Yo, BG professors (or at least those that work at colleges in some form)

[Ksandra]

I think we may have only like two, but I figured it was worth a shot since I know none in the real world.

I want to gauge if anything is changing in the expectations regarding students who come to college. We all know that there has been a dumbing down of America which means that students overall are a lot less prepared for college than in our day. I don't know if that is forcing professors to also dumb down their lessons, or take a harder stance of "sink or swim, bitches" about it.

I also wanted to know where technology is going.

I don't have students print out papers for me. They type them all in Drive and since I can make comments, carrying around a laptop is a million times nicer than carrying around 70+ papers.

I was thinking if this is something professors are leaning towards doing as well, and if they expect a certain format for the papers to be in (all one file, separate sections while in the same folder, etc.). Or is there any sort of submission website that is becoming popular that I should have students practicing with (ala turnitin.com).

Any advice you would have for a high school teacher of any subject (so I can pass it along) would be appreciated.

I think with the huge gap now in learning, I want to do what I can to communicate with who these kids go to next.

[Teorem]

Not a faculty member, but I've been a student/staff working at USC for almost 20 years now and think I can provide some insight.

I don't believe the difficulty level of the coursework has changed over time as a response to students' inability to handle work. However, this also varies with instructor and subject; your Linear Algebra course isn't going to change that much (and there are definitely faculty still there that could not give a fuck if you think the material is too challenging), but a Liberal Arts-type class will be different simply from the culture change over time and the fact that these courses are generally taught by adjuncts who shuffle between universities as they work towards tenure and bring with them their own teaching experience and class management strategies.

What we do have is an office on campus that is in charge of issues related to learning disabilities, which covers any kind of special need that would need to be accommodated for the student, whether its origin is physical or mental. Instructors MUST accommodate students accordingly, but the onus is on the students to work with the office to provide current documentation of their needs every semester and work with their instructors at the beginning of the semester to work out the details. It is very unlikely that you'd be able to send your instructor an email the night before a paper is due and claim panic attack to get an extension, but if you had a documented history of anxiety or some other condition brought on by stress that would require you to get an extra hour on an exam or a separate room with a proctor, you could get an accommodation like that as long as it was coordinated beforehand.

Instructors set their own preferences for submission of work, and nowadays a lot goes through CMS/LMS (course/learning management system) software. We've been using Blackboard for the last 15 years, and there are a lot of open source and paid options out there that are decent. Most, if not all, will have some sort of plug-in integration for anti-plagiarism software (most commonly, Turnitin).

For high school it's hard to say which system is best, because even if something like Edmodo might solve all your needs as an instructor, it's not as good if your students don't (or won't) buy into its "social" Facebook-style interface. At the college level it's a little different: an instructor can hand out 30-page packets of EE schematics homework because it's just easier for TA-delgated grading, or make students print out their papers because labs with printers are readily accessible (and to avoid "I emailed/submitted it but it didn't go through!") on campus, or tell them that the discussion forum on the CMS must be used for your grade. Because at $1500 a unit, "If you don't want to do it, you can just take your F and like it" is pretty compelling for an adult taking a 3 or 4-unit class.

Rapid technological development is by far the biggest factor in the way the classroom experience is changing, but faculty still vary a lot with the rates at which they embrace it.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I'll text my dad and ask him. I know most of the papers/work done are submitted electronically, but idk if there's a standard. Just based off what he's told me, and my own experience, though, I would say it is important to teach the kids how to manage their time and think critically. Also that effort does not correlate to success. He's had a few students protest a bad grade by repeatedly insisting "But I tried really hard!" as if that means they should have gotten an A.

aight so that's what i came up with while he replied. The question, as I posed it to him, was "What advice would you give to a high school teacher in regards to preparing their students for college?"

His reply is: "Help students develop critical thinking skills, communication skills especially writing, and good social skills."

I feel like the phrase "critical thinking" has become a bit of a buzzword. It's difficult to know what, exactly, that refers to. There are whole processes which you can find that attempt to break it down, but I think one of the more useful aspects would be self-awareness. The ability to hold a thought in your mind and think about why you're thinking that thought. Why do you dislike ____? Why does _____ make you angry? Deconstructing your own emotions is an excellent way, imo, to figure out some of your blind spots and work through/around them.

Would you like me to ask about the software specifically?

[Zetanio]

As someone who has taken 2 degrees in the last 10 years and seen the landscape evolve, I agree with Teorem for the most part.

There are teachers who refuse to do anything but anything but the minimum (Posting a syllabus) using NYU Classes (NYU's CMS system, integrated with Google a bit).

There are teachers who embrace it as a useful tool and allow submissions via Classes/Turnitin. They also use the forum system a bit but it's rather clunky.

There are teachers who go way overboard and try to force everyone to do everything on Classes and it negatively impacts the class because the teacher is deliberately less available and shunts the onus on to the system, which isn't perfect.

Most LA classes and core classes are geared heavily towards technology now. Most of my business classes have separate systems and utilize Classes for submissions only. Most of my math teachers live in the 1970's and kill trees at an astonishing rate.

[Zetanio]

If a student can't pass a Critical Thinking class they should be kicked out of college. Same goes for basic accounting classes.

Shit is so stupidly easy you can google your way through it.

[Churchill]

I hate online math, dumb shit that doesn't matter like english or feminism degrees, who cares. I hate online math.

[Teorem]

Also that effort does not correlate to success. He's had a few students protest a bad grade by repeatedly insisting "But I tried really hard!" as if that means they should have gotten an A.

Children absolutely need more exposure to failure before they come to college, where they will likely fail at something (if not academically) and in situations that may not be within their control. The lack of resilience can be astounding, but sadly, not surprising these days.

Also, helicopter parents are terrible. Ask an instructor how many angry calls/emails they've fielded from Mom or Dad about a child's bad grade(s) this semester so far and you might just be killed.

[dasva]

Children absolutely need more exposure to failure before they come to college, where they will likely fail at something (if not academically) and in situations that may not be within their control. The lack of resilience can be astounding, but sadly, not surprising these days.

My kindergarten highly believed kids need to learn about failure... well and that sometimes doing better than your peers was more important than some set score. So she made the 2 worst students each year repeat the grade. Doubt that would fly nowadays though

[Darus Grey]

Hey Ksandra, I presume I'm one of the few you're referring to. Been teaching @ university for last 7~yrs or so fulltime and as an adjunct(and was a supervised teacher/TA before that). I can only speak for my department(Computer Science & Engineering), but in the decade~ I've been involved I've seen our standards significantly drop.

We needed to add new classes to our curriculum just to fill the gap between what was our traditional introduction class because every year progressively more students were failing our introduction courses(same professors, syllabus, etc), and we also saw a drastic increase in cheating activity about 5yrs ago.

I've seen this same trend in my own intro class, where each year I have to adjust it slightly downwards and cover less and less material just to get everyone through it.

The most remarkable thing to me is the objective increase in...dissatisfied students. Granted college students are basically fucking up as a rule, but it's only been the last few years I've seen a drastic rise of students who file complaints and basically use any administrative tool available to them to make my life hell.

This essentially never happened before, and last 7 semesters I've had *at least* 2 students do this every semester, who basically do nothing at all, or do such obviously sub-par work that it's unquestionable they deserve an F, and instead of trying to pass they'll fight you tooth and nail for the grade they think they deserve for their "effort". Which is basically just a gigantic waste of time, I can only presume other professors cave into this because it makes no sense otherwise.

I've been getting in trouble with my department because I sent a notice that I will no longer be replying to administrative reviews because they significantly interfere with my ability to operate and teach when used as a weapon, and other professors have given me quite a bit of sympathy over this.

Speaking to my colleagues *my understanding* is that these issues are becoming more common among the public universities, and not so much the private or ivy. Presumably because public institutions basically have to respond to the population and private/ivy schools basically can keep their standards the same and still enroll the same numbers due to supply/demand.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I went through grad school four years ago and felt it was a breeze. I'm good student and all that so I pulled As with quality but all around me I saw people getting A- and B+ for work significantly lower quality than mine. And I mean from content to citations, just top-to-bottom. It was disheartening cuz one day I realized I'm gonna be competing with these hacks for the same jobs. This was especially noticeable in groupwork where we might each take a portion of the work. I'd always be the assemblyman of this work and was often forced to improve the work of my mates just to do well on the project. I was disgusted everytime.

Schooling standards are so bad these days and it sucks for the hard-working student who actually know their shit due to talent or studying or whatever. Too many students as getting away with lackluster performances. That's the new B-student, and I can remember when that was a D-student no questions asked.

[Gredival]

I was discussing how even tier 1 law schools are admitting too many underqualified students with a friend of mine who is a grad student who teaches in a prestigious public college. He told me that the phenomena isn't isolated and that most faculty believe that the quality of undergrads at his school the last few years has become noticeably worse. However his school is close by to an elite private institution and they work in a consortium, and according to him the standards there are still pretty high because that school can afford to just reject underqualified students. There are, of course, typical bad performing legacies and sports scholarship kids there but the quality of the regular student is the same.

[Churchill]

Sounds like academia got what it wanted

[Darus Grey]

I went through grad school four years ago and felt it was a breeze. I'm good student and all that so I pulled As with quality but all around me I saw people getting A- and B+ for work significantly lower quality than mine. And I mean from content to citations, just top-to-bottom. It was disheartening cuz one day I realized I'm gonna be competing with these hacks for the same jobs. This was especially noticeable in groupwork where we might each take a portion of the work. I'd always be the assemblyman of this work and was often forced to improve the work of my mates just to do well on the project. I was disgusted everytime.

