Many/most of them do not read LMS announcements or emails. From what I've seen, they often just interact with the LMS on their phones, which doesn't offer the same content/interface as the web, or they simply ignore everthing that isn't an "ASSIGNMENT DUE TODAY!!!!!!" link for submission. (And they ignore a lot of those too.)
On day one in every class I tell them they are reponsible for checking the LMS announcements AND their campus email accounts every class day. Anything they miss is on them and I will not take questions or excuses resulting from their failure to maintain basic contact with course communication. It's not really a problem with older students, but lots of fall first-years are still used to having high school teachers coddle them at every turn so they need to learn their lesson somehow.
I was so surprised to discover how many of my students only interact with the LMS on their phones. It's obvious I'm an old, because I can't fathom doing assignments and asking questions and taking tests with no keyboard
My oldest just graduated high school and its so bad that the school was talking about bringing back typing classes based on feedback from employers and universities.
I'm old (47!) and I've lived before and after the internet. The best class I ever took in high school was typing/keyboarding. I can still type around 100wpm!! :)
Remember the games on the big black floppy disks?
Until an embarrassingly age to realize that a floppy disks and hard disks weren't the black floppys and hard plastic ones.
I was amazed to learn that some systems still run on floppy discs. Some Boeing 747s have critical updates loaded this way and there is some train system in the US that requires them too.
For what? I barely remember DOS but I know my first computer was DOS based, I just never really used it. My memories of truly starting to use computers are around 2000 and therefore Windows dominated.
My real job is for the federal government and we have some inventory and accounting systems that run on them. There are some GUI interfaces but some of the work still needs to be done in DOS itself.
Once you understand the logic it runs fast and very rarely crashes.
We had this awesome high school typing class that was like an off-brand Wheel of Fortune typing game. It was so much fun! And hey, I can type now.*
*Likely unrelated.
Bc a generation of teachers who had been taught to type saw kids texting at lightning speed and working out how to program a video remote, both of these being skills the teachers had not mastered, and decided that Kids These Days just learn how to handle tech rather as they learn to breathe. "Digital natives" was the buzzword.
I hate accessing LMSs on my phone. You can't see everything (unless I am using incorrect settings or something) and nothing frustrates me more than trying to access the top right upper corner and can't. Because I am on my phone. So I always use the computer. Like the old fart I have become.
This was a big insight for me a while back, because I work on laptop/desktop OS most of the time, so now I regularly check my courses on both the teacher and student Canvas apps.
Honestly I want to use my phone for it a lot more. Not for long written sections, but I would love to be able to grade on my phone or tablet, pull information, update short announcements, etc. unfortunately, a lot of that doesn’t work well in the app
omg, similar age, and my students do the same thing! I can barely even read their laptops when they point to those, definitely can't read their phones. Between that and students mumbling questions from the back of the room (when I truly cannot hear them that well) . . . I sometimes wonder if I am too infirm to be around 20yos.
Me to a student who isn’t seeming to get announcements: “it’s on the front page of the learning management system.” (I literally get on and show him where.)
Him: “I access it on my phone. I have a different front page.”
Me: “It might be good to check on a laptop or computer then?”
Him: “I don’t have a laptop or computer.”
Me: “How do you finish assignments?”
Him: “I type them on my phone.”
Me: ……
This is exactly right. On top of me making this announcement, I refer back to it when I receive those whiny emails. I also post a required reading (as in- can’t open the rest of the module until you read it) titled “high school vs college” that I made from a bunch of other online sources.
As a high school teacher, we try so hard to get students to check their emails and LMS announcements. I even make my students do an assignment about using the LMS. Don’t blame us. It’s just pure laziness on their end
It's the lack of accountability that's the problem-- I do blame the high school culture because that's clearly where the ball is being dropped. 10 years ago we got students who were held accountable in high school; they no longer are. I don't blame the teachers though; most I know would prefer to hold students to reasonable standards. It's the admins and parents who insist there be no consequences and all students earn Cs or better for simply showing up that are the problem.
