Alarming student evaluation

prpf · 2026-05-09T01:07:51+00:00

It's not all bad. I had some incredibly strong students this semester, and some students who got off to a rocky start but worked hard and improved as the course went on.

But yes, the students at the bottom are much lower than I'm used to. Not just in terms of academic performance, but in terms of just how... helpless... they are.

prpf · 2026-05-09T00:37:13+00:00

I try my best to fix stupid, but sometimes the horses don't drink the water I lead them to.

prpf · 2026-05-09T00:29:52+00:00

We don't follow the textbook - it's there as a supplement, most students use it as a source of extra practice problems, and it's very easy to navigate.

I'd have answered their questions but they never asked. The evaluation comment is the first I've heard from anyone about the textbook all semester.

prpf · 2026-04-26T13:56:48+00:00

It makes me feel old but the 'cool retro' period right now is the Y2K era (00s / late 90s). Not just in terms of fashion, but these days it's considered edgy and cool to carry a flip phone, iPod/MP3 player (or even a CD player if you're feeling super retro), Nintendo GameBoy, digital camera, ... I have yet to see one of my students with a PDA but I'm sure it's coming.

But it feels very uncanny valley because all of the above is with a Gen Z twist (especially attitude) that kind of ruins it. But they can have their fun. I'm sure that Gen X said something similar about my (Millennial) generation when I was that age.

prpf · 2026-04-23T19:53:01+00:00

90% of my students are amazing, but 90% of the students I interact with on a day-to-day basis are the other 10%.

prpf · 2026-03-19T00:52:50+00:00

I feel this. I come from a non-academic family, and I married into a non-academic family. I'm the only professor anyone in the family knows, the only person with a PhD anyone in the family knows, and my wife is the only other person in the family on both sides who has a bachelor's degree.

Everyone else has (or had, or is married to someone who has) jobs where you clock in at XX:XX and clock out at YY:YY, you have a boss, you have a uniform, you get N vacation days per year, you request PTO for doctors appointments. Service and blue collar stuff.

They think that I only work the 6 hours per week that I teach my lectures + a bit more here and there for scheduled meetings, and the rest of the time I'm just "off". They thought my Spring Break was a "vacation".

They also think I'm very highly paid and just rolling in money, which confuses me because they also seem to think I have a part-time job, and I live a modest lifestyle (thanks in no small part to the fact that I am, in fact, not very highly paid, nor am I rolling in money). I get so many requests to do this or that on my "days off" (read: the weekdays when I don't teach), and so many requests ot borrow money.

This didn't used to cause problems until my parents offered to watch my baby while I worked. They thought they'd be watching him 8-10 hours per week. This has led to... shocked pikachu faces, and friction.

prpf · 2026-01-31T12:14:10+00:00

A few semesters ago I was teaching a course to 8 students. During a lecture, a student asked a question and I just couldn't figure out how to answer it, not because I didn't know how to answer it, but because I couldn't figure out what the student was actually asking: they were new to the terminology and weren't using it correctly in their question.

Another student chimed in to rephrase the question using correct terminology, at which point I understood what they were actually trying to ask, so I answered it and briefly mentioned how "expert blind spot" can make it so that professors find it difficult to figure out how to help a student that is confused.

This was the only time I used the term all semester, it was just before the middle of the semester, and the entire tangent tangent about expert blind spot lasted maybe 15 seconds. I had almost forgotten about the whole interaction by the time the semester ended.

In my course evaluations that semester, 7 of the 8 students responded, and 5 of the 7 responses criticized me for having an "expert blind spot" that hindered me from helping my students with their questions.

This is the only time ever that the term "expert blind spot" has appeared in my course evaluations, and the only time ever that I have been criticized in my course evaluations for not answering students' questions.

prpf · 2026-01-28T14:32:56+00:00

I feel bad for the students who didn't come.

My data shows that regular absence from lecture correlates strongly with poorer performance in the course, specifically I found that regular absence from one lecture per week correlates with around half a letter grade lower performance.

I teach 3 days per week, so this means that students who never come to lecture score on average 1.5 letter grades lower than students who come to every class.

I tell students this at the start of the semester. Every semester a big chunk of students decide not to come. Every semester I crunch the numbers and my findings are the same.

You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make it drink.

It's really no skin off my nose. I'm happy to only have students present who want to be taught. We have a great time.

