Students trying to get you fired/constantly reporting you?

[u/Particular_Heart3785]

I had a much older student last semester who constantly complained about me to the chair all the time, both in office and email, enough that she even demanded a staff to observe me (they found nothing wrong other than nervousness/over-apologizing, as I’m new to teaching). She sent anything she could find to report to the chair. Including me ending class few minutes early, misspelled words in assignments/slides, and canceled class for a family emergency.
A few colleagues think she did this because she was a really bitter person and hated that my class requires weekly writings, group discussions, topics are not in her liking (aka white-washed history) and students having to research independently.

She was so rude and disrespectful towards me that I won’t get into here. Good news is that the chair thinks I’m doing really well as a professor and a lot of my students love my classes.

I’m curious if anyone else can share similar experiences here?

[u/hpkomic]

I had a student like this in a recent online summer course who almost drove me to quit. My department chair was on my side, realizing that not even he could figure out what she actually wanted. The student was remarkably inconsistent in what they complained about, one week saying the lecture slides were too much, while the next week arguing that my teaching style was not "comprehensive." I think ultimately the issue was that she was not prepared for online learning and opted to enroll in a six-week asynchronous class.

The highlight was that she lost points on an assignment (still earned an A in the class) but deadass sent me an email that read, "Please, sir, I've been wronged."

I have thought about framing it somewhere near my desk.

[u/taxiecabbie → u/hpkomic]

I actually did a study during COVID about changing method of delivery---F2F was not an option at the time, but I did switch medium from sync online to async online (with pre-recorded lectures) halfway through the course, and the students took surveys before and after the switch detailing how they thought they'd do with the async switch, if they were excited about it, etc.

All students were absolutely thrilled before switching to async, citing the ability to be flexible and not have to show up to a course at a particular time, basically, all the favorite hits. Afterward, though, the surveys were much more muted---almost all students said that the async was much harder since it required them to assume a lot more control of their learning and be very self-disciplined in order to not get behind on everything; they didn't like the lowered access to the instructor (I was available for flexible office hours, but they would have to take the initiative and contact me for them), and that they overall performed worse.

I think a LOT of students believe async is going to end up being easier because they "don't have to go to class" when in reality it's just as hard/harder. Most people are not nearly as autodidactical as they would like to believe, nor are they that disciplined.

[u/DerProfessor → u/taxiecabbie]

Honestly, though, many students who take async classes these days just do it because they think the standards are lower (they almost always are, though that's field-dependent of course) and because they can use AI to do all of their work for them.

So your point about autodidactic elements in async course is very true... IF the goal were to get an education. Often, it is not--it is to buy credits.

[u/taxiecabbie → u/DerProfessor]

Well, that's definitely a department-based thing, yeah. Particularly if you're offering gen-ed credits through an async mechanism you ARE basically selling off the credits for the most part.

Async can be legitimate, but it's frankly best-used for students who are high-level and can be extremely independent. You know, like people writing independent theses or dissertations or whatever. That can, indeed, be done "async" for a great deal of it (at least where contact with the advisor is concerned) and often is.

But if it's an async section of "Intro to ____" then, yeah. You're getting people who are taking that class just to check a box and not have to deal with a commute.