This semester, I’m taking two required writing courses. One of them is a media writing course that is supposed to teach us the very basics of how to write for print, broadcast, Internet, and advertising. It’s a pre-requisite for the rest of the communications/journalism curriculum. After this semester, students will not be allowed to progress without at least a C in the course. That’s how seriously the department is taking this.
This class has not met for over two weeks. The first week was weather-related. The roads were lousy and a lot of professors cancelled class. The second week was illness related. It’s winter; people get sick. She’s been sending us notes for missed classes, so it’s not like we’re missing any information.
This past Tuesday, we showed up. There were no e-mails from her at all; no PowerPoint files with notes, so we assumed that class would be held as scheduled. Thirty-some students were in the classroom. We waited. Thirteen minutes went by before we invoked the University’s ten-minute rule and left. That afternoon, there was a message from her. No explanation, no nothing. Just a PowerPoint attachment.
Today, class was cancelled. Again.
I am getting rather pissed off by this apparent cavalier attitude. This course is a requirement. We need a passing grade. So far, the only grade we’ve got is for an assignment we did the first week of class, and we all got the full 15 points just for doing it. This is a passing grade, to be sure, but we’ve got loads of information with little practice and no feedback. I want feedback. I’m a comm/journ major because I want to make my living writing. I don’t care about the grade so much as I do about the writing. I’d just love it if the professor cared about it as much as I do.
I never went to J school but I learned in college that some classes are for learning, some classes are for meeting requirements.
Is it possible that your class is the latter?
Here’s my take on this. Some vocations are more popular than others and there are classes that exist only to weed out lightweights from those who are truly serious about their path. In times when many people are enrolled these classes help cull the herd by making the class time intensive and difficult. If enrollment is down these classes are simply “take the class, get the grade, move on”.
So you have two choices.
1 - Talk to the prof and see if the class is “really” a learning prereq. If it is you need to light a fire under her and get the education you paid for. If not you could let her know that you are serious about your chosen vocation and would like some info that will give you an edge as you continue on to other courses.
2 - Go with the flow - collect the grade (the curve will take care of you since you’re not the only one in the dark)
Hi, Robin. If I were you, i’d talk to your advisor and/or the department head about this matter. Since you want to get the most out of the class, see if there’s another section that you could get into, or if you could get an independent study with a different professor (since that’s basically what you’re doing anyway). Your professor may very well have a good excuse for the repeated cancellations; however, you and your classmates are paying good money for this class, and deserve to have a professor who cares as much about it as you do.
I had a professor do the same to me once. With her, it was the first day of class that she didn’t show up because she was coaching the soccer team. I couldn’t believe that the professor who was supposed to be teaching me advanced comp thought a soccer game was more important. Needless to say, that started her out on the wrong foot with me (and many others, I might add), and we clashed the entire semester. Which is why I tell you: get out now if you can.
Best of luck!
The problem is that the same professor teaches both sections of this course, and is probably going to continue to teach the course, so I can’t get away from her. The course is also a requirement, so I have to show the credits for it before I can take anything else.
A C? Is that all? If I only needed a C, I would not be anywhere near as worried as I currently am. I’m not sure if I’m gonna tear my hair out or break down crying from frustration first. I need a B- in first year journalism and a B- average, and first semester I ended up just under on the average (and journalism just got harder). Although, if I drop out, I can switch to English, but I’d rather take the J-school courses. [/hijack]
Anyways, I’m with the other two–talk to your teacher, head of the department, whatever. They’ll probably be more than willing to help you and it could give you an edge in next year’s courses if you’re studying more than you need to now.
You’re quite welcome! I’ve taken a class through independent study, and it’s really not bad. In fact, I really liked the freedom of working at my own pace, and though I thought I wouldn’t, I felt challenged by it. At any rate, it will save you the frustration of showing up for a class that’s always canceled.
I found Introduction to Mass Communications to be a rather useful class, even though I’m not even in the J-School anymore. Go over the professor’s head and get things taken care of.