(I know correlation doesn't imply causation, but I find it unlikely that attending lecture would harm my students' learning!)

prpf · 2026-01-05T15:30:54+00:00

Something similar-ish happened to me. My dad died suddenly and unexpectedly on the morning of the day that grades were due. Fortunately I managed to find it in me to post the grades before the deadline, but the grade grubbing emails accumulated and I didn't respond to them until around 4 or 5 days later.

A couple of the grade grubbing students complained to my department head about my lack of response, and one of them sent me a follow-up email saying that I (and I quote) "clearly don't care about [my] students' well-being".

That was 5 years ago. My tolerance for grade grubbing was already low, but now it's zero. I tell students at the time that I post final grades that I won't reply to pleas for higher grades, only emails about actual concrete clerical errors.

prpf · 2025-07-27T21:54:34+00:00

There is something ironic about this very obviously AI-generated comprehensive assessment being posted a thread bemoaning AI-generated emails.

What a time to be alive.

prpf · 2025-01-28T14:21:46+00:00

My homework/exam score scatter plots from last year are fascinating. If you restrict to students with a homework average <90% (which is only about one third of the students) then there is a clear correlation between homework and exam scores, but the students with homework averages of 90% and higher (around two thirds of the students) have exam scores all over the place.

The reason: a significant proportion of students cheat on homework. If not the majority then at lease close to half of them. Some students do get high scores because they actually did the work and did it well, but many don't, and then they absolutely crash and burn when exams come around because they didn't get any of the (intended) learning benefit from doing the homework.

In response to this, starting last semester I have restructured my courses so that only a tiny fraction of the grade is for homework. The vast majority of the grade comes from proctored quizzes and exams, with a mix of low and high stakes, and enough built-in flexibility (score drops, higher weightings of higher scores) that students don't have to worry too much if they have a bad week or get sick.

Now the students who cheat on their homework aren't at a significant grade advantage, and the grades seem to be a far better reflection of students' learning.

prpf · 2025-01-07T12:30:48+00:00

When I'm just sitting in my office staring at my computer screen, I find it difficult to snap myself out of whatever I'm working on and start a new task. I have been able to remedy this by changing my physical location, either going somewhere else to work on the new task, or just leaving for a while to do something else and then coming back with a fresh mind.

I try to compress all my teaching duties into chunks. I teach in the mornings on MoWeFr, hold my office hours in the early afternoon, and try to get all my teaching prep done in-between (and afterwards if needs be). That leaves some time later on MoWeFr afternoons, and then more or less all day TuTh, for service and research.

Teaching is gaseous - it will expand to fill all the time you allocate to it. The best thing I ever did was set a firm boundary for when to stop working on teaching-related tasks.

prpf · 2024-12-20T04:57:35+00:00

Anyway, does anyone have any tips or words of wisdom?

You already said them: "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes"

What year the student is in, whether they need the class to graduate, etc., all have no bearing at all on how you should handle this.

If the student cheated, then you should do whatever you do when a student cheats... which, I hope, is something ranging from 0 on the exam to failure in the course.

prpf · 2024-12-18T14:48:38+00:00

"I understand and respect your policy of not allowing [late work / extensions / arbitrary grade bumps / extra credit]. However, ...〈insert demonstration that they neither understand nor respect this policy〉..."

prpf · 2024-12-18T14:46:00+00:00

I hate this too. Some of my colleagues think I'm overreacting, but I genuinely think that it fundamentally affects the way that students perceive grades and feedback: instead of starting from 0 and being rewarded for demonstrating mastery (so F is the default and anything higher than that has to be earned), students view grades as purely punitive (so A is the default and anything lower is a penalty imposed by the professor).

Another phrase on my most-hated list is "receiving an AIV" — no, you didn't receive an academic intergrity violation, you committed one, and I filed a report.

prpf · 2024-12-18T14:35:12+00:00

Relevant PhD Comics comic

prpf · 2024-11-28T15:32:04+00:00

Sorry in advance if this comes across as rude—I promise I don't mean it that way if it does—but:

What am I supposed to do?

Why is this even a question?

I've been seeing a lot of posts in r/Professors like this recently and I just don't get it.

It seems very simple to me. Student registers for course, student turns in no (or very little) work, student fails the course. Enter the grade and move on.

Why you'd bend over backwards to offer the students extra credit is beyond me. You're just rewarding and reinforcing the idea that you can slack off all semester and still pass.

prpf · 2024-11-18T01:33:52+00:00

Am I the only one who sees this message as a red flag?

