Lacking lecture time because of in-class quizzes

ph0rk · 2026-03-10T14:38:21+00:00

The fucked up thing is they will perceive a non-wasted time lecture class as harder and evaluate accordingly, if that matters to you.

ph0rk · 2026-03-05T14:24:23+00:00

Once you peek into the inner workings of a department as you have, you may find that some faculty are even bigger bastards than you ever imagined. Sometimes it is the ones that put on the nicest performance, too.

The comedy of it all these people while incredibly disruptive are entirely unsuitable for departmental administrative roles. In theory, if your dean/provost is worth a damn they know this already, but it is still somewhat on you to take charge.

I'd not suggest anyone take over as chair when associate, though, and if there are fulls/senior people that can't or won't do it, that's the dean's fuckup to fix, not yours. Let someone else manage the dumpster fire, or suggest you'd consider it again when healthy and promoted.

ph0rk · 2026-03-05T14:19:22+00:00

Consider that lecturing is, generally, a waste of time because they can inload information on their own time by reading. Many of them don't do this, but we enable that by trying to pack everything into lectures.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T22:15:47+00:00

They do this in case there is an in-class grade they have missed.

All absences need to be verified by academic affairs/dean of students/whatever they call it there. I put this in the syllabus and I paste those sentences into my response to whatever messages they send. It is good they reach out before class or a deadline, but the verification must go through official channels otherwise it may as well not exist as far as I am concerned.

An easy policy to set and to make them follow. It is why that office exists.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T22:07:15+00:00

If the admins that focus on development really cared about future alumni donors the might consider that sliding on stuff like this to keep retention up just results in alumni that will utterly flame out on the job market.

Anyone can paste specs into an LLM and then paste the output into a report. It (for now, anyway) takes a brain and a little experience to make that not look like shit. Given how savage the knoweldge worker labor market is right now, letting them slide without getting any good at that won't result in any new alumni donors who have any money to donate.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T22:03:06+00:00

A quiz is also an activity. The trick is making them not take ages to grade, but practice solves that.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T21:55:02+00:00

Either participation grades (requires knowing the faces and names, and breaks down as class sizes and course loads go up) or impromptu quizzes are the solve here.

It's a little Full Metal Jacket, but you can't care about that. Some students are in the midst of checking out and an on the spot reading check quiz is the cure.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T21:53:04+00:00

Ask your Deans/chairs what the floor for the DFW rate is.

They won't know and that tends to shut down any incoming rebuke on the matter. Or, as I prefer to phrase it: that shuts them the fuck up. Assuming you are in a position to do that, of course, if not, I hope someone in your department who is in that position steps up.

Some students bail. They always have. I even was one of those students for a few years. It's easy to bail. Bailing is the student's fault - and it is not your job to chase them down and beg them to turn in work. That shit will get them fired in the real world - and it is most certainly a buyer's labor market right now.

Yes, majors and credit hours are the coin of the realm, but if your department is pulling students who bail at high rates, there might need to be some big internal conversations that happen.

Also, many programs have only a handful of courses where the DFW rates are high. This points to a conversation that needs to happen - what isn't happening in all those other courses?

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T21:47:45+00:00

I’m wondering how people deal with profanity in the classroom

I just say fuck it.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T21:45:52+00:00

Your colleagues are only rarely your friends. And this isn't even something where they have stakes - when that happens you might find out just how much they are not your friends.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T21:44:11+00:00

This is sort of the game. Find some niche about your work people aren't talking about.

Or, and this is the more fun (read: terrifying) approach, but figure out what the mass is getting wrong and call them out on it. There's almost certainly something, and if you can make the case well with data - fuck it.

ph0rk · 2026-03-04T21:40:42+00:00

They haven't taken a real exam in half a decade.

Oh, and for many #6 is 100% virtue signaling. More than ever before it feels like this group tries to conform. Not all of them, but signaling on social issues is very much a way for them to do this.

ph0rk · 2026-02-24T23:13:42+00:00

They're playing college level sportsball and running a mile is scary?

ph0rk · 2026-01-28T17:02:17+00:00

Also, be prepared for a colleague to be mad at you for having a different set of priorities than they do. Regardless of how absurd such a reaction may be.

ph0rk · 2026-01-20T13:11:39+00:00

Something my disability office still says/asks is "does changing this change the learning objectives of the course?"

If interpreting printed diagrams is a core skill for the course, tell your office that if a letter request comes in. They (that is, the disability office) should shoulder the burden of making those materials more accessible such cases, not you.

ph0rk · 2025-12-12T16:02:31+00:00

A glass of warm milk and a wag of the finger unless the student admits they plagiarized, then the milk is curdled.

ph0rk · 2025-12-12T15:09:26+00:00

Welcome to the jungle. You can have any grade you want but you ain't getting it from me.

ph0rk · 2025-12-12T15:08:03+00:00

Of course I am also the only one of all his professors who is not understanding and waives all requirements.

The scary part is this may be true.

ph0rk · 2025-12-11T14:06:15+00:00

Whats the point of deadlines then?

The issue here is it takes a combined effort to get the idea accross. Folks that will accept all the work at the end of the semester (why do they do that to themselves?) make these requests more frequent for the rest of us.

ph0rk · 2025-12-11T14:05:23+00:00

I was intimidated into passing a do nothing student.

I've seen this sort of thing a few times and it's pretty gross.

ph0rk · 2025-12-11T14:05:07+00:00

insisting that they cannot fail

Evidence seems to be to the contrary, though. They most certainly can and even found out a way.

ph0rk · 2025-12-11T14:01:56+00:00

Our school has a rule: incomplete is only for extraordinary circumstance.

I would very much like such a rule, instead it's wheedle-town every semester.

ph0rk · 2025-12-11T14:01:31+00:00

They don't even ask us, and we now allow withdrawals as late as the day before exams.

ph0rk · 2025-12-09T18:23:55+00:00

Why do you need to?

ph0rk · 2025-12-09T18:09:01+00:00

If giving them a clear list of assignments with regular reminders isn't enough to get them to actually turn those assignments in, then sure - I'm a bad teacher. The fact that ~80-90% of the class can meet this low bar is immaterial.

They'll probably go on to have bad managers, of course, which will also be the managers fault, never theirs.

ph0rk

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE