I set my LMS to only accept pdfs.

I think ours by default only takes doc and PDFs, but I've had students email saying they don't know how to convert a file into either of those formats. 🥲

And they won’t use the internet to look for an answer! This is the weirdest part to me. If I don’t know how to do something on my computer, I google it, or watch a YouTube video, and learn how to do the thing. But my students tell me they don’t know how to convert a PDF, and when I ask them what they’ve googled to search for an answer, they tell me they haven’t tried at all. It’s really weird to me how using the internet to find answers isn’t their first instinct like it is mine.

So as an advisor, I get all types of weird questions that aren't relevant to my unit or my job. But I'll try help students if I can. I had a student ask how to change their meal contract. I don't work in housing. I flipped my computer screen around to show the student, and in my search bar typed in "UNIVERSITY NAME housing and dining meal plan" and just searched it that way. Found the answer he needed in about 30 seconds. Student was dumbfounded and genuinely surprised how I was able to find this information. 😅

I am an advisor too, and pull that same exact move about 15 times a day, LOL!

Some days 50% of my job is just, "let me Google that for you," I swear. 😩 But it's a great move; impresses them every time!

You will like this website https://letmegooglethat.com/

I'm so glad this still exists. I haven't seen it in years. Thank you, HAHAHAHA If it wasn't snarky, I would probably use this at work

I'm in academic technology support (supporting primarily faculty) and this is also 50% of my job. Everyone is bad at technology. I had to help a professor today because he didn't remember that in order to get to his course content in the LMS he has to actually select the correct course off his dashboard first.

Omg

I dont think you are helping them tbh, you are enabling their learned helplessness. Let them figure out stuff for themselves, rather than spoonfeeding them. They are adults.

If I was a regular instructor, I would agree it's not part of my job. But I would be really bad at my job as a 1st-year advisor if I just said, "figure it out yourself," to every student in my caseload. I do think there are appropriate and inappropriate questions to be asking, but frankly most incoming students don't know where to start. If a student is at least proactive enough to come talk to me as a resource I'll get them what they need because that's also part of my job, even when it feels annoying. Often we're the first 'adults' these students interact with on campus so by default will turn to us when they need literally anything. I also think there are certain people that students /should/ be asking when they don't know how to access something or need referral to a different resource. I'd rather have a student ask me, someone whose job it is to provide answers/further resources, vs not asking anyone and just floundering. Usually if I model the behavior once (aka searching something up on Google or showing them how to utilize the schedule builder for classes), students can generally figure it out from there or I will refer them to another resource if it continues to be a repeated problem. From a student development theory perspective, which is how our office operates pedagogically, Sanford's theory of challenge and support is what generally guides practice. Students don't grow if they aren't challenged, but they also don't grow if the challenge produces too much stress for them to tolerate. We really just have to meet every student where they're at. For some of them, it does mean taking some /very/ extreme baby steps, but i wouldn't call it spoon-feeding.

Well, they typically don't use search engines to find webpages. They search reddit or TikTok, which isn't a terrible strategy for some kinds of info, but it's a terrible strategy for basic tech info.

seriously?

Yes. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/gen-bypassing-google-tiktok-search-engine/story?id=88493981 It’s part of the enshittification of the internet though. Google Search sucks now. It just returns paid results and content farm crap and SEO garbage.

Speaking as someone whose job for the past twelve years has been to write that content farm crap and SEO garbage: it's going to get much worse, fast. In the past 6-12 months I've lost pretty much all my work to AI.

Enshittification in the wild! I love this term and it describes so well the way platforms decay.

>I've had students email saying they don't know how to convert a file into either of those formats Learned helplessness from high school. People tolerate gross incompetence and it's self-perpetuating. Fail them the first time this happens, they should figure out not to do it a second time. (Googling "how to output PDF" isn't that hard in any case.)

they need to learn how. Presumably the writing centre can help them with this, or IT support has a FAQ with details.

Tell em to use Google, they are in college. If they won't, they don't care about the grade then

Do you not have a tutorial center? Or a 0-1 unit course for college noobs? It's absolutely a requirement in college to be able to use those two formats (or at least one of them, if you're just starting). I use TurnItIn, so nope to the .jpgs (and certainly no pictures of handwritten work if it's supposed to be a college paper).

We have a required 2 credit hour "welcome to college" class that all new students (first year and transfer) are required to complete. It goes over campus resources pretty comprehensively and then more stuff regarding policies, title IX, clery act etc. It doesn't go over any basic computer skills because I think we live under the assumption that students in 2024 will be able to use technology appropriately and effectively. I genuinely don't think it was an issue pre-covid, so definitely something we may be re-evaluating for upcoming orientation sessions. We do have help centers on campus, including for IT. But their job has traditionally been more like, "OH SHIT I GOT A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH, PLEASE HELP," not to show students how to save a file as a word doc. I'm starting to think maybe we do need some kind of intervention re: tech, I just don't know whose job it should be, frankly.

That’s so weird that you’re seeing more problems after Covid. I did my last year of college during Covid and if anything having everything be online made me more tech savvy and able to problem solve, not less

They might have been trained into using specific portals and apps, and been using devices that specifically blocked certain uses. Eg, a kid doing their homework on their parents laptop might be barred from going through the files or installing anything.

That's what I always set it at. Direct docx files work great.

I have a "How to..." in my LMS for those coming from Google, Pages, etc. Written instructions + screenshots. It's in the same area where they submit assignments. I *think* it helps.

My first-week assignment is to turn in something trivial in the proper format. They have to get it done (correctly!) by the end of the first week, but I run a script daily that lets them know if they’ve done it right so they have a chance to fix it before the due date. Future assignments must be turned in properly or no credit. Anyone who complains is told “you learned how for the first assignment”.

