Most instructors roll-over their Canvas space but revamp their classes every semester, adding things here, tweaking things there, removing things all together. I’m currently totally revamping my humanities-based Canvas space and am curious what the best workflow is for students. Do you prefer thematic units, weekly modules, or something else? How do you click around Canvas—the module tabs, assignment tabs, discussion tabs, etc., or do you prefer everything listed on the homepage and click from there? In organizing modules/units, do you prefer them to be chunked out into various categories for collapsible modules (e.g. an umbrella module for Assignments, an umbrella module for Lecture Notes, and umbrella module for Videos, etc.) or do you prefer one long collapsible module for each unit (with everything streamlined clickable within the module, perhaps divided with text headers for each “chunk” of material)? There are countless ways of organizing Canvas, and as a faculty member with ADHD and an abstract-random mind style (check out Gregorc mind styles if you’re curious about your own!), this is always my most difficult task every semester… any input would be extremely appreciated not just for me but for my students!

Next semester I’ll be teaching an online course for the first time in a while.

The last time around, I did a handful of video lectures (2 or 3, for a total of an hour of content each week), discussion boards, and weekly quizzes.

To be honest, I didn’t much care for those methods. Discussion boards always read as forced, video lectures got low views, etc.

So, what have instructors done in online classes that you’ve liked.

I’m considering doing lectures as podcasts instead of videos, and asking students to keep a kind of reflective journal about the class’ topics, but would love to know what people have done that actually works for an online class.

I teach a couple introductory, 100-level college courses. Towards the end of the semester I make sure to build in work time for our final project, etc. since I know how busy everyone is.

I've toyed with the idea of playing music while students work on their final project for my class (I realize I'm biased, but realistically our final project really isn't hard) and thought it might be fun to let students anonymously curate the playlist. For students who don't want to partake, they can put their ear buds/head phones on.

As a college student, would you like this? Or would you find it annoying and or distracting? I also don't want to alienate the students who prefer silence when working. Help me, please.

Students I haven’t seen login all semester in online courses and who haven’t done any of the work except required first-week attendance are filling out the course evals and sending me the optional email that lets the instructor know a student has filled it out (doesn’t attach their name to their eval, just lets me know so-and-so completed it). What is the thought process behind this?

Hello students! I begin a professor job in August and will have an office for the first time. What items have you seen in your professors’ offices that you liked? Both useful items and others. Any advice for me to hopefully create a space that is student-friendly and feels like me! I am a young female so I want to come across as friendly and relatable (hopefully lol). Thanks!

I proctor in a testing center that requires a photo ID to test. Students often do not have a photo ID with them, even if they drove to campus, but offer up a picture on their phone of a student ID or driver's license. Is there somewhere that a photo of a photo ID is actually accepted?

And are you intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to earn “good grades” in the face of grade inflation? What motivates you?

(In terms of Canvas/Blackboard/Moodle/D2L/other LMS user experience. This question is to help professors help students navigate their online classes better. What could the professor do to help you “get around better” in their online class?)

Despite frequent chats about what constitutes plagiarism and how not to plagiarize, students seem very surprised when they submit work and find out they’ve plagiarized once their paper is processed through the plagiarism checker. These are not trivial amounts of plagiarism (e.g. colloquialisms, etc.). What are tips and tricks I can share with students who are genuinely distraught and surprised their paper came back with plagiarism, and lots of it? How do you assess before you submit?

I teach large lecture classes in STEM in the US. Students are typically freshmen and sophomores. Attendance is not mandatory in my classes. While most of my students listen attentively during my lectures, about 10% of the class will be playing on their phones or talking with their neighbors. I know I can't prevent them from looking at their phones, but talking during the lecture is terrible (imo). Not only is it distracting to me, I can imagine that it is very distracting and annoying to the students sitting nearby that are trying to pay attention. I have a "no tardiness" clause in my syllabus, and I also lay out my expectations clearly on Day 1, but I just can't stop this. When the talking gets too distracting I typically interrupt the lecture and shut them down, but its like playing whack-a-mole, and some other students will do it the next day.

I am curious about how you students think I should handle this.

This is a question for students. I am a STEM Faculty in the US. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have modified the mode of feedback that I give students.

For smaller sections (~20 students) or for team-work, I provide ~1-2 minutes of feedback via a video recording of me speaking about the students' work, rather than written comments. For now, I limit this to major deliverables like exams (I don't have time to do this for "minor" deliverables). I have not sensed or heard anything negative or positive from my students thus far.

How would you feel about receiving a short video recording of your professor giving you feedback on an exam rather than just receiving a score or markings on a paper?

What would you like to see on such feedback? I usually include "positives" and "negatives/what to improve in the future."

I teach in the liberal arts, and I hate the textbooks out there for the classes I teach. I’ve reviewed over 20 of them and they are a) too expensive, b) cover too much material (the class wouldn’t use the entire book), and c) don’t spend enough time on material that is essential. I thinking about dropping textbooks completely, but that means students won’t have a written reference except for my PowerPoint slides. How would students feel about a class like this? Good idea? Bad idea?

