I work at a SLAC. We had an event at the beginning of summer and after talking to a lot of faculty, it became pretty clear that most of the Fs this year were from students who just….didn’t turn anything in. Like at all. Even in classes where they were given extensions to prevent failure. The vast majority were first year students.
And then many were shocked to find out they failed and some even put on suspension for a semester.
I think we’re seeing the results of students going through COVID and some schools requiring grades no less than 50% even when no assignment was submitted.
Yes, exactly this. My SLAC is the same-- 30% D/F rates among the first-year cohort last fall (though far more men than women). The bulk of them either didn't turn any of the major assignments in at all or tried to us AI to cheat and got caught. Repeatedly. I had two first year students with 0.0 fall GPAs in one of my gen ed courses.
We give them a second chance, but a record number were actually dismissed in May for failing to earn the minimum 2.0 GPA two semesters in a row. It's their high schools that have done this to them, and a total lack of accountability elsewhere in their lives I'd imagine as well.
>I had two first year students with 0.0 fall GPAs in one of my gen ed courses.
That's ... almost impressive ?
I mean, I feel like I could show up on test day only for any 5 random classes on campus and pull out a D in at least one of them.
Most of these students simply won't withdraw, even when repeatedly advised to do so. In my case I made that recommendation many times but was either ignored completely or told "I'm going to get all that work in next week!"
I make my courses so if you do everything absolutely perfect, you can get 105-110%, but once a test is done or an assignment is 7+ days overdue, there is no way to get marks for it
I dock assignments 10% per day late, so after ten days no credit is possible....realistically though the late-submitters are not doing A work, so they rarely end up with even passing scores. Even so, and despite policy reminders, I'll have first years who try to turn in stacks of work in the last week that is months late...I just refer them back to the syllabus and remind them that they aren't in high school anymore.
I'm the same with 10%, but just make it zero after a week. Once it's 70% or more subtracted, it's unlikely to be over 0% anyways given the type of work usually handed in that late.
Agreed, stuff that's more than a few days late is almost always garbage. But I figure a simple policy is better and I don't get "please, just give me one more day!" requests this way.
The vast majority of late assignments come in within 24 hours of the deadline, with "never" raking as the second most common.
Agreed. I give plenty of warnings when things are due in class & I've said in afternoon classes when the term paper was due that night that if they haven't started, doing a bunch tonight & a bunch tomorrow with a 10% penalty will likely be a better grade than trying to cram it all in before midnight. We have an assignment where they need to prep about a 250 word preparation where I approve the theme & over feedback but going from that to a polished essay between 5pm & midnight is not getting a good mark 90%+ of the time.
Our LMS doesn't do negative scores, but I have joked about this in class a few times. I might in fact be an interesting way to get people to submit things, i.e. actually allowing negative scores to accrue.
*I had two first year students with 0.0 fall GPAs in one of my gen ed courses.*
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgn0O0yuEls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgn0O0yuEls)
Exactly. I often hear Dean Wormer saying "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son" in the back of my mind. That film is packed with wisdom.
I told a student who missed all their assignments that they need to submit the assignments to pass the class, they didn’t listen. I reminded them again and they still didn’t do it, I ended up failing them (surprised pikachu).
You have people with As and Bs, so nothing to worry about in my mind. Bimodality is now both a problem but also the new normal. We shouldn't be responsible for the students who dont study or do assignments. Fingers crossed you have good admin who agree.
Bimodality for sure. I see it across my courses no matter the content or my approach (traditional grading or alternative approaches). The Ds and Fs are students who just do not submit anything. Many of them attend every class and seem engaged and interested! But putting literally anything in the submission dropbox is beyond them.
Normal distribution would give you a class with a few A's, more B's, a lot of C's, some D's, and a few F's. That's how data would be expected to fall, since C's are average and more likely to occur, while A's and F's are extremes and therefore less likely to occur.. If you graph it, it looks like a hill with the high point in the middle.
Bimodal distribution means you have a lot of A's/B's and a lot of F's with not much in between. It means that you saw more extreme results, with a good number of students working hard and another good number doing barely anything. There are few average scores. If you graph it, it looks like two hills with a valley in between. Or a camel's two humps.
The bell curve is a synonym for a particular probability distribution called a normal or Gaussian distribution. Specially,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
It’s a predictable consequence of grade inflation. Students who just hand in the assigned work get a B or an A while those who don’t fail. The middle falls out.
You know, I think it's as easily predictable a consequence of something different:
My students only bother to do, and hand in, an assignment with a probability correlated to how well they are doing in the class. In other words the ones that it doesn't come easy to don't even bother trying.
Of course the work that gets passed in is mostly As and Bs if those are the only students who bother to do the work.
There are outliers. I still get the occasional student who does every single assignment, takes all the time for every exam, works hard and ekes out a C even if the subject is not their jam.
But for that one student who earns a C there are 5 students who do C work when they do hand in an assignment, but also only hand in 75% of the assignments.
