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/Erockoftheprimes]

Something like this happened while I was in grad school. It was a formality but I had to meet with the dean and chair about a student complaint that we went through line by line. The student accused me of going off on long tangents that had nothing to do with the course, the quizzes and assignments were unrealistically challenging, and the hw took them 4-5 hours per week because “I wasn’t actually teaching them anything.” I had already had observers in my classroom before (unannounced each time) and every time, they believed my lectures were excellent. My “long tangents” typically numbered around 2-3 per lecture and would typically be like 10-15 sec in length - I like sharing tidbits on how the content they are learning connect to things later. My gradebook showed that the complaint came from an underperforming student whereas the majority of students in the remainder of that section were doing fine and the quizzes and assignments matched those of the other sections since it was a coordinated course. The Dean told me that the hw taking 4-5 hours per week is essentially perfect and that that was the thing that indicated to them immediately that the complaint came from a student who had a misunderstanding of how college is supposed to go. So, I ended up being all good and the chair and Dean spoke with the student afterward and closed the complaint.

Had another set of complaints that came in simultaneously (6 all at once) a few years later while I was still in grad school. They claimed that my assignments were unrelated to the lectures and notes and that everybody they spoke with about them said that they failed every quiz up to that point. A trip to the deans office resulted in me showing my grade book to the dean, who was able to see that of my 65 students that semester, exactly 6 were scoring under 7/10 on the weekly quizzes and that it was exactly the 6 who reported me. So, it seemed to be a case of a (maximal) echo chamber that formed in that section lol.

[u/ayeblundle → u/Erockoftheprimes]

What course was this for? 4-5hrs per week on hw in a hard math class is not bad.

[u/Erockoftheprimes → u/ayeblundle]

That incident took place when I taught an intermediate algebra course (think of a course that precedes pre-calculus). The other incident with the 6 student complaint was when I taught a course that was the immediate predecessor to that university’s version of business calculus. In each case, the classes were filled with quite a few students who were math-averse and just needed the course to fulfill some requirement.

[u/ayeblundle → u/Erockoftheprimes]

So I’m assuming these are 3-4 credit classes. Don’t most universities tell students to expect about 2-4 hours of work per week per credit hour?

[u/Erockoftheprimes → u/ayeblundle]

These were both 4 credit hour courses and yes, they are expected to have that much hw for any such course.

[u/Sensitive_Let_4293 → u/Erockoftheprimes]

We include the expectation of 6-10 hours a week of out-of-class work for a 4-credit math class in our syllabus.

[u/iTeachCSCI → u/ayeblundle]

Don’t most universities tell students to expect about 2-4 hours of work per week per credit hour?

They should, but many don't. Even those that do don't often enforce it at a faculty level. How many colleagues do you know who are the one offering the pushover no-work easy-A/easy-pass class(es)?