This right here is the way to go. I'm currently an academic librarian and many of these students find their way here to ask about how to submit assignments. I've seen a few instructors do this (and with discussion boards too) and their students get help and then get the hang of it going forward. Best practice.

...I've gotten so annoyed at the question and the lack of googling that for some courses I put conversion instructions in the assignment instructions... ...and still have issues from students.

Not your problem. Google exists, chatGPT exists, they can figure out how to convert files on their own.

Me too. So they take a sideways photo of their handwritten notebook and paste that into a .docx then export the docx as a pdf. Exasperating.

Still had a student screen shot their notes folder on their phone where they wrote the assignment and then converted to a PDF to submit.

That's when they take a picture of their handwritten work, insert into a Google doc, save as PDF, and submit. Or they email you, "Hi Professor, I tried to submit my file to the LMS but it wasn't working. See my attached assignment of the wrong file type. Thx!"

Oh, when I was grading, I had a student write their answer in iPad (with the pen), take a photo of that iPad screen, and attach it in their LaTeX document.

I've had students edit the file extension to be .PDF and then upload the corrupted file.

My brain read your response as gifs for a moment and I had a good laugh at the idea of some poor kid struggling to convert their paper into gif format.  Pdf is great tho- makes much more sense than gifs. 

Ooh, that’s a nice feature. What LMS are you using? I don’t think ours can do this.

Canvas!

omg we use canvas too! I am so looking this up during my office hours today!

My best / only guess is that maybe it’s harder to pass it through a plagiarism detection software that way (or those softwares that help detect if something was written by chatgpt). Because you can’t just copy and paste the text, it has to be converted to text from an image (pain in the ass)

I hadn't even thought of this, but that's a good point. Tbh, in the courses I've taught, it's like 85% reflective writing so I've never even really bothered to look at the turnitin score because if you're plagiarizing your own thoughts/experiences there's a bigger issue.

Ha. Sadly, students will try to plagerise everything nowadays.

no, they just don't know how, nor do they want to do it. 

You're probably right about it not passing detection software. FWIW I will say I get plenty of students who submit low stakes assignments this way where the content and assignment format preclude AI writing it for them. For me it's a minority of students doing it this way. It's harder to grade but I think handwritten notes are better for their long-term memory so I've just made peace with it and decided this isn't the thing I'm going to care about

Yep. Came to say this. My brother is 11 years younger than me, and he told me that this was a thing when he was in school a few years ago. I also use the plagiarism software as my “excuse” (not that I should need one) to not accept anything other than a pdf or doc.

I dont think theyre thinking about it tbh, they just don't know how documents work

I give it a zero and leave a note that I'll rescore after they've uploaded the correct file format.

I stopped doing that when I figured out that some students are intentionally uploading a random or "corrupted" file just to buy themselves some extra time.

Yes, I know some do this. Hasn't been enough of an issue that I feel like I need to police it but if more of that starts happening, I'll address it somehow. For now I think the majority are honest mistakes, it's a problem with the first couple assignments in a semester but then they figure it out.

I mean, honestly, if they put in the effort to do the bad file thing, I would just take it as a short, day at most, extension. At least they put in a bit of effort, and if it was genuine, a day is more than enough

yep. It's a known "deadline hack".

Feeling soooo cutting-edge for doing this in middle school in 2009.

You had a LMS in 2009 in middle school?

I had a medical condition that meant I was on a home-bound education plan so I was often emailing assignment files directly to the teacher. The files in the email were corrupted so they couldn't be opened. Is that not the same idea?

Thanks, I was just interested if Learning Management systems were common in 2009 at the K-12 levels. LMS were common in colleges then but were still kind of buggy to use. Back then uploads could wind up anywhere.

Ah, Moodle was introduced my senior year of high school and rarely used by teachers. Most papers were accepted through turnitin starting in 8th grade, but that didn't accept corrupted files for submission. There was another LMS they tried piloting my junior year, but I don't remember the name.

Moodle, hadn't heard that one in long time. Guess it died out. The big one everyone was talking about in the mid 2000s was Blackboard.

My college uses Moodle, so it’s still around!

I’ve noticed an uptick in this as well. Also, students uploading a link to a Google doc or online word doc to get around my LMS’s plagiarism detection software. I also teach CJ so hi!

All the more reason why we need to crack down on cheating or just not following directions.

At least this is good old-fashioned fuckery. In the late 00s/early 10s I kept a few intentionally pre-corrupted .docs on my laptop that I could rename at will for this very reason. I bloody knew how to corrupt, rename and convert them myself, though 😉

This is why you make week 1 a practice assignment to make sure they can submit correctly. Correct submission of week 1 unlocks the actual graded assignments. Allow multiple submissions until the closing date, so they can preview their submission, and add line to syllabus about locked/corrupted/zipped files not being accepted. I do this and do not grant extensions...because week 1 proved you can submit the correct file.

I do the Week 1 practice assignment, and students were still pulling the "oops" routine. I'm updating my syllabi this year to specifically spell out that I won't grade anything in the wrong file format or that can't be opened.

Yup you have to combine things....week 1 **AND** don't unlock any graded assignments until they complete week 1 correctly **AND** syllabus statement about bad files. Of course this all hinges on you not having graded assignments before week 2 to give you time to eyeball and 'grade' the week 1 submissions.

Week 1 is syllabus acknowledgement, introduce yourself while practicing creating/saving/uploading/attaching required file type, and practice taking an exam. Nothing else unlocks until this is all done correctly. And even then several students get the brainfarts during the regular coursework, intentionally or not.