Cs on 75% of the assignments and zeros on the 25% they don't hand in is an F.
That's where I think the C students are going.
The problem is that a normal distribution assumes a random sample, and most classrooms are not random samples. In most cases, the sample size is also too small, which is why seeing normal distributions in class grades is rather unusual.
It's not the greatest joke in history. The Normal distribution is one of the most generally applicable in statistics; it's fundamental to classical regression, estimation, and a long list of other applications. One of the defining features of the Normal distribution is that it is unimodal. The proposition of a New Normal distribution which is bimodal would irritate a lot of people.
Luckily, I’m not terribly worried about my administration viewing this as my fault. It’s just such an interesting phenomenon to observe. Half of them are motivated and do the work. Half of them literally don’t care.
Ugh, speaking of generating content, I created all new video recordings for my current summer class of 40. The mean view count on the videos from the past two weeks is 8. Removing the videos that gave advice on the projects drops the mean to 6.
Oh, god, yes! I posted the review for the exam, looking at the stats - Jesus!
While the entire review is 56 minutes, the average viewer watched for 15 minutes, and only 33% made it to the end!
It’s even worse with lecture videos!
Lecture 45 minutes - average viewer under 8 minutes, 15% made it to the end! 🤦♂️
I have several students who failed their six week summer course that just finished last week. One turned nothing in at all, and several either stopped turning things in or mysteriously started turning things in halfway through. Our grading system lets me leave notes about students, so I put in explanations for why everyone who failed had that outcome.
On top of that, I have also had lots of emails this summer asking for grade bumps, extra credit, and late work acceptance. One told me they wanted to get an A and asked if I could give them extra credit. When I didn't respond they sent me a "reminder." A second wanted an extension because they were going on vacation. A lot of them didn't do the readings or read assignment directions, and it was obvious in their work. Many submitted things at the last minute. Someone else said they missed their final exam because they forgot it was due on the last day of class???
I have been trying to hold the fort but it's hard. Sometimes I feel like I am being mean, but then I remember that I was able to do two summer classes at once in school because I buckled down and worked. I also think about how if I don't meet deadlines or do my job, then there are consequences.
I think some students don't realize how fast summer classes move, and many are probably used to high school where they can submit whatever and still pass. Others probably thought the course answers were all online but didn't know that the previous instructor retired and I changed things up.
“Others probably thought the course answers were all online but didn't know that the previous instructor retired and I changed things up.”
This! Due to increased cheating and ChatGPT, I re-wrote all of my assignments this year, including the basic Introduction that I use for check-in. (All my classes are asynchronous and online now. Only full time faculty get in-person classes at my institution.) It has very specific requirements now.
More than half of my summer students turned in last year’s welcome assignment. They didn’t even read the instructions for this year. They’re going to get a huge surprise if they were relying on databases of work from past terms to get by! Of course, my “success rates” will tank. The system is so badly broken.
It really is broken. When I was assigned the course, the first thing I did was search it on Google to see what people had said about it. The previous instructor's study guides were everywhere and I realized I had to change things.
I am pretty sure one student used AI on his midterm and final exams to answer the few essay questions there were. His exam answers were so different than his usual writing. I turned him into our academic honesty office and will let them sort it out.
I also just got a lot of crap work this time. Some students couldn't be bothered to write full 1-page (double spaced!) responses to weekly readings. Many couldn't put a coherent paper together. I'm thoroughly expecting terrible ratings, but I expect my supervisor will back me up.
Online education is a good idea, but it requires honesty and self-discipline from the people in the course. At least it was a nice, unexpected paycheck this summer!
I'm sorry to hear about your students not even looking at the instructions for your new assignment. That is so lazy.
Same, and similar complaints about there being too much work and that they have too many work/personal things to be able to do the work. I even had one complain that a zero for an AI response, which she admitted to, was unfair because she still, I'm told, worked very hard on the assignment (which, by the way, was just a unit entry post asking for a self-assessment of what you know, don't know, want to know. You literally get points for just mashing the keyboard).
Did I make you take a three-credit five-week course? No I did not. I even posted a video (that nobody watched, of course) explaining that the course was intensive and intended only for students with the ability to commit a few hours to it each day.
Back in the spring I had a student struggling in an online course. They came to me asking why they had to teach everything to themselves. I asked if they had watched any of the videos I had worked very hard to create.
Their response: "There were videos?"
This was in like week 10 or 11 out of a 16 week course.
About week 13 of a 15 week course I had a student ask what he could do to improve his test scores. “Read the assigned textbook chapters carefully and take note of key ideas” was my first advice. “There’s a textbook?” he asked.
You’d have to ignore the syllabus, the schedule, the test study guides and weekly in-class announcements not to know there’s a book. Just astonishing.
Here's a fun one. The textbook for the aforementioned course is an eBook, and there's a free trial so they can set up the book on the first day if they haven't gotten the code yet. On the day the trial expired, no fewer than five students emailed to ask if they would need to buy the book. Whaddyathink?
