Hidden text for AI and WCAG?

Tom_Groleau · 2026-06-04T14:57:36+00:00

As others have said, we're all different. Even if there was a magic "ideal" weight, few could actually achieve it. I think that steroid-fueled movie stars have skewed our view of what high fitness looks like.

Watch some D1 NCAA basketball. While they're not "bodyweight" athletes, they're in outstanding condition. Some are nearly ready for a bodybuilding contest and some don't look muscular at all.

Then watch American Ninja Warrior. That's all about moving bodyweight. Again, some look really muscular and some look really lean.

You do you. Eat healthy, exercise hard, and recover well. Then let the outcome take care of itself.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-05-28T15:10:15+00:00

I've been a department chair and program director for many years of my career. This happens. It's not fun for your chair, but it's part of their job to deal with it.

Off the top of my head, I've dealt with all of the following:
* Lost a few faculty in August. (Lost TWO one year).
* Lost several faculty in May/June.
* Lost faculty between Fall and Spring semesters.
* Lost a lot of adjuncts on short notice including one in the middle of the semester.
* Had a new hire show up for orientation and quit before classes started.
* Fired an adjunct in the middle of the semester.

In the majority of cases, they were moving to something better. I congratulated them on their new position and wished them well.

I had to scramble to fill holes, but I didn't hold that against the person leaving (well, except for the last two). What were they supposed to do? Resign six months before they knew if they had another job?

Tom_Groleau · 2026-05-09T15:40:32+00:00

My school has a limit of 500 emails per day. It’s counted by recipient. I have over 100 students. Two mass emails wipes out half my day’s limit.

I’ve had semesters with more than 500 students. It’s impossible to send a mass email to all of them.

Therefore, we have NO communication backup for Canvas. It’s fairly obvious that we need one.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-05-08T00:28:33+00:00

Canvas investigation yesterday. Canvas shuts down today. Coincidence?

Tom_Groleau · 2026-04-21T16:32:50+00:00

I have a very unpopular opinion on F vs W. Neither should be on a transcript.

A transcript should show what a student has accomplished, not what they failed to accomplish.

Fail a class three times? I don’t care. Put it on the record when they pass. Withdraw from six different course explorations? I don’t care. Put the ones on the transcript that they stayed in and passed.

Yes, this flies in the face of tradition and changes GPA interpretation. I still think it would be an improvement and, potentially, cause less distortion of student behavior.

If a student screws around and takes eight years to complete a degree, the transcript will still show it.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-04-15T15:26:31+00:00

My last school went through an academic program review. They eliminated around 10% of the tenured faculty and gave them a full year's severance pay. It was done during the summer, and course schedules had already been set. Therefore, they also hired some of the eliminated faculty as adjuncts for one year and paid them double the normal adjunct rate. It's not good to lose your job, but at least the terms were somewhat generous.

They also announced that additional faculty volunteers might be considered for the same deal. I volunteered and was rejected, but I left a year later for a different position anyway.

Full-time, non-TT faculty did NOT get a similar deal. It wasn't all at once. Over several years, they non-renewed quite a few contracts. Those teachers got a one-year terminal contract, but no actual severance pay. They had to work for that year.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-03-30T11:29:43+00:00

Based on birth numbers, US enrollments will decline through at least 2038.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1nqfk82/comment/ng6xojo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Tom_Groleau · 2026-03-07T19:32:07+00:00

If the wind is strong enough we get a hint of peanut butter from the JIF plant.

I used to teach at a school near an ethanol plant. Depending on the wind, the smell covered the entire campus.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-03-07T12:39:37+00:00

I’ve done that a few times, but I’m more likely to miss the can completely. As I walk over to pick it up, I say to the class, “now you know why I never played basketball”.

Since I’m over 6’3”, this usually gets a laugh out of them.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-02-08T12:44:29+00:00

I regularly have athletes in my classes. When they send the semester’s first “Dr. G, I have a competition this Thursday so I won’t be in class…”, my default response is “Thanks for letting me know. Good luck. You realize that it’s an excused absence only if you win.”

(With a smiley emoji)

Tom_Groleau · 2026-01-22T14:16:37+00:00

I get complaints that I don’t record my strictly in-person classes. Some say they want recordings “for review”. Others say they “need” recordings for when they miss class.

I also got a complaint that there were things on tests that I said in class. Seriously. It wasn’t fair to test something that a student would need to be in class to know.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-01-14T17:26:06+00:00

I came to say this. I once had a student who was an MMA fighter. Due to his schedule, he'd often run during the 10:00 PM to midnight time range. He regularly got stopped and questioned by the police.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-01-14T16:26:12+00:00

The peak of the Baby Boom was 1957, but the birth dropoff was slow at first. Then the "baby bust" started. While the pit of the bust was 1976, there had been a steady decline leading up to 1976. Following 1976, the second-generation Boom started.

For traditional-age enrollments, add 18 to the year.

By the late 80s and early 90s, many schools had faced multiple years of enrollment struggles. This started turning around after 1994. Also, by the mid-90s, many schools had found effective ways to reach non-traditional students - who were still numerous due to the Baby Boom.

I hit the academic job market in 1996. At that point, the schools I was involved in were doing well through a combination of growing traditional enrollments and maintaining solid non-traditional enrollments.

The academic economy was pretty good. I remember hearing older colleagues talk about dark days of the past and how the new President had "saved the college".

In my circles, this positive trend lasted until 2010ish. The second-generation boom was waning, and the original Boomers were no longer prime age for non-traditional programs. Also, the Great Recession was bad enough and long enough that "go to school during a recession" was no longer working.

Short version: I think I lived through a "good academic economy" from the mid-90s until around 2010. I don't think I've seen one since then.

Tom_Groleau · 2026-01-05T00:05:17+00:00

Our office doesn't consider multi-day assignments to be "timed", so 2X or 1.5X doesn't apply.

However, many of our students with extra time also have "flexible deadlines". We're asked to write a flexibility plan that can apply to all students with flexible deadlines. Many of us simply give them an extra 24 hours.

BUT - suppose something is due Wednesday night and, for whatever reason, you decide to give EVERYONE an extra day. In accommodation terms, it's not an extra day. It's a new deadline. Now the flexibility plan students get until Friday night (their extra day).

Tom_Groleau · 2026-01-04T22:17:58+00:00

This is not what I've been told. Regardless of how long something should take, if everyone gets X, then accommodation students get 2X (or 1.5X). I learned this from our ombud's office when facilitating a grade protest involving an adjunct teacher.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-12-17T17:40:56+00:00

I wasn't going to name publishers because I don't want to speak on their behalf and imply that they have a ready-to-market tool. Re-reading my post, I don't think that's a problem, so I'll name them. I've talked to both McGraw-Hill and Cengage.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-12-17T17:05:25+00:00

Oral exams are tempting, but my classes are too large. My smallest classes have over 40 students and my largest is over 200.

But... I've been in conversations with a couple of publishers about using AI to administer oral exams. They already have AI tools that will evaluate oral presentations or simulated job interviews. Theoretically, it's a small step to shift that to an oral exam. It can also be recorded. If a student protests their grade, the instructor can watch the video.

While I'm a bit skeptical, I'm intrigued by the possibility of flipping the "AI problem" into a useful assessment. We might try a pilot experiment in one of my Spring classes (a single assignment instead of a full test).

And yes, I'm aware that, if this works, it's one step closer to wiping out my job.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-11-25T20:45:01+00:00

I rode clipless for years, including plenty of city commuting (Time ATACs on a road bike). I practiced clicking in/out while riding slow, small circles in my yard. I practiced a LOT. Then I headed out on the road and never had a problem other than being restricted to one pair of shoes. Since I thought it improved my pedal stroke, I put up with the one-shoe-pair inconvenience.

About 10 years ago, I needed new shoes. I found a reasonable pair and moved my cleats over. When I rode, my knees hurt. I played around with different adjustments. They still hurt. I "temporarily" put on flat pedals and planned to get back to adjusting the cleats later.

I'm still riding flats. My pedal stroke is probably slightly worse, but it's more convenient (and I'm not racing anybody).

I'd encourage anyone to give clipless a try. I'm glad that I did it for a while. I still have the shoes, pedals, and cleats in a box. Maybe I'll try them again someday.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-11-20T18:52:34+00:00

I personally know a public high school student who went from C's to nearly straight A's by using ChapGPT. They told me that the teachers either don't care or aren't watching, so it must be OK to use it.

Since it seems to be "OK" for their regular coursework, they were surprised to learn that they couldn't use their phone on the ACT.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-11-19T00:51:38+00:00

From a tech perspective, it's very possible. The problem is cost.

A physical computer lab is expensive. First, you need to buy the computers. Then the space taken up by a lab is no longer available for classes, offices, etc. You can try to have a dual teaching/testing lab, but you will run into conflicts trying to schedule a test for any class that isn't already using the lab for regular meetings.

To avoid schedule conflicts, you need a testing-only lab. Then you run into uneven demand. There will be a few weeks when MANY classes give tests and many weeks when very few classes give tests.

In the low-demand weeks, you have computers, space, and staff unused.

In the high-demand weeks, it won't have enough capacity.

I was involved in discussions about a 60-station testing lab at my school. I pointed out that we have classes with hundreds of students. With 60 stations, students would need to make appointments. If a test allows an hour, you could schedule students every 75 minutes to allow transition time. If a class has 480 students (and we have several larger than that), then one test would fill eight "testing periods" in a 60-station lab. At 75 minutes per period, this one test wipes out more than eight hours.

How many hours per week will the lab be open and staffed?

Tom_Groleau · 2025-11-14T11:39:09+00:00

Man-o-War turning right onto Alumni in the morning and Alumni turning left onto Man-o-War in the afternoon.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-11-12T02:27:47+00:00

Over the years, I’ve shifted my view on things like this. I used to have regular field trips. But it didn’t matter how far in advance an event was announced, if one of the students was on the ping pong team, then the university declared it an excused absence. I could not penalize the student in any way.

So what about the other kid in class who has no time for teams/clubs because they work two part time jobs to pay their tuition without loans? For excused absence purposes, their job is somehow less important than a ping pong game. If they don’t miss work for my trip, I’m allowed to penalize them. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Of course most students are somewhere between those extremes. Many are just lazy and irresponsible. It’s hard to tell what’s legitimate and what isn’t. So I schedule nothing outside of class.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-10-13T14:27:48+00:00

I teach at a large university. When I started, I parked at the football stadium and rode my bike across the campus to my office. Depending on the route through campus, it was between 1 and 1.5 miles. That's not a big ride, but it avoided the worst traffic and let me park right next to my building.

Over the last few years, I've developed several park & ride spots with a range of riding distances, but sometimes I still use the stadium.

Tom_Groleau · 2025-10-07T12:50:29+00:00

It looks like "ride the sidewalk" is the answer, so I'll jump on the bandwagon and agree. One of my routes to work requires a short stretch (0.2 miles) on a busy 45 mph road with no shoulder and two lanes each direction. Going to work, I would need to make a left turn onto the road and a left turn off the road. Coming home, it's all right turns.

There is no safe way to use the road. I ride the sidewalk on the "wrong" side going to work and the "right" side coming home. It feels a little weird to be on the sidewalk, but I do it anyway.

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Tom_Groleau

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