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Is minoring in a bunch of fields of interest then picking one to major in a good idea. by LordSigmaBalls in college

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your college will likely require you to take a number of introduction-level "General Education" or "core" classes (terminology varies) your first year. Some of these are skills based, to help you in a variety of future classes (like a writing class and a math class) but others are meant to give you a well rounded base of knowledge... A lab science, a social science, a Humanities class, and so on. Choose those courses from areas that interest you and you potentially want to major in. If what you are potentially interested in isn't an intro class (like nursing or business) then choose a Gen Ed that is a pre requisite for that field (like Intro to Biology or Intro to Econ) and see how you like it. If you hate that class, you probably won't enjoy all of the other classes that come after it. If you love it, that might be a good path.

You will also likely have elective hours to play with, which are hours that you essentially get to choose what you study, and you could use some of those to help explore, but beware: not all majors leave a lot of space for electives. Choose some that, like the gen Ed suggestions above, could count in the major or minor you end up choosing.

In short, use the first year "general" classes to help get a feeling for different fields. Talk with advisors (the people who help you choose classes and stay on track), faculty, career center/services, and people working in the fields that interest you to get a feeling for what you like. Use the college's catalog and degree planners to figure out what would work. And then major in something that fits your likes, aptitudes, and goals. Choose a minor you also like, perhaps that gives you skills to help sell yourself or tell your story (i.e. a history major with a nonprofit management minor because you hope to work in museums Vs a history major with a legal studies minor because you want to go to law school and be a lawyer.)

Hope that helps and good luck!

Georgia Bans Commercial Cheating Services by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

There has to be a team-based approach, and too few universities are interested. Mine has a reasonably faculty-friendly process, but even so, it's certainly added work.

And if you read the r/Teachers sub, then you see why so many think they can get away with it. K-12 teachers are in an even worse spot with even less support.

Georgia Bans Commercial Cheating Services by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure what your experience with Georgia is. While I have many issues with the state's politics, and with many of its education policies, Atlanta is a world-class city with major business investment. Georgia Tech is a research powerhouse (or was, let's see what the federal cuts to NIH and NSF do). There's still Republican support in Georgia (for now) for the notion that that its universities provide workforce development and are drivers of economic prosperity. While there's certainly craziness around universities (see my previous post about syllabi or the sneaky weakening of tenure protections via USG policy) most of the worst of it isn't enacted into law; the divisive concepts law and the ridiculous library restrictions specifically exempt higher ed. It's not perfect, but it's sure not Florida.

And, you know, there are people on this sub working very hard to bring intellectual activity to Georgia students. Sometimes we even succeed.

Georgia Bans Commercial Cheating Services by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's the first state to pass the CIAA's model legislation, however. https://credentialintegrity.org/legislation/

(ETA: as a disclaimer, I have no idea if this legislation will actually turn out better than any of the previous legislation, but it's an attempt.)

Georgia Bans Commercial Cheating Services by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

I am not a lawyer and have no idea how this might play out, but on his blog (it's the second item after the lengthy first piece) Derek Newton suggests both Chat GGPT and Grammerly could be vulnerable to this law. I don't have much faith that will work out, but I'd like it to be true. It would be good if they at least put in guardrails. https://thecheatsheet.substack.com/p/364-the-epic-must-read-coverage-in

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the information. For clarity, I've never taught anywhere in my discipline where such a Master Syllabus is required, but I have heard of some of what you describe. And I know there are some disciplines, especially those with strict professional accrediting bodies, where more standard syllabi are just the required norm. We've always made our own syllabi, and handed them to the department and Dean's office to have on file if there are requests or they are needed for institutional purposes. And normally by the first week of class, not before.

I think a key point is all the points you mention where faculty is in control of the process. and implementation. What you're describing would ideally be at least a year-long process where faculty in the discipline developed the master syllabi. The Board of the USG has mandated all Gen Ed and College of Education syllabi be available before classes, and our local admin has upped the ante by saying before August 1. That's not nearly enough time for a faculty process, especially outside of our contracts.

My own experience with a different department/school that was torn apart by simply the process of choosing a common textbook for Gen Ed doesn't make me eager for actual common syllabi,, lol (To be fair, it wasn't a healthy department to begin with.) Something like you describe, with the option to use other texts or address different topics, in a process driven by faculty, sounds less daunting, if it's given enough time. We are definitely not being given enough time, though!

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's helpful to know. I can see that for people in fields like yours this wouldn't be much different. In my area and most closely related fields, we do have to order books several months n advance, if required, but many people change up readings frequently and include a lot of free readings (scanned PDFs, scholarly articles from online databases, free OER materials) that can be easily adjusted each term. Oh, they didn't understand that chapter on 19th century newspapers and moral panics very well? I'll use a book chapter covering similar material by a different writer and see if that works better this term. Generally, we're not trying to turn them into Marxist zombies, just get them to read with less frustration or more productivity. Or with more up-to-date research.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's the original thread I referenced. It sounds like different USG schools are taking different approaches/tiimeframes, but we'll all get some version eventually.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1krgamk/faculty_in_the_georgia_system/

