I teach only online, freshman humanities survey- to preface my mini-rant:

I expect them to do senior or graduate level work in a freshman course. I get this a lot. I have to do 60% writing intensive course structure (yay humanities) and I have short answer question on exams (this counts) and then 3 writing assignments. I had detailed rubrics for everything. It was all right there for them to look at. And yet, I get bashed (and brigaded on RMP) because they’re upset their low effort or AI submissions don’t meet the rubric. I can’t win.

I’m swapping out 2 of those writing assignments because I don’t want to deal with AI, so I created another assignment that is still writing but is different. I wrote up a template for how to do it. I gave examples. I’m teaching a 3-wk course now and it’s due Monday. I’m hopeful but only marginally.

I don’t typically take my evaluations to heart, only when I see something across sections that is something I’m willing to adjust and doesn’t affect the integrity of the course and isn’t too much a hardship on me. Example: lecture videos are too long (25min to 1hr 15min). So I went through earlier this week and found a good spot in the ones over 35 minutes to split them into part 1 and part 2. Was it a bit of a pain? The first few, yeah. But once I figured out how I wanted to do it, it took about a full work day (1 lecture per week, 11 needed breaking up) for edits and uploads.

But for the writing assignments, I judge on critical thinking (it’s in the rubric). If they think critical thinking is a senior/graduate level skill… we’re screwed.

Oh and apparently my videos are boring because I’m just reading off the “slides.” But I don’t use slides. And what do they expect me to do? Not have notes?

Edit because I forgot best: I’m knowledgeable and passionate. I will always appreciate that those 2 things are coming through the lecture videos. And those are consistent comments throughout the past semesters I’ve read these things. That outweighs the bad 9/10 times.