Schooling standards are so bad these days and it sucks for the hard-working student who actually know their shit due to talent or studying or whatever. Too many students as getting away with lackluster performances. That's the new B-student, and I can remember when that was a D-student no questions asked.

I went through the same thing in grad school, the gap in effort between an A and an A-/B+ were so fucking huge that you were essentially wasting time not aiming for a B+ for 1/4 the effort. Doubly stupid because of the curve in grad-school of anything below B essentially being failing, instead of the students rising to the occasion teachers were expected to basically grade on this bizarre fucking curve.

One semester when I just really didnt give a fuck for life reasons, I basically did nothing for a class but the first assignment and ended up with a C+, sure that's failing by grad school standards, but that was basically the floor for "did anything at all".

It seriously sickened me knowing that virtually everyone around me was cheating, and that they'd be rewarded with an easy B+ for it. Why would I bother? Why would I waste my time.

It taught me not to respect my own degree, nor basically others.

I believe we both went to SUNY schools Grey? How was it at yours? At mine it feels like the entire system is basically stacked to funnel in low achieving foreign students who pay 4x the tuition/board.

[Ksandra]

Thanks guys! I am struggling with the whole effort thing myself. A lot of my students came from a middle school where if they failed, they still moved on. Many are still adjusting to the idea that if they fail they have to repeat the class.


Even then, I feel my standards have to be set so low or a huge portion of the class would fail, which the school wouldn't allow. It's definitely a struggle.

[Byrthnoth]

The academic part of graduate school was basically a condensed (and thus less specific and easier) review of half a dozen undergrad classes for me. Every year, ~20% of the first-year students are booted out of my program because they fail those classes. This is after vetting almost 200 applicants, bringing 40 in, and accepting maybe 20. So 20% of the top 10% of people who apply to my program are unqualified to review undergraduate classes or just fail to be adults to such an extent that they get booted. Blows my mind.


As far as the undergrads, I've only had to TA once and I hope my experience wasn't representative. I was TAing a science course for non-majors that people typically took as their distribution requirements. Our tests were half multiple-choice / half true-false and kids scored below chance. .... aaaaand that pretty much sums up the entire experience. Maybe 30% of the kids came to class / took notes and obtained their easy A. Another 20% came and dicked around on their phones or slept and so forth, those were the B students. People that either had spotty attendance or were probably literally mentally handicapped got Cs. Ds were reserved for kids that didn't show up or make any attempt to learn the subject but weren't stupid. These two groups made up about 35% of the class. Finally, the Fs were people who didn't come to class, didn't make any attempt to learn the material, and were dumb as bricks / possibly high on test days. They were still a solid 15% of the class.

The teacher had a mini-breakdown in a meeting with me because she couldn't figure out how to pull the class' grades up and she was getting flak from the administration.



Kids were terrible when I was an undergrad too, but my desk was facing the other direction so I just viewed it as helping my curve.

[Mojo]

[Zetanio]

At mine it feels like the entire system is basically stacked to funnel in low achieving foreign students who pay 4x the tuition/board.

Welcome to NYU. All China, all the time.

[Zetanio]

I'm expecting my networking with only Chinese students for 2 years to pay off soon though. One child policy ftw.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Ok talking with dad now, paraphrasing a bit and on mobile so errors etc.

"I don't use Google Drive or whatever but the students need to use the spellchecker and grammarcheck, BUT, if they're not sure about the word need to use, back it up with a dictionary. You can't just write the way you talk. For technology, universities will have different policies. Places that have a mission that include access may not want to require digital format. But that's a good discipline to do at the high school level of you can." He also refers to a conversation we had earlier about sources. Students need to learn how to determine what is a good source (Wikipedia not acceptable etc). Also, in regards to his earlier social skills advice, he's referring to things like shaking hands, making eye contact, telephone answering, the sort of basic stuff they need but no one explicitly teaches.

He also adds that if you can accomplish even a third of that you'll be a great high school teacher.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[Grey Jorildyn]

It seriously sickened me knowing that virtually everyone around me was cheating, and that they'd be rewarded with an
I believe we both went to SUNY schools Grey? How was it at yours? At mine it feels like the entire system is basically stacked to funnel in low achieving foreign students who pay 4x the tuition/board.

I started at suny for undergrad (it was difficult actually) but finished bachelor's and master's at different private colleges. It was the same experience at both and my wife who just graduated from the same undergrad school as I did. Seemed even worse hearing it from her.

You would think that failing the students that are terribad and making them retake shit would be a better business model. I guess guaranteeing their attendance for four bullshit years pays off though.