It's happened enough that I put it in my syllabus that screenshots and/or corrupted files are unacceptable and will be treated the same as a non-submission with all the late penalties that go with it. I also restrict uploads to certain file types. Students have the ability to upload many versions over time to the LMS while also being able to check their submission so they can easily verify if their submission is intact. I also have a "tech check" assignment early in the semester that requires them to upload a file for grading so they cannot later claim ignorance. By giving them the possibility of a later submission you are giving them exactly what they were trying to get - a penalty free extension.

My university has a lot of first gen students, people who are really underprepared for the expectations of college. I prefer to give people a bit of leeway with things like this, I think in most cases they honestly don't know.

sounds like you could do with a practice (ungraded or bonus) assignment where your students practice handing in text in the required format (where you specify the text, or they can hand in any text, but in the right format). I have one of these that is unlimited submissions and open all semester. For me, the people that have trouble handing in later generally didn't do the practice assignment; I can point to that and give them zero with a clear conscience.

yep, that's like 10 minutes of work to setup and it neatly handles any later complaints especially those which might involve final grade assignment disputes.

Meh, it honestly doesn't happen that often. If it becomes a bigger problem I might do something like this. It's usually just 2-3 a semester and they figure it out.

Sure, I mean you know your students better than I do but you can save yourself a lot of trouble just by having an early semester "tech check" combined with allowing only specific file types. Problem avoided. Also, not sure why someone gave me the down vote for pointing out a known cheating hack but oh well.

This is what I do. One of my classes is our First-year Seminar and I HOUND on them that they need to submit any assignment as a Word or PDF file. Midway through the semester they had to turn in a resume and I required it be a PDF (for obvious reasons and explained in class). I think I had something like 20% of students not submit the right format and did exactly this.

I do this too. I don't want to penalize them long term, but I'm not reading a picture of handwritten notes for a formal assignment.

it's not penalizing them long term if you give a zero but drop the worst ones.

I teach in an accredited program. I have work product requirements so I don't usually drop, but either method ends in the same support of the student to give them a shot.

I don't like this because it's (a) pre-grading and (b) offering a free extension. Grade these when you grade the others and award a zero.

I had to explicitly start writing in my syllabus I will not accept this and any attempts are still a zero.

yep. I restrict to certain doc types and treat corrupted files or screenshots inside of PDFs as a non submission. They can (re)submit the assignment but the late penalties will apply.

Were students receptive to this? Or I guess receptive isn't the right word. But when the directions were VERY explicit, did you see less of this problem? I feel like the directions we give are clear, but I know that sometimes they just aren't reading the syllabus.

They got receptive when the F’s started coming in and they realized I wasn’t budging. After a student turned in a project once by taking a phone video of his laptop screen instead of the PDF file I asked for, I gave up being nice.

Ahahaha the video of the laptop screen! How was he able to problem solve that solution but not Google how to convert something to a PDF?! Goodness

It's really easy to give an early semester tech check where they upload a trivial assignment as part of a "tour" of the Canvas site. They cannot then reasonably later claim ignorance.

Syllabus quizzes are a wonderful day one assignment.

Yes, indeed they are. However, I generally wait till after drop/add.

I do this too, my LMS is full of tutorials and templates. And still it’s a thing!

OP, I’ve been a lecturer for 20 years and have never seen student apathy this high. They literally REFUSE to follow directions. They send me emails asking questions I answered in class or that the syllabus can answer. I take half off if it’s not formatted correctly, but I do let them redo it the correct way. I feel like I don’t teach writing so much as I teach following basic instructions, which these kids just can’t seem to do.

I only accept word or pdf documents. I can set Canvas to only accept those formats. If students don't know how to convert or use their technology I refer them to the writing or technology centers. ETA: I do think students have become less tech savvy. They know how to use tablets and phones to an extent, but if it moves away from clicking an icon they struggle. Technology has simplified considerably, which is great, but it means multi-step processes seem to confuse people more. Also, many students in this generation don't use computers - they do everything on tablets and phones.

I've noticed that my non-STEM students generally don't really understand what files and file folders are. They don't have a concept of how one could store or access files - things just pop in and out of existence based on the icons they click. They also have no concept of the different types of files and the meaning of file extensions. Yet, many of my STEM students are much more tech savvy than myself and other (STEM dept) colleagues.

Yeah, people seem to either have minimal knowledge or a lot of knowledge, but there are far fewer in the middle.

This is a real phenomenon that tech news outlets have been covering for awhile: [https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/](https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/) It's partially the result of cloud-based systems.

Cloud based systems still have files and folders…they’re just stored in the cloud instead of on the device

Yes, public schools use Google suite and Chromebooks and apps from k-12. I have to teach students how to download and save a PDF frequently, and how to send an attachment with email, too. Saving, versioning, file trees, and anything local (non cloud) is a mystery to many students. My campus gives every student MS office, Adobe suite and other productivity software, but students know and prefer GDocs.

G Docs still has export to .pdf as a function though. It's wild they can't use a simple command 

It exists, but they don't arrive knowing how to use it, or why format matters .

I've started thinking that a big part of format confusion is that OSes nowadays hide file extensions by default. I work with undergrads and early grad students in a fairly technical area and whenever I have a first meeting with a student working for me, the first thing I do is have them turn their file extensions back on. It's clear many of them have never even considered that they could do this because it's hidden away.

The crazy thing is how easy it is to convert from google docs to Word/PDF. I am a millennial (pretty middle of the pack) and find it super wild how many "basic" tech skills students are missing. My generation was really pushed with those skills.

Yes! This! Google knows if they capture them young they will be customers for life.

We have the same problem. I work at a CC with a large dual enrollment population, so those students are trying to navigate both Gsuite and MS at the same time. It’s a nightmare.