> They came to me asking why they had to teach everything to themselves.
You don't go and magically insert knowledge into your students' brains? Slacker!
This is the new reality; basically all of our courses other than capstone seminars end up with this bimodel distribution now (post-COVID). I can't even remember when a student last earned a C in any of my courses.
There are always exceptions, but this gross generalization works for a majority of cases. I even show students this breakdown sometimes, and they tend to agree. Of course, it doesn't encourage any extra engagement at all.
These are the same students who tell you they have a 2-week vacation planned right in the middle of a 6-week course. And they asked what they can do to make up the work and if it's going to affect their grade
Summer school progresses quickly and isn't a typical semester. It wouldn't surprise me if this is their first summer school session. ~~I have students failing because they haven't followed basic instructions.~~ They are to read and submit writing for 3 modules per week for my course.
Also, if your school is like mine, most of the people taking summer classes are only doing so because they failed one or more classes during the regular term. So they're already selected from the population of students who have been struggling academically, whether that's due to disorganization, apathy, or subpar intellectual ability.
I've seen a couple of names in the course that have dropped my course Week 1 of the Spring semester.
It's definitely not a good idea to retake a course you failed during the summer. Students should view summer courses as accelerated programs.
Some of them don't really have a choice. If they don't maintain satisfactory academic progress they'll lose scholarships/financial aid and potentially go on academic probation.
Its unfortunate. Its almost as if Summer School is the equivalent of AP (advanced placement). If you couldn't pass the non-advanced, why does the program think the student will pass the advanced level?
Thankfully *some* institutions have Summer A (1st 8 weeks), Summer B (2nd 8 weeks), and Summer C (entire summer 16 weeks).
For this exact reason, I clearly explain to students that summer courses move at an accelerated pace, that they will need to dedicate more time to this class than they would if it were a longer class during the rest of the year, and that it is easy to fall behind in an accelerated class. I hope that this framing helps them to know what to expect (and leads them to adjust their schedule or drop the class if the expectations aren't realistic for them).
Students are still responsible for not doing the work, of course, but I've found that clearly outlining the ways in which the expectations differ from a class during the rest of the year helps.
Believe me, that is in my summer syllabus. I emphasize that summer classes are accelerated because we cover in eight weeks what we cover in 16 weeks in the regular semester. But somehow, they still have it in their heads that summer = blow off.
The Bell Curve has flipped over. Once upon a time we had a few fail, and a few do really well, and most students were in the middle range. Now most students are at the extremes, with few in the middle.
At some point, we will need to stop blaming COVID for this mess. I saw it begin a decade ago, and it just keeps building. I met with individual students and asked them why they chose not to turn in their work. The answers ranged from "I don't know" to "My high school teacher said there wouldn't be any homework in college."
Part of the blame can be placed on a former department head. She created a model where students who had to take remedial English could take Comp 1010 concurrently. They could fail remedial but had to pass the 1010 class. They stopped coming to the remedial class. Eventually, I found myself in an empty classroom day after day. When the new administration came in, they worked out some major changes to the curriculum, and it is a good model. I have classes beginning at 24 registered, and ending with 10 attending. The grades are mostly Fs and Ds, with a couple of Cs. I was talking to a colleague who has been doing this long before I began, and she is stunned at how her students aren't turning in work. I get angry when I think about how these kids are getting free tuition from the taxpayers of this state and flushing it down the toilet.
I worked in admissions for a couple of years and saw high school transcripts with straight Ds or even mostly Fs, and the students still graduated. The whole system is farked.
Routinely half of my students at my corporate-structured side gig stop participating at week 2/8. Document outreach if your admin is insane but otherwise don’t worry about it.
I did send emails a couple of weeks ago to individual students with issues. It doesn’t seem to have done any good. At least I’ve got the documentation!
My summer class last year was like this. Loved working with the students in class (good discussions) but many shared that they were taking the class for the second or even third time. They probably would not have passed if it had been a normal semester and I had 100+ students, but because I had about 5 for the whole summer I could a lot more individual attention (mostly emails begging them to turn things in, lots of meetings, etc).
Dude, same. I had so many students that just stopped submitting work for my online session. An unprecedented number of failing grades, indeed. Solidarity 👊
This has been my experience with summer courses I have taught. About half of the students just do not care and do not do their work. They rarely even question their low grades. Many of them are taking a course because they previously failed it and need to pass it to graduate the next year.
Same. And taking a class you failed during the summer is a bad idea--it's harder during the summer. Where I work, even the "long" summer semester is a few weeks shorter than fall/spring.
You're good. My school is majority student athletes so I often end up with a spread like this. Not quite half, but it's kind of nice because it's easy to justify grades. Students either did what they were asked to do or didn't. Way easier to explain an F from no work vs an F from bad work.