Still, the *system* is failing our students before they get to college. If HS teachers could (and did) penalize students who don't do the work, don't follow directions, don't open the LMS, don't do the readings, etc. etc. the problem could be addressed before they end up wasting $40K on a year of failed college courses. But from what my students tell me that isn't happening-- and my teacher friends all say they basically aren't being *allowed* to fail students even when they do nothing at all in class.
I don't care if they read the announcements or not. Once it is written - I have done my due diligence.
**WE ARE NOT BABYSITTING TODDLERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**
I think this has to be configured in their settings. I always cover this in my first day syllabus review, and tell them to set their notifications settings to push certain things to whatever medium they prefer and will see asap.
I also mention that, if there should be an unexpected need for me to cancel class, I will post that as a canvas announcement. Thus, it is in their interest to make sure that they are seeing those promptly!
At some point, if you send too many of these (and *all* of their professors are doing this), it all just becomes "spam" and it's hard to sort out which of those "announcements/emails" are actually important, like all the campus-wide "junk emails" admins constantly send around all the time.
Our university in their wisdom decided that the default should be all announcements arrive at the end of the day as a single digest. This is fine unless the announcement you are sending out is class is canceled or the room is changed. The rationale was less information for students to read. In the first two weeks of classes I send out a couple of messages to first-year students, after that I only use announcements for things that students need to know immediately and cannot wait until the next class. Makes me wonder how many announcements other people send out.
We use Moodle, so I edit the first topic each Friday with a weekly focus. Reminders go there and it is up to the students to look each week. It also means other staff associated with the course can add things. For example, my lab tech added a form for students to request their DNA samples back. She could have emailed me and then I had to do it, but this way less emails for me!
It was astounding how many students this past semester failed to read announcements or assignment descriptions.
They'd of course lose points resulting in *shocked Pikachu face* and an email full of complaints
Can't stand it.
I spell stuff out so any moron could just accidentally do things right, but I can tell they have no idea what the assignment even was. Stupid.
I post deadlines on announcements and make step by step tutorials on how to complete the assignments, I still get students that get the assignments wrong.
I teach an asynchronous summer course and only one student has been watching my videos. It takes me three four hours to prepare the materials and record the lectures. It was disappointing when I first checked.
Yup, it’s not worth the time, I make less than 15 an hr with our summer stipend. I know all the students and they’re nice students in person, but it was disappointing when I found out that I was wasting my time.
I would recommend at the present time for Gen Z to just add supplementary material and not engage in any extensive labour like reworking entire videos; ask your IT if you can’t see the stats; odds are very few, if any, are actually watching lectures.
Yeah; every single time I check the stats on my online classes’ video or audio lectures (and supplementary material I upload) to see who/how many times they’ve been accessed and played all the way through or downloaded, it’s always discouraging. Two (?) summers ago I had an online class of 40 where zero students accessed the lectures until after the second test, and then two did, played them for a few minutes to partway through, one skipped to a couple different ones and watched for a few seconds then closed it out, and then nobody accessed them for the rest of the semester. It’s definitely discouraging to look at the stats of access or have IT pull them for you. I could be uploading videos of SpongeBob SquarePants and not wasting my own time, for all they care. It’s ridiculous. Most classes I’ll have about five who regularly watch/listen, but the majority ignore it.
For my first lecture, I made a one hr video explaining in depth of the concepts and materials, one student watched it. For the second video, I shortened it to 30 mins, still one person watched it. It takes me around 3 hrs to make the ppt from scratch and another hr to record it. Now I just type the class assignment instructions instead of making slides. I make around 15 dollars an hr for this summer course with the amount of time I’m putting into it.
Currently going through this with my summer class. It’s funny how after I give them a zero, they send an email 5 minutes later asking to complete the assignment late. It’s really getting old.