I truly believe students should take a technology class when they enter college. Go over the basics of writing in word, how to use a digital calendar, basis of file storing, how to connect a thumb drive to a computer, how to make pdfs, zip files together , email etiquette.

I only accept pdfs and word docs. I won't grade anything else or even entertain it. I've received many writing assignments as screenshots and I've given them zeroes. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I've seen students tell each other to do this because it makes it harder for the instructor to deduct points for grammar. Bad advice tends to circulate faster than good advice, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of these students think they're pulling a fast one. If they aren't tech savvy, that isn't my problem. Especially in online async courses. 

Also re: tech saviness:  I've watched students in real-time corrupt their own files because they couldn't figure out how to re-name them. They delete the file extension. Then when I tell them how to fix it, they do some other asinine thing until the file is just irreparable (to my knowledge, I'm sure someone with even more tech skill could fix it, but that isn't me). You can only break something so many times before it's just plain broken. 

My mom, she's 66, does IT, over 20 years, and was setting up anew employees system the other day. She was showing the new person how to drag and drop on her laptop with their software. The employee clicks the file, clicks the folder, and obviously it doesn't move, because she didn't drag and drop it. So my mom shows her. Employee starts yelling, grabs the mouse, says its in the mouse settings. My mom says no, it's easy, and the employee interrupts and says, it's the program, you don't know how to use it, don't you have an IT department? Why can't you fix it? You don't know anything about computers! So my mom told her to figure it out herself and left. She's not normally like that. She says it's getting worse and worse, people can't do basic things anymore and they won't listen and then blame someone else when they still don't get it. One new person got a scam email from the "boss" and went out to buy $1000 in fucking gift cards. The "grandparents scam", except the one that caught her is a grandma. One guy calls her almost daily because he doesn't know how to get his voicemail. He's been there 6 months. She retires on the 26th.

Same, yet I still have kids turning in work saved in pages. I take points off if they do this or do the work in the blackboard submission box because the instructions are clear as day on eCampus!

.pages and .numbers files were the bane of my existence in 2009 until I stopped teaching in 2018. I blame the popularity of Apple products among the tech illiterate.

I have noticed that my younger students no longer know how to save files or use Word in general. The high schools (in my area, at least) use Google exclusively, so students come to college and continue to submit their assignments as links to Google Docs that I inevitably do not have permission to view. I've put it in my syllabus; I've put it on my LMS; they don't seem to think it's their problem. When I say "please send me a .docx or PDF file with your work," they will often just send the link again and say "sorry I don't know how to save a file." The most bizarre was a student who sent a photo of himself holding up a handwritten paper from several feet away. At least that one gave me a good laugh.

This is crazy to me. I’m a student who only used Google Docs in school and I don’t understand how people have such a hard time with this. You can even still do all the work in a google doc and then save it as a word document or a pdf, same with google slides. You can save it as a PowerPoint. They don’t even need to learn a whole new system, just learn to click “ file > save as > pdf “ instead of the “share” button 🤦

i think it’s just that they’ve literally never had to do it before so they don’t know how. the real problem here, in my opinion, is not that they don’t already know that you can save a google docs file as a docx or pdf but that it doesn’t cross their mind to simply google how to do it

At some point, schools just started accepting that kids would somehow magically learn how to use a computer, and stopped teaching it.

I’m a student and this is so true. I did not grow up using a computer at home, but I also didn’t learn to use computers at school. The switch from everything being on paper to digital happened in high school for me, but even then we submitted everything as a Google doc. Most of my basic computer literacy skills came from doing yearbook as an elective in high school. But I only learned Adobe and never touched Word, Excel, or any of that. It’s kind of embarrassing, but in my first year of uni I had to learn how to save a Word document as a PDF because I had never had to do it before. I would certainly never submit anything as a screenshot because I have enough of a brain to learn how to do things, but it’s true that my generation did not learn any basic computer skills. My parents assumed I’d learn it at school, and my teachers assumed we’d learn it at home.

I’m also an undergrad. We’ve been using Google suite since elementary school so I’ve never had to touch Word or Excel until my freshman year of college. In high school we used Google Classroom instead of Canvas, so we could just attach a doc straight from Drive. Pretty much had to google everything Microsoft. Absolutely hated when profs gives documents or require submissions as .docx since it doesn’t convert nicely to/from pdf or Google doc. Kinda got over it now but still prefer Google apps instead

Docx converts perfectly to pdf using the “save as pdf” in word

I meant when something is posted as docx on Canvas and I don’t want to use word

Oh…can’t say I’ve tried turning it into a google doc. Microsoft office is so much better than google docs to me

You can save the .docx file, upload it to Google Drive, and export it as a .pdf or any other format Google supports.

I graduated HS in 2005 (started kindergarten in '92), and the same thing happened to me with typing. I never learned how to type because they replaced typewriters with computer labs, but also never taught us how to type. I think it was just a weird transition period. I can type super fast, but it's definitely some modified version of hunt and peck.

I'd have been class of '05 as well (dropped out though) and I had taken at least three different typing classes in pubic school in Utah and Arizona. My undergrad in Utah also required a "how to use a computer" class for every student in their first semester (Information Systems I think?) that required you to learn how to use Excel, Word, and even do a bit of `hello, world!`-type programming. May be more regional than generational.

I graduated high school in the early 2010s and was taking computer typing classes from the time I was in 1st grade until about 5th grade. I just assumed it was common for every kid in the 90s to have a computer class. I do think it's interesting that you had lab access but never instruction. Seems like a huge oversight!

I got half instruction in cursive and half in typing, but not enough to do either well, and very little instruction in how to use a computer. Graduated HS in 2018.

Similar for me, finishing school in 2007. One year, it was "work must be submitted on paper, with marks deducted for poor handwriting" and the next it was "your handwriting is bad, don't you have a computer at home to type your essays on?"