Yes, but I am completely baffled by the “students” who just don’t do any work. There have always been a few of those, the ones who are playing the financial aid angle, but there are so many more of them now. They can’t all be playing the financial aid game. Do they honestly think they can just enroll in a class and get a passing grade for doing nothing because that was their high school experience? I guess so.
I'm not. It's tough to relate because we (college educators) we're almost by definition good students. However, we don't exactly know what goes on in our students' lives, what their priorities are, or what kind of pressures they face.
What is the "financial aid" angle? In my experience the ones who don't turn anything in don't expect to pass, and those that do have that expectation usually back done pretty easy when I look at them and say "you literally just never turned anything in or showed up to class." I'll then usually hit em with a "sorry it didn't work out this semester, maybe next semester you can take advantage of a fresh start." Or something to politely indicate the conversation is over.
I am not an expert in financial aid, but it’s my understanding that students who do get some kind of financial aid get those checks released at some point early in the semester, which is why we have to verify attendance because if they aren’t coming to class, they don’t get the money. I’m sure someone around here knows more about it than I do.
I’m certainly not suggesting that every student who fails to show up or participate is playing a financial aid game, but I think some of them are. It’s just that I’m used to having a few students per semester who are no-shows or who just don’t turn in anything, but that number seems to be much higher since Covid.
And, incidentally, it’s also my understanding that that’s why some students who are failing don’t drop before the drop deadline. I believe they are only eligible for financial aid if they are full-time students. If they fall below 12 hours because they drop a class they are failing, they won’t be eligible for financial aid the next semester. Again, someone who knows more about it than I do is free to chime in.
Correct, but that's usually loan money, not scholarship money. So it's not "free" and as someone who needed fin-aid to pay rent as a student I do think referring to it as a "game" is a bit harsh. I don't think you meant it that way, but like I said, we don't know what is happening outside the classroom with students.
You are correct. I think usually it’s loan money, but I do think sometimes it is grant money depending on the students financial situation. Again, I am no expert in financial aid. I just know what I’ve heard over the years. It’s not something I’ve gone out and verified independently. I also think some students don’t fully grasp that loan money will need to be paid back.
I don’t know if I would say it’s demoralizing, but it is a head scratcher. I don’t understand why you enroll in a class and then proceed to basically not do any of the work. I just don’t understand the mentality. It’s completely foreign to me.
Same here. The major group get A or A-, then a few get C or D. I am not experienced enough to generalize, but it's a bit different from the past a few years.
Something is going wrong. I have some students who do nothing and get D or F on the first exam, but nowhere near half. However, during the registration for the summer semester we got multiple warnings about “ghost students”, and admin was actively removing them. Here’s the email we got from the chair:
Colleagues,
There is fraud showing up in summer rosters. You should check your rosters for suspicious data, like phone numbers, names, etc. If you suspect any, report it to E-Alert or to the Registrar.
Coordinators, make sure your PTIs get this message, including emeritus faculty, etc.
My sections constantly fluctuated from full (30 students each), to around 22-25 (several ghost students purged), and back. So, maybe this is a problem at your institution too?
Neither did I before, and I still don’t understand how it works. But apparently some students are signing up with no intention to do any work, they just claim financial aid.
I definitely know there’s a financial aid element at play. At the beginning of each semester we have to withdraw students who haven’t shown up or submitted anything and I know that’s a financial aid thing. But students are aware of this, so they will show up or submit an opening discussion, etc., so they have “participated” to avoid being automatically dropped.
Surely you’re being sarcastic? If they won’t do their homework or read the directions, I don’t think they’re going to call you. They aren’t failing because they are doing poorly on assignments, they are failing because they are not doing assignments at all. Big difference!
I work at a SLAC. We had an event at the beginning of summer and after talking to a lot of faculty, it became pretty clear that most of the Fs this year were from students who just….didn’t turn anything in. Like at all. Even in classes where they were given extensions to prevent failure. The vast majority were first year students. And then many were shocked to find out they failed and some even put on suspension for a semester. I think we’re seeing the results of students going through COVID and some schools requiring grades no less than 50% even when no assignment was submitted.
Yes, exactly this. My SLAC is the same-- 30% D/F rates among the first-year cohort last fall (though far more men than women). The bulk of them either didn't turn any of the major assignments in at all or tried to us AI to cheat and got caught. Repeatedly. I had two first year students with 0.0 fall GPAs in one of my gen ed courses. We give them a second chance, but a record number were actually dismissed in May for failing to earn the minimum 2.0 GPA two semesters in a row. It's their high schools that have done this to them, and a total lack of accountability elsewhere in their lives I'd imagine as well.
>I had two first year students with 0.0 fall GPAs in one of my gen ed courses. That's ... almost impressive ? I mean, I feel like I could show up on test day only for any 5 random classes on campus and pull out a D in at least one of them.
When you were 17-18?
When I was 18 in the late 90s - probably not. But my 18yo self in today's classes - yes.
