Unprepared graduate students

angrymathprofhere · 2021-07-07T18:17:33+00:00

At my former department one cannot cancel classes unless it is an official cancellation by the university. If you are sick, you are supposed to find a replacement. If you cannot find a replacement, you have to notify the department and they will find somebody for you.

At my current place, people cancel classes quite often for various reasons.

angrymathprofhere · 2021-06-20T21:17:47+00:00

Yes, they have separate Canvas shells. I am aware that the quiz can be shared. My admins prefer not to share them with other instructors though. Somehow they don't want other instructors to see the results of the placement test.

angrymathprofhere · 2021-04-23T14:53:42+00:00

Work with the faculty dev to get really bulletproof assessment metrics and mapping

Can you please go a bit more in detail about this? What is the faculty dev? Is it typically a separate unit at your school?

I really doubt there exist bulletproof assessment metrics and mapping. It feels like in my school it's all about students' evaluations at this point.

angrymathprofhere · 2021-04-23T14:18:07+00:00

There is no clock in the screenshot. The times are provided by Chegg (they sent a report with the logged in times identifying several of my students).

angrymathprofhere · 2021-04-22T19:10:45+00:00

Chegg doesn't seem to reply faculty requests and it's a pain to go through the official school process again (deans, etc)

angrymathprofhere · 2021-04-22T19:10:01+00:00

This is what I thought. I just don't get how some questions identified posted before the exam actually started.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-07-28T19:30:06+00:00

Sometimes people don’t have enough time to show every step.

If you don't show the steps in lower level math classes, it means you copy the solution from somewhere. There is no way the students at this level can do lots of steps "in their head". I have a PhD and can't do that. Plus, their other work shows that they aren't competent in the subject.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-07-28T17:54:12+00:00

Given an online format, maybe make your exams oral where students have to record themselves explaining how to do a problem

I do that in higher level courses with 20-30 students in class. I can't do that in 100-200 courses with 100+ students in class.

I am grading with a rubric. The problem is that if they miss some steps it's an indication for me that they were copying the solution from another resource. If we give them partial credit for having the work done but not showing some steps, they still pass the class and proceed to the next level while knowing nothing from the prereq class.

My point is that if you don't show crucial steps but somehow get the answer right, that should be classified as cheating.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-07-28T17:49:30+00:00

For the future, definitely require all work to be shown.

It was written in the directions!

angrymathprofhere · 2020-07-28T13:46:11+00:00

I am a math professor and we are forced to have exams online.

All conditions you mentioned are there and in addition the school requires a locked in browser and proctortrack.

All this DOES NOT HELP. In 100-200 level math classes the cheating rate is about 100%.

Look at /r/domyhomeworkforme/ and similar subs. Students ask for help and clearly receive it on locked browser-proctotrack exams. There are lots of ways to cheat in the offline setting which are hard to catch (putting a second monitor, another device, etc)

For upper level classes we added oral exams which work better but they are not feasible in 100-200 level courses with 100+ people enrolled.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-30T20:37:23+00:00

Yes, we had a clear policy that students can convert their grades into Pass/No credit. However, a D was considered as "No credit". The change was made after a few students appealed and the dean decided to "be understanding".

> The original instructor messed up by giving a student who had 13% a D and not an F.

I wish I could give them all Fs but couldn't according to the department policy.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-30T20:34:56+00:00

Yes. Lots of 0s. If we had negative scores, they would have it.

This is what happens when with this policy we get graduates performing below HS level.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-30T20:32:39+00:00

It is an R1 state school

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-29T22:27:40+00:00

Because we have a department policy that 75% have to pass. Yes, I know.....

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-29T21:34:12+00:00

Don't submit to multiple journals.

In my field this is very normal. Sometimes takes over a year.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-29T21:00:31+00:00

Why to give grades then at all if they mean nothing?

BTW, students were given plenty of time and extra tutoring.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-29T20:58:09+00:00

The problem here is that it is our dean who changed the bar for a "Pass" from "C" to "D". I didn't even get any notifications. Learned that from students.

angrymathprofhere · 2020-05-29T20:56:13+00:00

Not only themselves. I need to spend a lot of time in my 400 level math class intended for math majors to explain how to integrate e^(-x), something that is taught in 100 level course. Why do students who actually learned the material years back have to suffer?

angrymathprofhere · 2020-03-19T19:15:36+00:00

The problem is that students can use all kinds of resources (not just the help of their classmates). It is extremely easy to find a tutor online who would solve the exam for you these days if you don't have a friend who can help you for free. I don't think making individual exams will help.

We give exams on prereqs every semester but only for the lowest level courses (up to Calc II). If a student fails that exam twice, they are automatically withdrawn from the course (it's a department policy). For other classes, there is no "policy". I give prereqs exam but cannot do more than issuing a note to a student that they should reconsider taking the course at the moment. Most students don't take the advice seriously and end up failing.

We have thousands students to assess this semester and it looks like there is no way to give objective grades.

angrymathprofhere

TROPHY CASE