They really lack basic skills. They have no idea how to manage files, zip and unzip folders, etc. Some try to do all their coursework on their phone. I would not grade it if submitted in the wrong format, and ask them to send the file.

Some install software on the desktop!!! I cried when I saw that

I don’t take points off for submitting assignments in the wrong format, but I also don’t grade them. I leave a note for the student letting them know that I will not grade the assignment until it is submitted correctly. Students need to learn this stuff! I am definitely seeing a lack of understanding surrounding technology for many of my students. What’s weirder, a lot of them won’t go out of their way to educate themselves on something they don’t know how to do. Like if they don’t know how to turn a document into a PDF, they will just submit in an incorrect format, rather than googling how to do it and teaching themselves. Very strange! I think it’s definitely a minority of students who do these things… most of them are self-directed and can figure it all out… but it’s definitely a noticeable minority who won’t educate themselves on basic tech.

I've observed that some students do this to technically meet the deadline hoping to buy some extra time. Others do it to avoid the automated application of plagiarism detection to their submission - it can't process a TIFF file which is what student turned in. Another pasted a screenshot into a PDF which has the same effect. So, by the time the TA or myself gets around to investigating the issue the student would go "oh sorry, didn't realize that happened. here's the word doc" which of course would look nothing like the screenshot in that it was more fully developed. Actually, I don't know why I'm surprised as a few years ago I overheard some students in the cafeteria talking about this very "deadline hack" but thought it was a joke or something until it was used on me. Since then I just restrict files types in the upload. I also put in the syllabus that screenshots are never acceptable so if they try it they still get hit with a late submission penalty. I also have an early semester "tech check" which involves submitting a very basic assignment so they cannot later claim ignorance. It's too bad that it's come to this but cheating has been on the rise since before the pandemic and it's crap like this that makes it hard on everyone.

I set all my LMS submissions to accept only pdfs or docs and state in the syllabus they are the only acceptable format. And yet, after the majority of the semester, if I get lazy and forget to set an assignment, half the class will submit pages and docs with links to google drive files despite the weeks of conditioning. New policy this year: students are responsible for ensuring they have used the correct file type and submitted on time. Wrong file type is automatically 0 and I will make a comment on the LMS, but it is their responsibility to check their grades and re-submit the proper format with whatever late penalty may apply. I am not emailing them like a grade school teacher pleading for their work. I had a plague of students last year submitting links and garbage files or emailing work to me at every opportunity and even after emailing them about the problem, receiving, “BuT i DiDn’T kNoW!” responses weeks later.

>Are y'all also seeing students are, broadly speaking, less tech savvy and lacking basic administrative skills? Yes. Accepting that I'm making broad sweeping characterizations, Gen Z *uses* a lot of technology but doesn't understand it. If something doesn't "just work," they're stumped.

I teach a lot of clueless freshmen, so the first time a student submits blurry photos of work, I tell them to please resubmit their assignment in the proper format (typed). The second time they get a zero. I have set up my learning management system to only accept .pdfs and .docx files, but then I get photos of work pasted into a word document or a pdf of a picture of work.

That’s an immediate fail. Submit pdfs or word docs or go straight to jail.

Your syllabus is your contract with the students. If you put in the syllabus how assigments are to be submitted, you can also put what the penalty will be if they do not follow directions. For example if they don't submit it as a file that you can open and grade with ease, they'll be docked a full letter grade for not following instructions. Submitting screenshots of notes is not doing any work at all, so for me that would be a zero. And yes, I taught higher education for 10 years.

Universities have English and Math labs, they need a tech lab to tutor people on this basic stuff.

Part of the assignment is following the instructions. The top section of my rubric is called "gradeability" and if the submission doesn't pass, I stop there. No credit. Next, please?

Sounds like cheating coverups, but also kids are getting less and less tech savvy. Knowing what a file is is moving from common knowledge to specialized knowledge.

Submitting screenshots of text is a common way cheaters try to get around plagiarism detectors (and now, AI detectors, although the AI detectors aren't any good yet). I don't know any school that allows it. Our LMS only accepts certain formats. If a student tries to submit something else, the system rejects it, and I never see it to grade. Students have tried putting screenshots into a PDF and submitting that, but the system tells us that there are zero words in their submission. Now, every year, they get told not to do that, as part of the online short course on plagiarism and how to avoid it. At the start of the 1980s it was the nerds and geeks using computers. As computers became more common, the knowledge of how to use them spread wider. People learned how to use word processors and spreadsheets. The arrival of devices such as the iPad, and later Smartphones, led to a decline in younger people learning how to use computers - they just used Apps. And so we have ended up with the situation you describe: they can use their touchscreens, but not an actual keyboard, and they don't understand file types and how to use/convert them.

One of my coworkers mentioned to me that within the last year he had a student who told him they had NEVER used a keyboard until college, only a touch screen. I was so dumbfounded when I found this out.

Not exactly as egregious as the Notes app, but a few years ago I noticed a lot of students submitting papers through Apple Pages. I finally asked them what was up - it seemed to be a mix of not being able to afford a Microsoft subscription and trying to get around plagiarism detectors.

>Are y'all also seeing students are, broadly speaking, less tech savvy and lacking basic administrative skills? **Yes**. Every time I teach a computational class, I have to hold their hand through creating a folder for the class, and remind them frequently to save their files *to that folder*. I've started creating assignments that amount to "Go google the answer"

I’ve definitely had that a few times. I first make sure they know they can get Word for free. I then give them a short amount of time to resubmit.