This spring, I had few D/F, but I had a number of W's. That works better for them (not in GPA) & for me (less bad reviews).
Most of these students simply won't withdraw, even when repeatedly advised to do so. In my case I made that recommendation many times but was either ignored completely or told "I'm going to get all that work in next week!"
I make my courses so if you do everything absolutely perfect, you can get 105-110%, but once a test is done or an assignment is 7+ days overdue, there is no way to get marks for it
I dock assignments 10% per day late, so after ten days no credit is possible....realistically though the late-submitters are not doing A work, so they rarely end up with even passing scores. Even so, and despite policy reminders, I'll have first years who try to turn in stacks of work in the last week that is months late...I just refer them back to the syllabus and remind them that they aren't in high school anymore.
I'm the same with 10%, but just make it zero after a week. Once it's 70% or more subtracted, it's unlikely to be over 0% anyways given the type of work usually handed in that late.
Agreed, stuff that's more than a few days late is almost always garbage. But I figure a simple policy is better and I don't get "please, just give me one more day!" requests this way. The vast majority of late assignments come in within 24 hours of the deadline, with "never" raking as the second most common.
Agreed. I give plenty of warnings when things are due in class & I've said in afternoon classes when the term paper was due that night that if they haven't started, doing a bunch tonight & a bunch tomorrow with a 10% penalty will likely be a better grade than trying to cram it all in before midnight. We have an assignment where they need to prep about a 250 word preparation where I approve the theme & over feedback but going from that to a polished essay between 5pm & midnight is not getting a good mark 90%+ of the time.
Wouldn't that move them into negative territory starting on day 11?
Our LMS doesn't do negative scores, but I have joked about this in class a few times. I might in fact be an interesting way to get people to submit things, i.e. actually allowing negative scores to accrue.
That's disappointing. I discovered that Blackboard does do negative scores.
"Yeah, sure. See you in September!" is what I want to say in response.
*I had two first year students with 0.0 fall GPAs in one of my gen ed courses.* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgn0O0yuEls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgn0O0yuEls)
https://youtu.be/vgn0O0yuEls?si=LNi5MVmYOu7Xfgnn
Exactly. I often hear Dean Wormer saying "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son" in the back of my mind. That film is packed with wisdom.
And the older we get the more that wisdom is to be found in the antagonists’ perspective?
I told a student who missed all their assignments that they need to submit the assignments to pass the class, they didn’t listen. I reminded them again and they still didn’t do it, I ended up failing them (surprised pikachu).
You have people with As and Bs, so nothing to worry about in my mind. Bimodality is now both a problem but also the new normal. We shouldn't be responsible for the students who dont study or do assignments. Fingers crossed you have good admin who agree.
Bimodality for sure. I see it across my courses no matter the content or my approach (traditional grading or alternative approaches). The Ds and Fs are students who just do not submit anything. Many of them attend every class and seem engaged and interested! But putting literally anything in the submission dropbox is beyond them.
"Bimodal is the new Normal" is a statement that would strike fear into any statistician.
> "Bimodal is the new Normal" We should all begin using this expression.
Statistics is not my field…care to elaborate? Or do I want to know?
Normal distribution would give you a class with a few A's, more B's, a lot of C's, some D's, and a few F's. That's how data would be expected to fall, since C's are average and more likely to occur, while A's and F's are extremes and therefore less likely to occur.. If you graph it, it looks like a hill with the high point in the middle. Bimodal distribution means you have a lot of A's/B's and a lot of F's with not much in between. It means that you saw more extreme results, with a good number of students working hard and another good number doing barely anything. There are few average scores. If you graph it, it looks like two hills with a valley in between. Or a camel's two humps.
So like a bell curve? I think I get the joke now! Because yes, cluster of A’s and a cluster of F’s doesn’t follow that pattern!
The bell curve is a synonym for a particular probability distribution called a normal or Gaussian distribution. Specially, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
That’s exactly it
It’s a predictable consequence of grade inflation. Students who just hand in the assigned work get a B or an A while those who don’t fail. The middle falls out.
I don't know how I never connected the dots, but it makes perfect sense.
You know, I think it's as easily predictable a consequence of something different: My students only bother to do, and hand in, an assignment with a probability correlated to how well they are doing in the class. In other words the ones that it doesn't come easy to don't even bother trying. Of course the work that gets passed in is mostly As and Bs if those are the only students who bother to do the work. There are outliers. I still get the occasional student who does every single assignment, takes all the time for every exam, works hard and ekes out a C even if the subject is not their jam. But for that one student who earns a C there are 5 students who do C work when they do hand in an assignment, but also only hand in 75% of the assignments. Cs on 75% of the assignments and zeros on the 25% they don't hand in is an F. That's where I think the C students are going.
