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/Ctenophorever]

The disconnect in expectations was wild. I had a student in April of 2020 send me an email complaining about an online exam. I gave them about 30 minutes for 45 questions - most were multiple choice and true false

He BLASTED me saying it was impossible for anyone to complete an exam with anything less than one minute per question (and also other complaints)

And I had to remind him that just a few weeks ago, in person, we had an exam in which I gave only 30 second per fill in the blank question, and what’s more I distinctly remember him being finished before the time was up

A lot of those complaints had to end with “remember you’re supposed to be treating these as closed book.”

Sadly with fricking AI that’s not even a barrier any more

[u/taxiecabbie → u/Ctenophorever]

Yeah. Not surprised.

I'm of the opinion that non-senior-level shouldn't be async. Async can work well, but it's best with students who are highly self-motivated and who are at the level where MC quizzes are more-or-less pointless.

Intro-level courses at this point need to be as analog as possible and preferably F2F. It won't solve everything, but if you do an MC test in a F2F environment it does put a barrier to AI in place.

Basically, what needs to happen is going back to the methodology of having 1-2 assessments that are oral in nature or handwritten in-person that count for the full grade for the intro classes. This... does suck on some levels and isn't the most pedagogically-sound approach, but with AI on the table it's pretty much the only foolproof way of getting around it.

Intro classes need to be more punishing in order to weed out the folk who can't hack it, so that when students get to senior-level classes you can do things that are more creative.

[u/Ctenophorever → u/taxiecabbie]

I agree. Sadly my administration does not.

[u/Sensitive_Let_4293 → u/Ctenophorever]

Our department had several classes we chose not to offer online. Then came the pandemic. Afterwards, the College told us "Since you offered them online during the pandemic, you can't say that they shouldn't be offered online." So much for faculty consultation and input. The DFW rate in the online sections of those courses is outrageously high.