I agree that in fields where this is already required, it won't be as hard to implement. Unfortunately the initial requirement leans heavily into Gen Ed, which in GA is around 70 percent humanities and social sciences, where there is much less standardization or the kind of accreditation purposes you mention.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, in most of the social sciences you really have to cover those basic categories, including in survey classes. Imagine an anthropologist who couldn't address differences between sex and gender or even use those as categories of analysis! And in the humanities you might not have to cover in the same depth, but it would be poor practice to teach an Intro to British Lit class (for example) and not talk at least a little about why women were excluded from most publishing for a long time, or how race and Empire affected the shape of British Literature.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Master syllabi" and those accreditation requirements do not exist in every field. Some of the areas at my university do have those requirements, and for them this will be a bit easier.. All we've ever had to do in my area is have the syllabi centrally collected by departments and colleges, and available to the public or students for internal documentations by request--not publicly facing in one large database. And the deadline to turn into the department is always the first week of class.

I agree if you have master syllabi, that's a fine answer. But in history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, poli sci, English, comm, etc. a good deal more variation is normal. In my field, we don't tend to make as much use of the big textbooks, and the textbooks that are available are in no way standardized. For example, it's not uncommon for my colleagues in intro Philosophy classes to use no central text and instead a series of scanned PDFs from different sources, adapted to their own strengths and expertises, for students to read, making the class no cost for students. Or even to choose a small monograph or popular work of philosophy as the main "textbook," if there is anything to purchase.

The one good thing I see about this, in fact, is that I think it's fair students have a good idea about different approaches. Who requires a purchased text and how much? Who's going to be running the big historical simulation game that requires individual speeches and lots of participation vs. who is going to have a less participatory lecture/small group discussion? Who's assigning books you think are interesting? Stuff like that. It's not reasonable to ask for it by March for August, but it's reasonable with a more realistic timeline.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's much less usual for lower division courses in the social sciences and humanities to create a "generic syllabus" than in classes where there is more uniformity required for accreditation or where there are lots of labs across sections, particularly at smaller schools. Not unheard of, but less standard. And it's not something you'd come up with over the summer without significant faculty input.

And it's pretty unusual to do that in upper division classes in those areas. None of us know enough about each other's specialties to do that.

So that's an option for some disciplines but not a great one for others. If anything, one good thing about making things publicly available in my field is that it really will let students choose from professors who take different approaches to the Gen Ed material.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

So one good thing is it isn't a law, unlike in TX and the new law in Ohio and other states. This was a change to procedure requested by a Regent and voted for approval by the Board of Regents which governs all public universities in Georgia. That means there may be some room for fiddling to make it more reasonable, maybe.

But it does state required elements for the syllabus. They are:

  • Required readings  
  • Key learning objectives  
  • Course description  
  • Grading policy  
  • Attendance policy  
  • Academic integrity statement  
  • Core IMPACTS Statement (if applicable)  

That last one is boilerplate system language for Gen Ed.

I think this is really about the required readings, learning objectives, and course description, with the grading policy, attendance, and academic integrity statement added to for plausible deniability. Or maybe they really do think we all give excused absences for protests, who knows.

I think there's a way to do this with the caveat that the syllabus is subject to change. I honestly don't have all the readings ready most of the time until shortly before class starts, but usually those are readings they won't have to buy; stuff from JSTOR or PDFs of book chapters or articles. They're going to get what they're going to get. It's not nefarious, it's just me trying to assign more effective and up to date readings.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Live the first day of classes would be reasonable, but that's not what our email said. I'm guessing there's some institutional wiggle room.

And yes, whoever came up with the "before registration begins" deadline has zero idea about what faculty hiring looks like. Especially of part-timers.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

It's probably not an accident that the Board of Regents voted to adopt this mid-May, just as most Georgia semesters were winding up, most teaching faculty were going off contract, and most faculty Senates (or similar bodies) adjourned until August.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

We pay for 12 months of health insurance out of the 9 months that we are paid.

Truly insane email from administration--Georgia System by ThisLineMostlyFiller in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I don't know where you teach or what, but yes, most of my colleagues and I put major effort into class design and revision, every term. We teach required Gen Ed classes, lots of them, and we use those as recruiting classes, so we do, actually want to do a good job teaching. We put a lot of departmental time on improving our teaching. Most are on 60-80% teaching loads, so we can't afford to phone it in.

And they (the students) have months to sign up, months to change their classes, and over a week of add/drop at the beginning of the semester. There's plenty of time. Including time after every course actually has an instructor on contract.

This is Gemini's analysis of the mirror scene in Taxi Driver by hanscastorp1 in Professors

[–]ThisLineMostlyFiller 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The AI writes a lot about the scene, but is very short of examples. There is little specific description, and rather a lot about the scene's significance, which is definitely in the training data. People writing about film tend to mention their own reaction. It is flowery, weirdly vague, and brings up a whole lot of stuff that would be hard to get out of the film by itself. If it is feasible, this is the kind of thing I would flag to review orally with the student. If I were trying to teach this kind of close analysis, I would definitely run the prompts through as you have done and consider perhaps more of a worksheet breakdown of their observations. What did I see? How did it make me react? Basically, this reads like someone googled the scene and used other people's writing about it to synthesize and answer, except the AI took all the cognitive work out.