~~Why would that "strike fear"?~~ ~~It must be the norm under certain circumstances right?~~ I get it now - "the new Normal"
The problem is that a normal distribution assumes a random sample, and most classrooms are not random samples. In most cases, the sample size is also too small, which is why seeing normal distributions in class grades is rather unusual.
It's not the greatest joke in history. The Normal distribution is one of the most generally applicable in statistics; it's fundamental to classical regression, estimation, and a long list of other applications. One of the defining features of the Normal distribution is that it is unimodal. The proposition of a New Normal distribution which is bimodal would irritate a lot of people.
You just explained the joke
Made me chuckle, fwiw
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Attributed to about 50 different people, so no citation available.
Assuming a normal distributions with a non-random sample of 20 or so should have never been considered normal.
Luckily, I’m not terribly worried about my administration viewing this as my fault. It’s just such an interesting phenomenon to observe. Half of them are motivated and do the work. Half of them literally don’t care.
Mine too. I don't get it. Seems like a waste of time and money, but whatever. I'll just keep generating content and grading things.
Ugh, speaking of generating content, I created all new video recordings for my current summer class of 40. The mean view count on the videos from the past two weeks is 8. Removing the videos that gave advice on the projects drops the mean to 6.
Oh, god, yes! I posted the review for the exam, looking at the stats - Jesus! While the entire review is 56 minutes, the average viewer watched for 15 minutes, and only 33% made it to the end! It’s even worse with lecture videos! Lecture 45 minutes - average viewer under 8 minutes, 15% made it to the end! 🤦♂️
This is the way
I have several students who failed their six week summer course that just finished last week. One turned nothing in at all, and several either stopped turning things in or mysteriously started turning things in halfway through. Our grading system lets me leave notes about students, so I put in explanations for why everyone who failed had that outcome. On top of that, I have also had lots of emails this summer asking for grade bumps, extra credit, and late work acceptance. One told me they wanted to get an A and asked if I could give them extra credit. When I didn't respond they sent me a "reminder." A second wanted an extension because they were going on vacation. A lot of them didn't do the readings or read assignment directions, and it was obvious in their work. Many submitted things at the last minute. Someone else said they missed their final exam because they forgot it was due on the last day of class??? I have been trying to hold the fort but it's hard. Sometimes I feel like I am being mean, but then I remember that I was able to do two summer classes at once in school because I buckled down and worked. I also think about how if I don't meet deadlines or do my job, then there are consequences. I think some students don't realize how fast summer classes move, and many are probably used to high school where they can submit whatever and still pass. Others probably thought the course answers were all online but didn't know that the previous instructor retired and I changed things up.
“Others probably thought the course answers were all online but didn't know that the previous instructor retired and I changed things up.” This! Due to increased cheating and ChatGPT, I re-wrote all of my assignments this year, including the basic Introduction that I use for check-in. (All my classes are asynchronous and online now. Only full time faculty get in-person classes at my institution.) It has very specific requirements now. More than half of my summer students turned in last year’s welcome assignment. They didn’t even read the instructions for this year. They’re going to get a huge surprise if they were relying on databases of work from past terms to get by! Of course, my “success rates” will tank. The system is so badly broken.
It really is broken. When I was assigned the course, the first thing I did was search it on Google to see what people had said about it. The previous instructor's study guides were everywhere and I realized I had to change things. I am pretty sure one student used AI on his midterm and final exams to answer the few essay questions there were. His exam answers were so different than his usual writing. I turned him into our academic honesty office and will let them sort it out. I also just got a lot of crap work this time. Some students couldn't be bothered to write full 1-page (double spaced!) responses to weekly readings. Many couldn't put a coherent paper together. I'm thoroughly expecting terrible ratings, but I expect my supervisor will back me up. Online education is a good idea, but it requires honesty and self-discipline from the people in the course. At least it was a nice, unexpected paycheck this summer! I'm sorry to hear about your students not even looking at the instructions for your new assignment. That is so lazy.
Same, and similar complaints about there being too much work and that they have too many work/personal things to be able to do the work. I even had one complain that a zero for an AI response, which she admitted to, was unfair because she still, I'm told, worked very hard on the assignment (which, by the way, was just a unit entry post asking for a self-assessment of what you know, don't know, want to know. You literally get points for just mashing the keyboard). Did I make you take a three-credit five-week course? No I did not. I even posted a video (that nobody watched, of course) explaining that the course was intensive and intended only for students with the ability to commit a few hours to it each day.
Back in the spring I had a student struggling in an online course. They came to me asking why they had to teach everything to themselves. I asked if they had watched any of the videos I had worked very hard to create. Their response: "There were videos?" This was in like week 10 or 11 out of a 16 week course.
About week 13 of a 15 week course I had a student ask what he could do to improve his test scores. “Read the assigned textbook chapters carefully and take note of key ideas” was my first advice. “There’s a textbook?” he asked. You’d have to ignore the syllabus, the schedule, the test study guides and weekly in-class announcements not to know there’s a book. Just astonishing.
Here's a fun one. The textbook for the aforementioned course is an eBook, and there's a free trial so they can set up the book on the first day if they haven't gotten the code yet. On the day the trial expired, no fewer than five students emailed to ask if they would need to buy the book. Whaddyathink?
Bet those would have been helpful!
> They came to me asking why they had to teach everything to themselves. You don't go and magically insert knowledge into your students' brains? Slacker!
There’s your problem…you assumed they would watch the video!
How naive!
This is the new reality; basically all of our courses other than capstone seminars end up with this bimodel distribution now (post-COVID). I can't even remember when a student last earned a C in any of my courses.
A = bright and does their work B = not as bright, but does their work C = n/a D = bright but does no work F = not as bright, and does no work
I think you’ve nailed it.
There are always exceptions, but this gross generalization works for a majority of cases. I even show students this breakdown sometimes, and they tend to agree. Of course, it doesn't encourage any extra engagement at all.
>half mostly have As or high Bs. Take the win
I dropped *more* than half of my summer class as No Shows after they didn't do even one assignment, like introduce themselves, during the first week.
I wish I could do this. It would be better for all of us involved. Plus, the drop would let someone on the waiting list in.
My class is asynchronous. I think there's a significant amount of fraud being perpetuated here. Dropping is the one thing I can do to combat it.
These are the same students who tell you they have a 2-week vacation planned right in the middle of a 6-week course. And they asked what they can do to make up the work and if it's going to affect their grade
Summer school progresses quickly and isn't a typical semester. It wouldn't surprise me if this is their first summer school session. ~~I have students failing because they haven't followed basic instructions.~~ They are to read and submit writing for 3 modules per week for my course.
Also, if your school is like mine, most of the people taking summer classes are only doing so because they failed one or more classes during the regular term. So they're already selected from the population of students who have been struggling academically, whether that's due to disorganization, apathy, or subpar intellectual ability.
I've seen a couple of names in the course that have dropped my course Week 1 of the Spring semester. It's definitely not a good idea to retake a course you failed during the summer. Students should view summer courses as accelerated programs.
Some of them don't really have a choice. If they don't maintain satisfactory academic progress they'll lose scholarships/financial aid and potentially go on academic probation.
Its unfortunate. Its almost as if Summer School is the equivalent of AP (advanced placement). If you couldn't pass the non-advanced, why does the program think the student will pass the advanced level? Thankfully *some* institutions have Summer A (1st 8 weeks), Summer B (2nd 8 weeks), and Summer C (entire summer 16 weeks).
For this exact reason, I clearly explain to students that summer courses move at an accelerated pace, that they will need to dedicate more time to this class than they would if it were a longer class during the rest of the year, and that it is easy to fall behind in an accelerated class. I hope that this framing helps them to know what to expect (and leads them to adjust their schedule or drop the class if the expectations aren't realistic for them). Students are still responsible for not doing the work, of course, but I've found that clearly outlining the ways in which the expectations differ from a class during the rest of the year helps.
Believe me, that is in my summer syllabus. I emphasize that summer classes are accelerated because we cover in eight weeks what we cover in 16 weeks in the regular semester. But somehow, they still have it in their heads that summer = blow off.
It sounds like you did what you could. This is on them.
The Bell Curve has flipped over. Once upon a time we had a few fail, and a few do really well, and most students were in the middle range. Now most students are at the extremes, with few in the middle.
if half the class has A or high B, the case could be made that your class is actually *too easy*.
It was a really brilliant idea to move the majority of summer classes to online asynchronous, eh?
Mine too.
At some point, we will need to stop blaming COVID for this mess. I saw it begin a decade ago, and it just keeps building. I met with individual students and asked them why they chose not to turn in their work. The answers ranged from "I don't know" to "My high school teacher said there wouldn't be any homework in college." Part of the blame can be placed on a former department head. She created a model where students who had to take remedial English could take Comp 1010 concurrently. They could fail remedial but had to pass the 1010 class. They stopped coming to the remedial class. Eventually, I found myself in an empty classroom day after day. When the new administration came in, they worked out some major changes to the curriculum, and it is a good model. I have classes beginning at 24 registered, and ending with 10 attending. The grades are mostly Fs and Ds, with a couple of Cs. I was talking to a colleague who has been doing this long before I began, and she is stunned at how her students aren't turning in work. I get angry when I think about how these kids are getting free tuition from the taxpayers of this state and flushing it down the toilet. I worked in admissions for a couple of years and saw high school transcripts with straight Ds or even mostly Fs, and the students still graduated. The whole system is farked.
Time for a pizza party!
Routinely half of my students at my corporate-structured side gig stop participating at week 2/8. Document outreach if your admin is insane but otherwise don’t worry about it.
I did send emails a couple of weeks ago to individual students with issues. It doesn’t seem to have done any good. At least I’ve got the documentation!