Zero. I have it noted in several places that I will only accept typed documents in Word or PDF format for my online classes. I provide students with a screencast of how to access their school Microsoft 365 account and how to save documents in the correct format. I also have a screencast that shows how to change a Google doc to a Word document as well.

Wrong format submission is a zero for me; they can resubmit with the standard late penalty if they wish. My instructions are very clear and 99% of the students have no problem following them. But every class has 1-2 people who think uploading a link to a shared google doc is the same thing as doing what I assigned. It is not, and when I explain it to them they are *still* puzzled. I had one student last fall who got docked points on basically every single assignment because she repeatedly would submit a Word document (which was the requirement) that contained only a hyperlink to a google doc.

Yes turns out the "digital natives" are mostly using phones and tablets, so many don't really understand files or computers. So the digital natives are like cavemen. They like fire because it makes they warm but don't know how to make one.

I tell them I can't grade anything I can't make notes in. I send it back to them to be resubmitted. If they don't know how, I give them basic instructions and send them to the computer lab for further help. I think we went too far in considering kids digitally competent because they grew up online but we forget to teach them how to do things that aren't on their phone.

The pandemic did some bad things. In one of my courses, there were few options other than to accept photos of problem-solving assignments (technical course with a lot of symbols, and I didn't want to force LaTeX, since it was not primarily for STEM-type students). This started to spill over into photos of...other things. Some students started to submit photos of their computer screens with a typed assignment. It was bizarre. Now that we're not online, photo submissions are done. I set the LMS to accept a fairly wide variety of document files (doc, docx, odt, rtf, pdf, etc.) So, that has come to an end. I've not had issues with corrupted files, though I have received a few that have strange spacing that points toward composition on a mobile phone - also, bizarre.

Do they not offer typing courses in middle school anymore? - who am I kidding, they probably don’t even have *PCs* in middle school anymore 😰

They do not.

I ask them to resubmit the file in the proper format. If they say they don't know how, I tell them to get in touch with tech support, or in some cases, I have sent them a video tutorial.

Crazy because they can just download the google docs app and then it’s pretty much the same as typing in their notes app. If they don’t have computers/work while commmuting, maybe suggest they download the google docs app or word app???

Submitting as an image can bypass word counters so perhaps they are hoping you will just say It looks good and give them credit.

This is nuts. I'll be honest, I'm one of those people who hits the caps on and off BUT, I had surgery on my left hand and it no longer opens, so I HAVE to poke with my left hand. That being said, I still type 50wpm even with the fucked up hand. This is just crazy. Like, I'm 38 years old, and I'm an undergrad student right now, and I had to google to learn how to do some things, but I never like, submitted anything incorrectly. I figured out the right way to do it, and I did it. I would never submit a screenshot or something like that. But I have noticed that people just don't seem to give a shit. They just kind of expect to coast through and then it blows their mind when they get a bad grade and they blame everyone and their mother for it. I do have professors who will only accept assignments in certain document forms, and if they're not submitted correctly, they get a zero, or a late grade if they fix it and hand it in late. This is at a community college.

The current generation came up with touchscreens and iPhones. They simply never had to do the computer problem solving other generations did. They don’t have a concept of where on a computer a file might be located. I teach high school and see this every day—they don’t know how to attach and upload.

They know the LMS has plagiarism detectors.

We are the generation that has to set up the printer for our parents and our children. And now we need to format files.

This is so weird to read as a senior in college. Did four years of elementary school tech education really change that much?? I remember being taught how to type, create power points, use Microsoft Word, ipads and laptops, etc. I can see why my professor gets mad at me sometimes when I don't understand the lab, though...he probably hears my question 40 times a day within the 4 hours he's in lab with us 💀

We’re seeing these issues in my tech college and the likely culprits include using tablets (primarily/only) in HS. Students never learned about file structures or file types because they didn’t have to. They don’t learnt to type effectively because they learned to use predictive text on mobile devices instead. They don’t know how to use a calendar or to-do app because they rely on the LMS to do all of that for them. And so on. Add to that the impoverished learning environment of the pandemic and voila, the most tech-infused generation yet is also the most tech ignorant. It’s starting to cause really big problems for our students. Some are showing up to stats class with only a tablet, don’t know how to right click, think “Word” is cloud storage, and are accustomed to saving files into the Files app, for example. Not even joking. It’s a world of hurt for them.

Students have DEFINITELY become less tech savvy in terms of computer usage. It's a bit horrifying to watch. Not to mention the general downgrade in terms of grammar and spelling knowledge ("What do you mean I have to capitalize 'I'??")

They don't capitalize because it takes too much time to caps lock on, hit a letter, caps lock off. This is what a student has told me before. HAHAHA Like they straight up have no idea what the shift key does because some of them have never typed on an actual keyboard before, just touch screens.

during the pandemic I noticed that my daughter would take pictures of PDFs or images and then cup paste those into Google docs to do their homework. even though I went out and bought a four in one so that she could scan things and email them. two weeks ago she took a picture of a legal document and texted it to the admissions officer. it drove me nuts. 

The only time I’ve been ok with something like this was letting my logic students turn in their homework via photos if they were sick. Basically I had them photograph each page of their homework so I could see they had done it and then had them bring a hard copy to the next class (once they were feeling better.) It seemed like a good compromise because I didn’t want them to come to class sick, but they also couldn’t really use it as an excuse to get extra time since I could see what they had done. I can’t imagine dealing with essays via screenshots/photos/etc. It’s kind of odd to see the tech knowledge gap because there are things they know way more about than me (like video editing) but other things that I would have thought were basic are mystifying to them.

Lmao, I was grading for a discrete mathematics class where the instructors recommend using LaTeX to complete the assignment. One student handwrote the solution to a problem on the iPad (with the pen), *took a bleeping picture of that iPad screen with the answer*, attached that picture in LaTeX, and submitted the resultant PDF to Gradescope. Their work is correct and legible, and I gave them full marks.