You may also (after three weeks of no prof) want to inform the administration. They may be unaware that this is happening. If they were, they might be able to offer a sub (even on the college level), or offer some other solution. I know that if I had missed three weeks of class time that my students were paying for (and that the university was paying me for), without one hell of an explanation (like, "I’m sorry sir, but my head fell off last Tuesday)…well, I doubt it would have been pretty. And it is certainly not fair to the students. If they had wanted power point instead of lectures, they would have signed up for that.
Collect the grade(s) and learn independently of the class. You can’t make a teacher teach and if you could you probably wouldn’t get much out of this instructor anyway. (Just my opinion)
You need to get what you paid for. It shouldn’t matter that you “only need a C,” or that you “could” do independent study. It is a required class and you forked over good money.
I’d go to the department head. There is a good chance they have no clue that classes haven’t met, and they will do something about it. There are state laws that regulate how much time you have to spend in the classroom to earn a credit hour. If those minimum requirements aren’t being met, the college could end up in some hot water.
IMHO, It’s too early in your carreer to make waves. If it gets back to the teacher that you complained, you’re gonna get a lousy grade that will stay on your transcript forever.
Not likely. Grades can be appealed, and any unreasonablely low grade in a situation like this would probably do more damage to the prof’s career than the student’s. Unless the prof is tenured, naturally. And believe it or not, some profs aren’t vindictive asshats who’d do that sort of thing in the first place.
I teach college at two different campuses, and the policy for us is quite clear and strict: Be on time to teach your classes. If you can’t be on time, call the dept. or division and tell them to post the door with a sign-in sheet. Tell the students to wait 15 minutes and then they can leave if you don’t show. If you’re going to be absent for more than two meetings or in excess of a week, get a sub.
This professor is not meeting the terms of her contract. Her dept. head or division head probably has no idea what’s going on. They need to be told.
Dream on. The reality is that most people and institutions are smart enough to come up with a plausible pretext when they retaliate against people. Without proof of a causal link between the complaint and the poor grade, the victim is most likely screwed.
Although I do agree that some profs are decent enough that, when faced with a student who has gone over his or her head, would objectively assess their own behaviour and not hold anything against the student. But that’s not typical human nature. And IMHO it’s not worth the risk.
Sometimes there are admin policies in place so that the teacher never knows who made the complaint. It is expressed as “We have received notice that you appear to no longer be teaching your course. Is this the case?” No penalties. This, of course, does not occur with all universities, but there are a few enlightened ones.
Though there are rules about class hours, etc., each institution is different on how they handle this sort of situation.
The fact that the professor has been giving you handouts and even (glory!) powerpoint presentations demonstrates some responsibility on that person’s part. Two weeks, one of which was weather-related, is on the outside of acceptable, so you are in a grey zone.
Until four weeks go by, you also don’t have much of a claim to receiving feedback (the official point is the midterm).
There is also this fact: going to the department head alone is not going to accomplish much–dept. heads are going to yes-yes you but ultimately defend the professor, unless there is egregious abuse according to the standards of that institution.
I would get a group of students to go en masse to the chair if there is another cancelled class. Or express concern in writing and have group signatures.
You won’t get rid of the teacher for the semester (I have never seen that done, even when the prof was fired at the end of the year), so as far as the class is concerned you are stuck with it. But…write your evaluation NOW, keep it factual and document document document for the rest of the semester on hand–pass it in when you are doing evaluations, and I assure you that in most schools this will have an effect on the prof’s promotion and tenure.
Don’t do anything alone–you just don’t have enough power as a student.
And don’t worry about your grade outcome. With thirty students per class, the prof probably doesn’t have enough invested in any one student to do anything vindinctive. And even though s/he may be tempted to do something to your grade, s/he won’t because 1) s/he has more important things to spend time on 2) you have to be able to document grades if they go to appeal, so it’s not worth it.
Well, the class I took called Intro to Mass Communications sounds just like what you’re taking this semester. It was an overview of the writing styles of various journalistic fields, and was also a pre-requisite for the rest of the writing courses in the J-school.
Whatever the difference in names, I know the type of course you’re taking. And I’m saying it was useful. That’s all, that’s all!