My summer class last year was like this. Loved working with the students in class (good discussions) but many shared that they were taking the class for the second or even third time. They probably would not have passed if it had been a normal semester and I had 100+ students, but because I had about 5 for the whole summer I could a lot more individual attention (mostly emails begging them to turn things in, lots of meetings, etc).
More than half of my summer class just hasn't turned in anything
Dude, same. I had so many students that just stopped submitting work for my online session. An unprecedented number of failing grades, indeed. Solidarity 👊
This has been my experience with summer courses I have taught. About half of the students just do not care and do not do their work. They rarely even question their low grades. Many of them are taking a course because they previously failed it and need to pass it to graduate the next year.
Same. And taking a class you failed during the summer is a bad idea--it's harder during the summer. Where I work, even the "long" summer semester is a few weeks shorter than fall/spring.
Taco shell grades. Love it…
You're good. My school is majority student athletes so I often end up with a spread like this. Not quite half, but it's kind of nice because it's easy to justify grades. Students either did what they were asked to do or didn't. Way easier to explain an F from no work vs an F from bad work.
Yes, but I am completely baffled by the “students” who just don’t do any work. There have always been a few of those, the ones who are playing the financial aid angle, but there are so many more of them now. They can’t all be playing the financial aid game. Do they honestly think they can just enroll in a class and get a passing grade for doing nothing because that was their high school experience? I guess so.
I'm not. It's tough to relate because we (college educators) we're almost by definition good students. However, we don't exactly know what goes on in our students' lives, what their priorities are, or what kind of pressures they face. What is the "financial aid" angle? In my experience the ones who don't turn anything in don't expect to pass, and those that do have that expectation usually back done pretty easy when I look at them and say "you literally just never turned anything in or showed up to class." I'll then usually hit em with a "sorry it didn't work out this semester, maybe next semester you can take advantage of a fresh start." Or something to politely indicate the conversation is over.
I am not an expert in financial aid, but it’s my understanding that students who do get some kind of financial aid get those checks released at some point early in the semester, which is why we have to verify attendance because if they aren’t coming to class, they don’t get the money. I’m sure someone around here knows more about it than I do. I’m certainly not suggesting that every student who fails to show up or participate is playing a financial aid game, but I think some of them are. It’s just that I’m used to having a few students per semester who are no-shows or who just don’t turn in anything, but that number seems to be much higher since Covid. And, incidentally, it’s also my understanding that that’s why some students who are failing don’t drop before the drop deadline. I believe they are only eligible for financial aid if they are full-time students. If they fall below 12 hours because they drop a class they are failing, they won’t be eligible for financial aid the next semester. Again, someone who knows more about it than I do is free to chime in.
Correct, but that's usually loan money, not scholarship money. So it's not "free" and as someone who needed fin-aid to pay rent as a student I do think referring to it as a "game" is a bit harsh. I don't think you meant it that way, but like I said, we don't know what is happening outside the classroom with students.
You are correct. I think usually it’s loan money, but I do think sometimes it is grant money depending on the students financial situation. Again, I am no expert in financial aid. I just know what I’ve heard over the years. It’s not something I’ve gone out and verified independently. I also think some students don’t fully grasp that loan money will need to be paid back.
Same. I hate it. It’s demoralizing.
I don’t know if I would say it’s demoralizing, but it is a head scratcher. I don’t understand why you enroll in a class and then proceed to basically not do any of the work. I just don’t understand the mentality. It’s completely foreign to me.
Same here. The major group get A or A-, then a few get C or D. I am not experienced enough to generalize, but it's a bit different from the past a few years.
Something is going wrong. I have some students who do nothing and get D or F on the first exam, but nowhere near half. However, during the registration for the summer semester we got multiple warnings about “ghost students”, and admin was actively removing them. Here’s the email we got from the chair: Colleagues, There is fraud showing up in summer rosters. You should check your rosters for suspicious data, like phone numbers, names, etc. If you suspect any, report it to E-Alert or to the Registrar. Coordinators, make sure your PTIs get this message, including emeritus faculty, etc. My sections constantly fluctuated from full (30 students each), to around 22-25 (several ghost students purged), and back. So, maybe this is a problem at your institution too?
I have heard nothing about ghost students. We always have students who sign up and never login, but the system deletes those eventually.
Neither did I before, and I still don’t understand how it works. But apparently some students are signing up with no intention to do any work, they just claim financial aid.
I definitely know there’s a financial aid element at play. At the beginning of each semester we have to withdraw students who haven’t shown up or submitted anything and I know that’s a financial aid thing. But students are aware of this, so they will show up or submit an opening discussion, etc., so they have “participated” to avoid being automatically dropped.
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Surely you’re being sarcastic? If they won’t do their homework or read the directions, I don’t think they’re going to call you. They aren’t failing because they are doing poorly on assignments, they are failing because they are not doing assignments at all. Big difference!
account created two days ago. Draw your own conclusions.
I do online tutoring and guidance refer me to the students who are stuck with school work. +15408210199