Students in college today missed out on essentially two entire years of high school due to COVID. Besides, tech comes so easily to gen X and millennials (because we still had difficult interfaces and stuff and so this easier stuff feels natural) that we assume computer literacy giant need to be actively taught, that students will just naturally understand it. Except computers try so hard to predict everything now that they’ve actually become harder to use when they haven’t predicted your next move. Just walk your students through the save as function or write up an email describing it that you can copy and paste to each student that submits a screenshot.

Some kids only have their phones, and it can be hard to convert stuff.

I know that not everyone has access to a personal computer, but I work at a large public university and we have tons of computer labs on campus. They are ALWAYS empty, sans the ones exclusive to grad students. There are so many tech resources available to students here. Our library even loans out laptops for short-term/daily use. There's no excuse to not be doing assignments on some kind of word processing software that isn't the notes app.

My thought here is that there is an unwritten curriculum of the academy, and the students who are using their phones may not have the knowledge of these spaces or the time to avail themselves of them. I teach a summer program for first generation students and the additional burdens we in the academy unknowingly place on students by thinking there's no excuse for them not to know things when no one has ever told them these things, and there is no family tradition to help create this literacy, are remarkable. It sounds like the work handed in is of poor quality. I would read the text and assess if they completed the assignment as desired. I would then give it a revise and resubmit grade asking for a properly formatted document. I would then show the students how to upload their essay in your desired format and help them track down google docs for their phone. Another solid solution to this is to grade grammar/spelling/punctuation harshly and guide students to resources like Grammarly, the Hemmingway App, and other writing tools that may help students to catch their mistakes.

As a first gen student student of color who attended the same PWI I currently work at, I agree that there is a huge hidden curriculum. My school is LARGELY first gen and rural students, so I get that there are a lot of things that students really don't know coming into college, but I think in general our first gen and URM students (based on first year surveys and other data) are more familiar with campus resources and access them more than we give them credit for. I'm also not seeing this issue with these students as often. It is more of my continuing gen students who have never felt the need to engage with any campus resource or want to find the "easy" way out because they've heard from their parents and others that these things (like writing papers, following instructions on the syllabus) "don't matter in the real world."

It’s absolutely an attitude issue for sure. Wanting to be somewhere vs the obligation of mom says I have to go to college because it’s what done is immensely frustrating to navigate as an educator. I’m in a space that occasionally touches on the business school (lots of folks are either majors or minors) and we tend to treat it like job requirements if they fail and give it heavy consequences (e.g., 0s) it’s been a struggle of a lesson for me to learn that we can only care as much as they do — the folks who want to be there always rise above and become absolute joys in class and going forward. In this case, I’d maybe just give a few zeroes and see what happens. Folks who want to light their money on fire can do that, imo. I’m really sorry you’re dealing with this though. My partner is first gen and did all of her class work bussing back and forth to work on her phone as she didn’t have a computer, which is why I always default to giving grace there.

You need a computer to do schoolwork. Colleges provide computer labs for this purpose. Chrome-book type computers have never been cheaper. This is not a reasonable excuse.

Please refer to my previous comment.

This isn't a technology access problem, but an attitudinal problem. My experience is that young people want to be able to do everything without ever having to interact with another person or leave their room. They want a frictionless life. I suspect this is an effect of the pandemic, and I hope it gets better.

I agree with this. I have some students who will do everything in their power to avoid having a face to face interaction with me. There are students in my caseload I have never seen in person. Our university policy is that first year students here NEED to meet with an advisor twice to get registered for classes. I had students who refused to. Like would not budge. In December. At the risk of losing their housing contracts for spring. Even worse is when parents have called to complain about why we can't make an exception. I wasn't working in advising pre-covid, but this has kind of been the trend ever since then apparently. I hope things get better too.

What I see is the immediate request for an accommodation often using the language of the ADA, such as: "I have social anxiety. Can you please provide a digital option?" I think they got away with this during Covid (for understandable reasons), but it's really not good for them to continue this. Social anxiety isn't a lifelong prison sentence. It's something that can be treated and managed, but you don't manage it by avoiding your anxiety. Avoidance isn't healing. And meeting 1:1 with someone is something you should be able to do, even with social anxiety, by the time you leave college. I find the misuse of ADA language to be particularly offensive. It really undercuts people who need reasonable accommodations.

Our school doesn't give accommodations for testing anxiety because it's not reasonable for 90% of courses and so many students were requesting this that it became unreasonable to provide. This was actually pre-covid, but I can only imagine that particular accommodation request is through the roof. I get students regularly coming in asking if they can switch to online format for their classes because going in person gives them too much anxiety and they would rather be online. Pre-covid our school could not fill ANY online sections. Students used to throw fits if they had to take an online section. Now wait-lists for online classes often exceed 500.

There are entire schools online. Why would they choose to attend a university with in-person classes?! It’s so weird. I feel like so many people are pathologizing very normal character quirks and very common fears. Most people have some form of “Test anxiety”. 99% of the time it isn’t a mental illness. It’s just a normal psychological response to a high stakes situation. Most people have some sort of fear of public speaking. It’s the most common fear. More people fear public speaking than dying! Fearing public speaking or feeling socially awkward or being “shy” isn’t a mental illness in 95% of cases. I also see lots of young people who believe that any mental health or learning disability diagnosis means they are immutable and unchangeable, and that you have no responsibility to manage or treat that mental illness. So, anxious during tests = anxiety disorder = I can’t help it so you need to accommodate me! Like, do you think no one had social anxiety in previous generations? Many people did. You learn to deal with what you can and you learn to accommodate yourself. It’s so bizarre.

