I only give extra time on technology-hindered assignments if the down time was significant. They should be working on assignments before they are due. I don’t accept ‘I accidentally deleted my file when copying it to the server’. I try to be nice but firm.

They can bring breakfast to class as long as it doesn’t smell so good that everyone else gets hungry. And they have to eat quietly and pick up the trash.

My department has a policy against recording even the audio of a lecture unless you have a learning accommodation letter (need it to help overcome a learning disability). Then it is only for that student’s use. Otherwise, recording infringes on student privacy and faculty intellectual property.

This fall, most of my students were in my class last spring. They thought they were getting someone else, but get me again. Some won’t be happy even though I told them of the possibility.

Finally, I have asked a disruptive student to leave class. My university has a handout concerning Disruptive Student Behavior. But there are many borderline situations.

We added signs outside our classrooms telling people to turn off cellphones. I’m sure that not all of the students using laptops (we have wireless internet) are paying attention to what I’m discussing. But I’ll chastise them if they are interfering with class.

My hope is that they come to class ready to learn. Hope springs eternal. Classes start August 25, and I don’t want to think about it yet even though I have off and on all summer. At least mine is something I’ve done a few times. I still don’t have it right, but it gets better every time I teach it.

This should be a rule. This always annoyed me when I was a student. Some people just don’t realize that a lecture is largely a one way conversation. If you’re going to argue points with the instructor or just can’t keep up, save that conversation for posted office hours. The rest of the students are more interested in learning the information they will be graded on.

Hope it all goes well.

Also, it’s been rumored that some apps managed to find surreptitious ways to send invites without explicit permission from the author (unconfirmed). Facebook used to be pretty nice on Facebook just a few months ago, but now the apps are tearing things down.

If all I thought they were going to post is the content of class, I’d have not problem, but I have to protect the people interacting with the content.

This is largely why I’ve basically abandoned Facebook. Those quizzes were meant as a way of encouraging participation, but they’re far too invasive. I just go through and “ignore” all of them no matter who sent them.

>I also have to detail that students may not record and
>then share anything that happens in class without
>permission. I can’t think of a time when I wouldn’t
>give permission, but still.

This one surprised me. Why so? As a teacher I would think you’d encourage discussion along the lines of what happens in class. Indeed, its always been my experience that lots of sharing gets a lot done. Someone sharing “a” with someone else may get BOTH people’s neuron’s firing. What am I missing here?

Woah.

I did get told by a professor in some other discipline that the only reason astronomers accepted the Big Bang is because of our Judeo-Christian cultural predisposition to think that there was a moment of beginning….

While I was nonplussed at the time, it’s great in retrospect, because now I can say that the fundamentalists think I’m a heathen for accepting the Big Bang, and the po-mo types think I’m too much of a Christian for accepting the Big Bang.

I’ve been attacked by another professor in class for not being a creationist, but never by a student.

The students who have made been feel unsafe fell into two categories: Strung our on what I would guess was meth or cocaine, and off their meds mentally ill. I’ve now had two students with mental illness who were significantly larger then me and male, and I’d had warnings that one of them had physically threatened another prof. Situations like that scare the shit out of me and cause me to not have evening office hours when other faculty may not be around.

The students who have badgered me with questions to the point of making it hard to teach have also fallen into two camps: Students resentful that I teach a challenging course who try and get me to give up and make things easy by constantly saying some version of “I don’t get it and don’t even know why I need to learn this” over and over and over, and students with mental illness who don’t understand their questions may annoy others (autism is very hard to cope with in the college classroom).

Creationists I know how to handle – they train us for that and I’ve read the Bible enough times to be able to defend myself in office hours. Most creationists are willing to have the conversation after class if you are non-confrontational.

What I’m not trained to handle are drugs, aggressive apathy, and mental disorders. I’m learning on the fly, and it’s not at all fun.

Cheers,
Pamela

I’ve talked with biology profs here in Fresno who have told me about the incredibly difficult time they have with creationists challenging the lesson. One professor told me that she was thinking of hanging it all up and quitting the profession.

Have you had problems like this?

Now that I think about it, a lot of professors write a bunch of stringent rules about attendance, yet they don’t fuss that much about their own rules when things actually happen.

(this is from a student’s perspective)

(Of course, at first he didn’t admit to faking it… but he really didn’t give up.)

You’re detailing mostly the things that you have to tell the honest students, because of legitimate cultural confusion. Alas, there is also some small subset of students that like to play little lawyer, for whom you have to detail all sorts of little rules that should be (and, really, are) obvious.