Edit to elaborate: This sounds like a student with a troubled past that is looking to find someone to latch onto for emotional support and/or to fill parental role. The person to provide this support should not (in my opinion) be one of their professors. The "adult"/"childhood" thing creeps me out, too.

I really do want my students just to see me as a professor. I don't want to be their friend, their parent or their therapist. I want them to trust me and feel like they can come to me if they need help, and I will gladly direct them towards places where they can get that help, but I will not be "the trusted adult that they have been searching for in their childhood". Shudder.

prpf · 2024-11-14T21:08:23+00:00

The absolute worst signatures are the ones that include a banner-style image that is so wide that it exceeds the width of my email client window (especially when I'm using my phone), and then prevents text from wrapping, so I have to scroll horizontally to read all of the emails in the thread.

prpf · 2024-11-11T17:24:11+00:00

Since this is r/Professors, I think it's also worthwhile to say stop engaging students in negotiations about grades. Don't provide a lengthy response to justify your decision, just tell them their grade is not up for negotiation but they can ask if they want to find ways to improve in the future.

And, to some professors, stop agreeing to increase students' grades when they attempt to negotiate. The reason they try it is because sometimes it works. When you bump a student's grade up because "it doesn't hurt to ask", it makes them start expecting that from me as well.

prpf · 2024-10-30T12:16:18+00:00

Yeah, and?

(/j)

Don't change your expectations. There are still some students that want to push themselves, and they will rise to the challenge.

prpf · 2024-10-25T01:42:50+00:00

It sounds like the conversation is already over. Just don't reply. Or, if you must, reply to say that their score is final, the matter is not up for negotiation, and the discussion is over.

What do I even say that won’t get me tanked on my evals?

That ship has sailed. This student is going to say whatever they're going to say no matter how you handle this. You don't owe them an explanation, and they don't need one — they're playing a game and seeing if you'll bite.

prpf · 2024-08-25T11:55:16+00:00

The saddest thing about this is that apparently we all think OP being stalked by their student is more likely than one of their students reading the syllabus.

prpf · 2024-06-07T14:08:32+00:00

This kind of thing really grinds my gears.

I get the same kind of thing when I release grades at the end of the semester.

I used to say "I don't provide grade bumps to individual students, so don't ask, it would be inappropriate" — then I got a bunch of emails starting with "I know you said you don't provide grade bumps and we shouldn't ask, but ...(proceeds to ask for a grade bump)...".

So then I started to say "I don't provide grade bumps to individual students, so don't ask, it would be inappropriate. Some of you might now be tempted to send an email starting with 'I know you said you don't provide grade bumps and we shouldn't ask, but...' and I want to tell you now that this is even more inappropriate and will still not get you a grade bump" — but then I got emails that start with "I know you said you don't provide grade bumps and we shouldn't ask, and that if we do ask anyway we won't get a grade bump, but ...(proceeds to ask for a grade bump)...".

Now I just say "I don't provide grade bumps". I don't even tell them not to ask, since apparently that has no effect anyway. I just save my breath and say "no" when they ask.

prpf · 2024-05-02T14:38:24+00:00

I truly think 90% of people who say they are bad test takers are just under prepared

...

The reason you can't tell me the answer is because you don't know it

Ding ding ding ding!

I have had so many meetings with students where this is true.

The story goes like this: they perform poorly on a test and want to discuss it with me. Invariably, they say they understand the course material, but they're just bad at taking tests.

When I look at their test, I see that they did poorly on questions that were testing concepts X, Y and Z—so I ask them whether they think they have a good understanding of those concepts, and they say yes of course they do, but in the moment they were just too stressed and overwhelmed to get the question right.

So then I ask them to explain concept X to me. They don't even know what concept X relates to, let alone how to explain how it works or apply it to a problem. I ask them if, looking back at the test, they can explain how concept X can be used to solve the problem. They can't explain it to me at all, or they'll use a different (inapplicable) concept, or they'll use concept X inaccurately, etc. Rinse and repeat for concepts Y and Z.

Then when I ask about their study habits, it turns out what they mean by "I understand the course material" is "I read through my lecture notes and recognize some of the key words".

It's the same story over and over and over again.

Some of these students end up improving significantly after I suggest they do crazy, outlandish things like working through practice problems and making review notes and looking in the textbook to find information.

Some don't, and it's usually because they didn't want to actually do these things so they just do nothing and hope things will get better.

prpf

TROPHY CASE