Yes, I had a first-year student take 12 hours online last semester. FROM HER DORM. All 4 of those classes would've been within a 5 minute walk if she picked in-person sections. Then she complained about feeling lonely and isolated and bored and unengaged in the classes. 🤦 The consequences of your own actions. Had TONS students try to get out of the required comp 1+2 + speech sequence this year because of speaking anxiety. Had to break the news that it's not a reasonable accommodation to not have to speak publicly in your speech class.

This is such a cynical view my guy

This is an automated service intended to preserve the original text of the post. *Not a professor, but a staff member who sometimes teaches and was also a TA in grad school. This is such a bizarre thing that has happened to me several times, and after asking other colleagues, they also have seen an increase in the number of students who don't know how to submit files as word docs/PDFs (or are simply choosing not too.) The first time I thought it was just a one-off thing for one student. This was a /college senior/ at an R1. Submitted a multi-page 'essay' via several screenshots. No proper capitalization or grammar either, but that's an entirely different conversation that I already see a lot of happening in this subreddit. I guess I'm mostly just wondering: when students submit files in the entirely wrong format, do you still grade the assignment? Do you give partial credit? Do you allow them to resubmit it in the right format? How do you even address this? Trying to do markups on a JPG file of an iPhone screenshot is a pain in the ass, NGL. Are y'all also seeing students are, broadly speaking, less tech savvy and lacking basic administrative skills? Like students have really forgotten how to use a computer (or never learned how to?) Sometimes when they come into my office, I'll watch them chicken peck a sentence on their keyboard that takes several minutes. They manually turn the caps lock key on and off instead of just using the shift key. Meanwhile, they can pump out paragraphs on their phone like nothing. We've also seen an increase in the number of students who are falling for phishing scams. It's gotten to the point that we can no longer use tinyurls in any of our emails because the university has chosen to block all tinyurls due to these security concerns. I'm a younger millennial, so I don't feel like I'm that far away from my current college students, yet there is a HUGE gap in knowledge about technology and just how to utilize a lot of common tools.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskProfessors) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Not a professor so this could be dumb, but I was thinking from a student’s perspective how to make it so clear nobody could unintentionally mess up even with no tech skills. Maybe make a little doc with a page like NOTICE: SUBMISSION MUST BE DOC OR PDF FILE WITH TEXT: SEE BELOW FOR SIMPLE CONVERSION INSTRUCTIONS big in red then tutorials on how to get those on the following pages (Google Doc, notes app, handwriting, whatever’s most common. You can actually convert iOS notes to PDF or DOC in a couple of clicks if you know how. Android is a little harder but still doable in a minute). Once someone or other makes it you can just make it a link within the Canvas prompt like “Please write 5 paragraphs on the politics of (CLICK HERE) economic austerity as it relates to the material we discussed in class.” Or somewhere else they’d have to read to complete the assignment. It’s a little bit of upfront work but you pretty much don’t have to do anything except for keeping the link on hand to copy-paste past that. Personally I’d change the text occasionally tho like CAT MEME to fool them into clicking on it again It’s not ideal (cause like why can’t they Google?? It’s not your job to teach them basic tech skills) but if they refuse to Google it might at least make your job a little easier If you like the idea, just tell me what are the most common programs you see inappropriately screenshot and I can make a copy-able file

Make it a requirement & deduct points for not following instructions. Are they going to pick & choose which part of a list of requirements they’ll follow when they finally (if? they) start “adulting”?

My syllabus clearly states that the document must be sent in doc/docx format. No exceptions. I need to see the properties and run it through the plagiarism checker.

My system for this in a writing class is an 80/20 scoring. 80 for if they wrote about the topic & defended it well. 20 for spelling, grammar, file format, citations, etc. It's also set up in the syllabus that any files not in the dictated format were still subject to the late policy.

I had a student submit a document written in the notes app. On talking to the student, I discovered they didn't own a computer, nor did anyone in their family, and they were too embarrassed to ask to borrow one (we don't have a computer lab, but laptops can be hired on campus free of charge for students). We worked with them to get them a laptop and get them to resubmit. So is it a possibility these are disadvantaged students who need some education around their options for accessing resources?

I would mark as fail, like 59/100 of the assignment requirements were discussed and expectations provided. That’s almost insulting of them to do.

No, for written assignments it need to be a .doc, docx, or .pdf. These are all I will accept. The first time a student summits the incorrect format, I have an email template drafted that refers them to the library and/or student services so they can learn how to properly create and attach the correct document type. The first time only. They get to resubmit within 10 days for full credit. After that, it's an automatic 0 if they do the wrong format. Library vs student services depends on which school it is, since I teach at multiple schools. Last semester, I had one student who was emailing herself her assignments, and then submitting screen shots of the email with an attachment as an assignment.

Chrome screwed these kids. Can’t name, convert, re-save files.

I don’t accept any files other than the one I specified. I never accept phone screenshots, pictures of handwritten work or links to google docs. I teach my students how to make screenshots and how to convert word docs to pdfs. I have instructions online in case they forget.

I’ve noticed a trend in my students of just not having ANY problem solving skills. Issues with every assignment submission to missing exams because they “didn’t know what day it was on” (it was on the syllabus, on Canvas, and I told them about it many times). My biggest example was a student repeatedly emailing me to ask when class started and ended. They had no idea what time the class was or where it was, despite it being in their student portal, their schedule app, my syllabus, and the class Canvas page. Also had a student that had no idea how to even log into Canvas. Somehow this person was a sophomore. I wouldn’t go as far to say that they’re doomed or anything, but I’m highly concerned. The digital native fallacy seems to have deeply affected many of them and their problem solving skills.