EDIT: Thanks, all, for replying. I’m going to drop a textbook and cobble together a digital course pack (free to student) with pieces from different Open Access Resources!

It seems to me that there's almost no chance of getting away with it because any decent essay specific enough to your topic to be worth any points will be easy enough to find that you'll be caught. And the risk you take is that if you're caught you get minimum an F in the class, and it's possible to likely that you'll get expelled depending on your institution.

Have you plagiarized? Did you get away with it? What was your reasoning behind it?

Do you prefer collaborative assignments? Solo assignments? Third-party platforms like Piazza, Hypothesis, etc.? What do you enjoy about these assignments, and what bothers you? How might your professors make these more enjoyable and conducive to your learning experience?

ETA: I am specifically interested in English courses, but please feel free to comment on any coursework.

New generation = new preferences. How do you prefer directions/instructions on an assignment? (Bulleted lists, paragraphs, video or audio clips, something else entirely?)

Piggybacking on this really good question, this is also a question for students.

What good practices from the online learning environment would you like retained when we go back to face to face this fall?

Or,

When were you most engaged/learning when online and when were you least engaged/didn't career when online.

I wish all the students and Faculty good mental health and a great fall semester.

Context: I teach college math classes.

For the last year I've taught online, which meant online-format exams (open book, more concept-based, fewer computation-only problems unfortunately still timed to combat Chegging everything). I still dealt with serious academic honesty problems and will -- due to necessity -- probably return to traditional exams with one notecard and minimal calculators, so I can feel confident that the grades I assign reflect on my student themselves and not whomever they've asked to help them with homework.

I am worried that returning to in-person exams, especially in courses that rely heavily on prerequisite content, will be difficult for my students. In particular, if they're accustomed to relying on online tools or heavy textbook reference during exams, they might have lost a lot of fluency in computational skills that will make it possible for them to, (for example), compute an integral by hand without the aid of WolframAlpha.

At the same time, if I sacrifice a lot of my class time to re-teaching (to use the same example) rules for algebraic manipulation, factoring, etc. then I will be boring the students who are actually prepared for the class and will not have enough time to get through the content which allows us to call the class "Calculus II." I can spend at most 1-2 days of class time focusing solely on prerequisite material and will otherwise have to smatter it in briefly as we work on problems for the class we're actually in.

What should I do in this time to help you identify missing prerequisite material and, if necessary, go back and reteach it to yourself? My current plan is to give a class day worksheet at the start of the term about prerequisite material, with links to online content for each problem type, ask students to put their answers in online and report the material they are least comfortable with that night, and if the majority of the class is uncomfortable with a handful of specific topics I'd cover a few examples of those topics before diving in to course material. Would this make you feel put upon? Do you have any better ideas?

Our "office of instructional design" is "highly encouraging" us to limit videos to under 10 minutes, with around 5 minutes being considered "ideal".

Given that a traditional in-person lecture period is typically 75 minutes long, this works out to fifteen 5-minute videos (or around seven 10-minute videos).

I wonder about the wisdom/rationale behind this guideline. Do students genuinely retain the information better if broken into smaller segments? Almost certainly... But the caveat here is that they still must watch the entire playlist of multiple videos.

What's your take on this as a student? Are you more likely to finish watching a 75-minute video or a playlist of fifteen 5-minute videos? Thanks.

I ask students to fill out a little information sheet about themselves the first day of class, and for the “anything else?” question, a good 1/4 to 1/3 of students write “I’m a visual learner.”

Scientifically, the concept of learning styles has been roundly debunked, but nevertheless, these students are trying to tell me something about themselves. And different students don’t necessarily mean the same thing when they describe themselves that way. I’m hesitant to ask them to explain because if we’re just getting to know each other, it might feel uncomfortable to them.

So for students here who think of themselves as visual learners, what does that mean to you? What difference does it make for how you study? What features of instruction help you in that sense?

Hi everyone! As promised we're making some initial updates to our community based on discussion among the mod team and the feedback we've received (thank you!).

1. Community rules

We've updated the community rules. These rules address which communities may submit posts and top-level comments, standards for post titles, constructiveness guidelines, and miscellanea. These rules aren't retroactive, so older posts will stay up. Thank you to those who've submitted reports! They've helped us to craft our moderation process and these rules.

2. User flairs

There are new flairs! Flairs are customizable and the templates we are providing are just that—a template for you to customize. If something in a flair doesn't fit for you, please feel free to adapt it to your purposes. We strongly encourage you to flair yourself—using flair will help other community members understand your context and relate accordingly.

If you are unfamiliar with how to flair yourself, you can watch (here) or read (here).

We're aware of the US-centric nature of the current flair guide. We'd like to make flairs more inclusive of folks outside the US and would greatly appreciate feedback on what abbreviations, initialisms, and other guidance would be useful for students and faculty from non-US institutions.

We're also looking into new post flairs—let us know if you have any ideas!

3. Community feedback

We highly value your feedback on these changes. Please feel free to comment here or through modmail. We're committed to considering all of your feedback.

Thank you all for joining the AskStudents community! We're excited about the conversations we've seen so far and looking forward to seeing the dialogue continue!

The Mod Team

u/biglybiglytremendous u/factor_known u/leftseatchancellor u/TheAnswerWithinUs

29 May 2021

There are two main criticisms of professors I see both on Reddit and when my own students talk about professors in their other classes. One is that they think it is really unfair when professors do not accept late work (because covid, anxiety, life, etc.). Another is that they hate it when professors do not return assignments or grades in a timely manner. They want instant feedback. I find this to be an interesting double standard. Students seem to want all the flexibility to finish things on their own timetable, but trash professors who take a while to return grades. Remember that for every assignment you do, they have to grade yours plus countless others from the other students. My questions is why are students so demanding of their professors getting work done in a timely manner but feel entitled to hand in their own work whenever they get around to it? I want to add that I am not talking about the horror stories where it is week 13 and professors still haven't returned stuff from week 2. I am more referring to students pestering for grade results two days after an assignment is submitted. I have a reputation of being a fast grader as I set a personal policy of grading things as soon as I receive them wherever possible so as to avoid drowning in accumulated grading, yet even I get students who ask for grades literally within two hours of submission.

EDIT: I should have phrased my question differently. Instead of asking "Why is timely work a one-way street?" (which comes across as accusatory and presumptive), I should have asked, "Do you view timely work as a one-way street?", thus opening the door for all viewpoints.

Full disclosure - I get feedback from some students that I'm not "approachable". Not all, but some. I've done many things to try to be more approachable to students (extra office hours, open office for 90% of the time, making a point to interact with students outside of class and my office, etc.) but I still get this comment.

From a student perspective, what makes a professor seem approachable?

ETA: Thank you so much for the thoughtful responses.

I recently received my evaluations for this past semester, and as usual a few students criticized my high test weighting (60%) claiming that it wasn't fair to poor test takers. I hear that phrase all the time. Now I get that there are various anxiety issues and learning disabilities that affect testing. However, more often than not, students who make this claim are unable to demonstrate their knowledge even outside of a high stress testing environment. I can ask a student in casual conversation how to do a certain calculation, and they can't answer the question. In my experience, it seems like students use that phrase as a veiled way of saying that they haven't learned anything. So, for those of you who have made that claim, what exactly do you mean? Are you hiding your lack of knowledge? Do you really have a disorder affecting your testing ability? Are you displacing blame? Also, why can't you convey the knowledge via channels other than testing when asked (for those who can't)? This isn't a rant slamming students. I am genuinely curious what that phrase is actually saying.

UPDATE: A vast majority of the replies (thank you for which, by the way) mention that the responders do better on homework than tests so homework is a better assessment of what they know. My problem with such a statement is that homework does not really assess what you know. It assesses what you are able to eventually figure out with time and resources. When doing homework you can look things up, ask for help, work with friends, etc., but that still does not demonstrate that you actually know the material. Doing well on homework is not exactly an indicator of understanding while doing poorly on exams is a pretty good (not perfect) indicator of a lack of understanding.

Professors are always searching for best practices, being told to use best practices, teaching other faculty best practices, or publishing best practices, but these best practices are though the lens of other professors who have compiled data. From the student perspective, what do you think are best practices professors should keep in mind—and how would you encourage professors to put these practices to use? (Any modality, semester type, pedagogy, teaching or learning strategy, etc., but please provide specific, detailed information for maximum benefit!)

Edit:

Sorry for the confusion! Pedagogies are methods for teaching (e.g. do you prefer to be taught by active learning, seminar style, case studies, etc.). Modalities are the platform by which learning takes place (face to face, online, mixed mode, hybrid, Zoom, etc.). Best practices are “things you do in X situation that works best for Y [people involved/time frame/etc.],” where X and Y are dynamic and evolving. For example, I wouldn’t use, say, an ice breaker that requires students to go around the room and introduce themselves then repeat the names of everyone who has already introduced themselves in an online class; however, for a face-to-face class, this might be a “best practice” (interactive ice breaker). The interactive ice breaker could translate to an online class, but the modality would change how that best practice is implemented. So, I guess what I’m asking is… what do you like professors to do, in which modalities/semesters/demographic groups, and how might this change if you changed the modality/semester/demographic group/etc.?

Welcome our two new mods! u/leftseatchancellor, an associate professor of environmental and computational science at a small private university and Anna ( u/factor_known ) who is a student TA in STEM. Together we have been discussing how to make this sub a better place for students and professors to interact with each other.

We have been discussing many things, among them changing user flairs and adding to the rules to make them more clear and to promote a more cohesive community. We'll be implementing changes over the course of the coming weeks with your feedback.