Timeline for Learning Disabled Students and Untenable Instructor Workloads
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 5, 2021 at 17:12 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | I know many instructors who solely use email for all that and no LMS. | |
| Sep 5, 2021 at 16:33 | comment | added | nick012000 | @DanielR.Collins Having a central location for all of the documents and files that the students need? Having the ability to release marks for homework or assessment individually, without everyone else seeing them? Zoom is useful bordering on necessary, but how are the students going to get to the sessions if you don't have a site to post the Zoom links on? You could email the link, but then the link will become impossible to find ten weeks later once the email's been buried under a hundred other emails. | |
| Sep 5, 2021 at 3:51 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | Email, YouTube, Zoom can get one very far. I'm not sure what features of an LMS you think are necessary. | |
| Sep 5, 2021 at 1:24 | comment | added | nick012000 | @DanielR.Collins Again, I do not understand how any institution can function during covid without an LMS, when the government can proclaim a lockdown at any time and thereby force all study to be done online for weeks at a time. | |
| Sep 4, 2021 at 16:29 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | -1 Not how any of it works. LMS's, synched material, teaching assistants don't exist at many institutions. E.g., no TA's at my school -- highly unlikely at community colleges as in OP's case. | |
| Sep 4, 2021 at 14:14 | comment | added | nick012000 | @DanielR.Collins I don't understand how you'd be able to teach online students without a central learning management system - and given the pandemic, online students are at least half your class (and rapidly become your entire class whenever the government decides to do another lockdown). And yes, every instructor teaching a given class should be teaching the same material - the instructor of record should come up with the class's material, and the teaching assistants should coordinate their delivery of it. | |
| Sep 4, 2021 at 14:03 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | @nick012000: "The instructors should all be teaching the same material, ideally from a central learning management system, of course." This one statement almost has too many facts wrong to count. At minimum, there's academic freedom issues/overlooks meta thread on "academia varies more than you think". | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 16:05 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | Every college I've ever heard of lets you drop and register and the first day, so it would still be possible for people to switch sections, so blocking instructor names just creates headaches for everyone with very little effectivity. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 8:04 | comment | added | Arno | @nick012000 The idea that it shouldn't matter who is teaching a course is absurd and dehumanizing. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 7:44 | comment | added | nick012000 | @Bflat The instructors should all be teaching the same material, ideally from a central learning management system, of course. If you don't have one of those set up, I sort of wonder how your university is even functioning in this pandemic environment. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 7:16 | comment | added | B flat | @nick012000 Yes, this would help some and have proposed this here. However, tests are just one component. Also this doesn't actually normalize grades unless you control for all other variables many of which can't be controlled without robot instructors. Consider that some instructors will know questions ahead of time and some may be better at teaching to an exam than others. Some instructors share, hint or focus on old exams giving their students the advantage. This already happens now as some instructors give practice exams that are just like the exam and some a hard against it. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 6:55 | comment | added | nick012000 | @Bflat "Also, I think it is quite literally impossible to normalize student learning across different instructors." My university does moderation for assessment in its teaching teams for each course as a matter of course. You get all the teaching staff together during marking, have them each produce a work that they think looks like an A, a B, a C, and so forth, and then everyone goes over it together to make sure they're all holding the same standards. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 6:16 | comment | added | B flat | @nick From what I understand, the threat of the lawsuit did come from someone powerful with important ties to the college. Also, I think it is quite literally impossible to normalize student learning across different instructors. I suppose blind standardize testing could be used for assessments but I don't think that's an option. Even so, instructors are vastly different in their teaching. And students are vastly different in their learning. A good experience in one class can be a terrible experience in another. An argument can still be made for hidden names though. No opinion for me. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 2:34 | comment | added | paul garrett | To be clear: no it is a disservice to students to not announce the instructors. Yes, it is a disservice to the good teachers that they have a higher load. Yes, this does effectively reward less-than-the-best teachers... No, higher admin has no incentive to change this. No, bad teachers have no incentive to compensate good teachers. ... Dang. Sorry. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 2:32 | comment | added | paul garrett | I do understand the idea that the instructor of a course should not matter... but, especially at R1 places in the U.S., it is most often a definitive feature. The notion that "math is independent of people" and so on is arguably false, and ridiculously so. There is the invidious mythology among "research mathematicians" that "teaching" is the thing anyone can do, after they've lost interest in research. Yes, this is awful, but... well, anyway, it's not my fault... and I do push back on this in my own dept, but there are many dynamics that preserve this... | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 2:20 | comment | added | Elizabeth Henning | Quite frankly, a university should design its courses so that students with disabilities aren't at an unfair disadvantage in the first place. But they don't. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 2:08 | history | answered | nick012000 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |