start.
This is what the syllabus says:
Language - Clear, concise, and proper use of language, including spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Ideas - Expressed ideas are clearly stated and supported by evidence.
Relevance - Comments are relevant and important to the discussion question.
This reminds me of my flute teacher in 4th grade. He told us all that if we can’t read the music or remember the notes, just play b-flat in time with the music. As long as one person is playing the correct music, the audience will never know.
Well, my mother (the flautist) commented on it to me after a performance. She asked why I was the only person in the group actually playing the music. I’m sure she wasn’t the only musician in the audience who wondered the same thing.
My mother taught me to use my own abilities to shine; not to rely on other people to make me look good. I dread having a professor reply to something I wrote by telling me I need to expand or research more. So, I make my first post a good one.
MsRobyn I completely agree! I have been here long enough that I can’t handle other message boards because they don’t have the same standards. It’s really transferring over to my irritation with my classmates. If people on a recreational message board can put in the effort, why is it too much for college students? What’s even more irritating is the fact that most of my classmates are not ignorant 18-year-olds who don’t care! Most of them are older than I am (I’m 30)!
You know, if that stuff is in the syllabus, i wouldn’t worry.
He might just be taking the position that everyone in the class is a responsible adult who has read the syllabus, and he will simply allocate the grades that people deserve. I still think he probably should have tried to get things back on track, but as long as he sticks to his syllabus requirements when allocating grades, that’s the main thing.
My classmates, if they participate on time, are morons. Bad spelling, bad grammar. Thankfully I don’t have to reply TO my classmates, but since they write such drivel and I have two posts I have to do every week, I can’t respond to them. I write one before I do the assignment, one after, replying to myself.
Our week ends on Saturday. Days later, not just like Sunday at 9am, people post on the previous weeks’ boards. Sure, they might be doing the work, but three people posting before Saturday then 5 on Wednesday is crazy.
The people who post besides me are… well… I hope my prof is grading on a curve. One has some interesting points in his first few sentences, but he apparently doesn’t believe in paragraphs, so it’s just a big wall of text and I can’t read it.
The only other who participates a bit is annoying and stupid. She’ll ask the most stupid questions and it is totally not the place for me to post snarky and say “LMGFY.”
But since my grade doesn’t depend on interacting with them, I just get annoyed that I am not getting the most out of my education. But then I post here or on other forums to discuss stuff, so I’m just not discussing class topics with my idiot class. And it is better than being in a classroom because no one can see me roll my eyes. I’m not as patient as I was in HS and in college years ago and I don’t know if I could stop myself from saying “OMG STFU. How much money did you pay to get accepted here because obviously you didn’t learn your way here.”
