Tell me about your CF students...

[GameOldBirdz]

Me and a few colleagues last night were exchanging war stories of unbelievable and/of CF students.

Sadly these cases seem to be increasing with the marketisation of HE and there's lots of underlying misogyny but there's humour to be found in there somewhere...

One of my colleagues told us about her first lecture at a new university when she mentioned to the students that she'd just started. At the end of the lecture, a student handed her an evaluation of her performance

Mine would be when a student showed up at my office at 9:45am nearly in tears begging me to let her use my office computer to print her essay (due in at 10am) as her printer had just broken and the computer room was full. I took pity on her. She sat down, plugged in her USB, opened Chrome and went to Facebook . When I challenged her she said he had "plenty of time" as the essay submission was only down the corridor. I threw her out without her printed essay. She filed a formal complaint about me

Every year I get comments in my module evaluations about my hair. I do have funky hair and I do change it often but still...

Blimey - as the mother of two university students, all I can say is that my dses would get the bollocking to end all bollockings from me, if I thought they were engaged in any of this sort of behaviour!

You are all saints!

I went to university as a mature student, and still remember with gratitude the effort and high academic standards of all the lecturers.

mature students are IME the best!

I can just about put up with the CF students; it’s my colleagues’ response to them that tips me over the edge.

This week’s example: one of the students in my final year personal tutor group wants to apply for teacher training afterwards (well 3 do; but the other two submitted their applications weeks ago). This student got round to doing her application on Sunday. So she emailed late Sunday afternoon to ask for a reference. I replied on Monday evening saying that I would do it at some point this week.

The student then emails on Wednesday to chase up the reference with a load of utter bullshit about how the centre she wants to go to has started interviewing etc, etc. When I get back to the office (as I’ve been out if the office all week) I respond asking her why she has left the application so late and suggesting that it is reasonable to give lecturers at least a working week to respond to a reference request. I remind her that I said I’d do it this week.

So this morning (while trying to supervise a student workshop) I receive a flurry of emails. The first is from my line manager (who is usually great) asking if I’m ok and saying that I am aware that the student reference situation has become urgent. And can I please respond to her and the subject head ASAP. Then I get one from the programme leader telling me how upset and anxious the student is, and I need to get the reference done before 1.30. (I’m teaching til 1, of course, and then have back to back student meetings - with no lunch break).

None of these three people in any way acknowledge that it has NOT become urgent; the student is panicking because she has not applied in good time. Or that the appropriate response would have been to ask the student to reflect upon why she is upset and anxious and the extent to which she’s done this to herself.

I had to leave my class, log in to the teacher training application system and decline the reference request so that one of the idiots who caused this problem could do it instead.

Clearly it is official department policy that the students’ poor planning is our emergency and that we have no responsibility to teach the students about appropriate expectations and behaviour.

Frankly, I’d suggest that the student in question has managed to demonstrate wonderfully why she may be unsuitable for PG teacher training.

I think I’m at the end of my tether with the university and everyone in any kind of leadership position within it. After three separate loads the goalpost moving shit that makes it clear that my workload or wellbeing do not matter (plus some passive aggressive interference from a problematic colleague) and then this, I have had it with the place. Honestly, this afternoon is have quit with no notice if I didn’t need the money.

God, Abritrary that's a really shit situation. You have my sympathies. I think you did the right thing in declining the reference request.

I had a student once who emailed me at 9.30am. I was teaching a class 9am-11am and didn't see it. By 9.50am he had reported me to my Head of Department for not answering his email(!)

These are great.

A masters student told me to google the limitations of study design in which I have 15 years experience. Oh and "the Americans" have come up with a much better "thing", I should google that too.

A colleague was threatend to be reported because the students thought it was unfair that he had the answers of an research type assignement but they didn't

What's peoples thoughts on this? Do you think we are all at the whim of students these days? Sometimes that is what it feels like especially with the impact of the NSS.

I’m just going to say I’ve had 2 days in the last 2 weeks where our 2nd years have been utterly lovely, worked really hard in some workshop sessions, asked intelligent questions (and some not very intelligent ones but still asked those very nicely) and generally acted as if I am a human being. 10 of them have even asked if they can hand their coursework in three weeks early as they have finished it.
I can balance that out with a whole load of other issues the last 2 weeks caused by another group of students, but just wanted to revel in the good bits again for a minute

I've had several student in the last couple of weeks not coming to lecture because "they overslept"... I'm starting to think they just don't like me!

Once or twice fine... but hte same ones every week?

A student emailed me today to say that he had just realised - four weeks after the hand-in date and just before the marks are due to be released - that he handed in a draft of his essay, not the final version. Which he had put a lot of work into and therefore deserved a good mark! Could he resubmit. Ummmmm. NO!

Ha ha. I love the ‘I accidentally submitted a draft’ excuse.

I’ve told my students that it is their responsibility to ensure they submit the right file and that they should preview every page on turnitin to check.

I'm reading these and cringing.

I suspect some of DS's lecturers could write similar things about him. Certainly this rang a bell:
'I had one who emailed me to say he'd missed my lecture so could I meet him and explain it to him... er no!
The same guy then told his supervisor he was struggling with the material and he thought he might need some extra help! Concerned supervisor (lovely man) emailed me to ask if I could possible help him... I acidly suggested he should try coming to the timetabled sessions first and if he still needed extra help I'd be happy to! Next lecture... he's not there!'

DS has Asperger's, OCD and serious social anxiety, combined with an acute case of incompetence. He had full-time help at school and almost none at university (largely because he can't/won't apply for everything he's entitled to, and won't always even disclose his problems to the staff).

It's a miracle that he's made it to his second year and I live in hourly expectation of getting the Final Phonecall.

to anyone with him on their course. He'a nice lad underneath it all.

I was doing some work around student well-being in a university and, in response to complaints from lecturers about students being on their phone during lectures/seminairs, suggested that they ask students to put their phones in their bags turned off. If students don't want to do this, they can leave the room.

These lecturers just couldn't foresee how they could ask that of students. I can see the gap of a lack of organisational policy/protocol, but surely you would expect this at any meeting/gathering at work?

Is this usual in HE (because it's not in work-based education by any stretch).

We could ask the students to do it. But I don’t see how we can make a room full of 200 students do anything.

Some of my students went on a visit to a private school’s sixth form. They were utterly shocked that the students there were allowed their phones out and that they only used them to look up relevant things to help them with their work. I just thought the comment said more about my students than the students in the school they’d been visiting.

unimaginative that's a fair point about lecture halls full of students. But what about seminars and tutorials?

Most of them will have come from a school environment/gap year at work where it's an expectation that people don't have phones beeping etc.

In seminars and tutorials, IME, you can end up spending all the time simply trying to persuade them to do the work set and dealing with low level behaviour problems. I suspect they come from schools where their teachers would say much the same thing.

Except we can’t confiscate phones etc.

I find this extraordinary. I work in lots of different work settings, ask people to turn their phones off for the duration and they do.

The occasional interruption or i-phone twitcher, but nothing like seems the norm in HE.

When I was a student we had an academic who did not actively encourage us to put our phones away because he believed if we heard something in the seminar / lecture we wanted to look further into / question we could google and look into to then use this to approach the academic at a suitable point. Much preferred this attitude to a blanket ban as it actively made me more engaged and would google points raised rather than be on my phone.

Now, I’m not an academic but I do I do work alongside students in HE. I coordinate projects that students are volunteer for and I’m at the end of my tether with the awful attitudes to timekeeping and attendance. Cancelling 10minutws before they are due to be in attendance (which often causes issues with the project) or not turning up without notice. The sheer entitlement of them is getting worse!

I agree with what was said upthread about the privatisation of HE, that students are now customers etc has dramatically changed relationships and attitudes.

Even 'A' level students seem to be spoon fed these days, and so many arrive on campus with no aptitude or experience of independent study.

mature students are IME the best!

I was a mature student and lone parent when I did my BA.

I was shocked at the appalling behaviour of some of the students. Frequently late, talking during lectures, eating during lectures, thinking they could fool lecturers with blatantly plagiarised work, not putting effort into assignments, exams or presentations...

I loved my course and the lecturers and the other students I became friends with. Lecturers were very understanding if people had GENUINE issues affecting work (serious illness, bereavement of close person, pregnancy) but they didn't have much patience for the CF and I don't blame them!

As a rep I sometimes had students coming to me with issues and must admit it was very hard keeping in check to tell them they were taking the piss if eg they wanted an extension because there was a concert they just HAD to go to, or they got poor results in an exam when I knew they'd done sod all study for it!

Lecturers put up with a lot and should be better supported by management in my humble opinion

In lectures, I let them do what they want, other than talk. If I hear talking, I stop talking .. and wait ... and wait. It does seem to work. I observed one of my colleague's lectures the other day though and sat at the back of the lecture theatre. One student spent the whole time selecting a new pair of trainers (I must admit they were nice, the ones he chose). I would say 10% out of 100 or so were actively listening and taking notes. The rest were emailing, etc, etc.

Students at our place (as everywhere) say they don't want lectures - they want more small group teaching. But they don't turn up to or read for seminars. And they don't seem to realise that fees to teach 400 students in small groups would probably cost more than £9K.

Last week, in a seminar, one student told me that he didn't bother working because the "faculty are so lazy." Apparently, if we were harder working, he would be too. So, of course, I let him know that I would redouble my efforts henceforth, and also did a little curtsy to signal his superiority.**

One other thing - I was listening to the radio this morning and felt like crying. That minister, talking about the TEF, being taken down to course level. It's SUCH NONSENSE. I feel so sad that education is being valued solely on the basis of how much you earn afterwards, and students (like the one mentioned above) are constantly completing surveys to assess how good my teaching is. BOLLOCKS to it all. I am really considering my future in higher education. I do think it's wrong that so many students are paying huge amounts for limited returns, but I don't think this is the answer, I really don't. It's depressing. Anyway ... back to work!

**I didn't.

The phone issue is a massive one. A couple of years ago, I banned phones from my lectures and seminars.

A number of students complained on the grounds of disability discrimination. I got told I couldn't ban phones from my classrooms as it wasn't a departmental policy so not consistent across modules.

Funny that the students who complained on the grounds of disability discrimination weren't those that had disability/adjustment reports.