Happens to me all the time and with the lamest excuses. I had a student ask me if I could reopen the midterm exam for her because she worked night shift on the night that it was due on got home late. The exam had been available for a whole week…
They don't read anything. I have no idea what they consider "studying" anymore. I had a student come to my office, complaining about how they aren't doing well despite studying "so hard"...but it turns out that they hadn't read anything in the book or the LMS. They don't take notes in class. This particular student "studied" by watching YouTube videos. It's insane.
Ha, student complained my class was too hard cause I had “20 slides” for my lecture. My intro class exams are 100% based on the lecture notes. Some of them just come in to the classroom, set up their laptop, and play with their phones.
I've got more and more students who show up with...nothing. Just absolutely nothing. Not a laptop, not a notebook, not even a bag. They just sit in the desk and zone out.
Let them flunk. All appearances aside, they are adults with the privileges and burdens thereunto attached. It's on them to engage with the material and assignments.
Sounds about right. I’m fine with them doing whatever as long as they’re content with their grades, the worst ones are the ones who get Cs and Ds cause of missed assignments and classes then blame it on you.
I just did this for my summer class and I loved it.
Of course Chuck complained that he couldn't see Quiz 3 but Chad could. Yeah buddy Chad completed 1 and 2, and you haven't even gone through the syllabus quiz yet.
I'm teaching a course with an online synchronous component and had to cancel recently because of a family situation. I posted two announcements a few days prior and then a third an hour before the class would have started. Yup, right as I was boarding my flight, my phone started lighting up with emails wondering why I wasn't there. Seriously, at least 1/3 of the class somehow missed all three announcements. Oh, and I forgot! I even inserted another reminder into the module for that week.
So naturally, I put my phone into airplane mode and ordered a drink.
On the rare occasions I've needed to cancel my synchronous Zoom classes over the years, I always post an announcement on the LMS (which forwards to their school emails), update the syllabus (which I have in webpage form that they can click and instantly see - I even put the date of the latest update in the title), and mention it in advance during class whenever I have sufficient notice. I make sure to post an asynchronous replacement of the lesson in the weekly module, which is generally a narrated version of the PPT I was already going to use and a DB task, so it's especially important they get the message and complete what they need to complete.
Every time, I get at least three emails alerting me that a student has joined my meeting room. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I used to email those students (generally from my phone, as I canceled class for a reason) reminding them that class had been canceled, but I don't do that anymore. It's like shouting into the void. It didn't even work most of the time, as those students would sometimes STILL ask me the following week during class why no one had been in the Zoom room. They just weren't checking their emails or the LMS announcements. Ever.
My favorite is when I get questions about upcoming assignments regarding how they should it be formatted, what needs to be included, etc. when I've both extensively reviewed the requirements during class as well as made sure to write extremely detailed assignment descriptions and rubrics - once again, all of which are posted on the LMS and readily available to students. It's so frustrating! I've sent literal screenshots of the rubric or syllabus before via email to answer their questions, which I know might come across as passive aggressive, but if I'm going back to check what I wrote to reply to their email, why can't they do the same? It's all already there!
This isn't all of my students, of course, but it's enough of a pattern that it's been concerning me. Do y'all remember how college used to be, when we showed up Day 1, got a paper syllabus for our binders, and deadlines were never mentioned again by most professors? There was no LMS or course information made available in advance (aside from the catalog blurb). I'm not saying that was ideal, but it certainly taught us how to take charge of our semester. Now, I get students emailing me asking for a syllabus a month or two in advance of a new semester so they can "consider whether the workload will fit their schedule". When this is for a course I've taught before I just send it along, but for new courses I don't always have a syllabus ready yet and don't want to feel as though I need to scramble. It's also not as if I teach elective courses that can and should be carefully considered and chosen based upon their workload. I teach GRADUATE courses, all of which students are taking because they're required by their programs. So why do they need to see the syllabus in advance? Most don't have multiple sections, so I'm the only option.
I feel as though this comes across as me being unkind and bitter, but if anything I've always been too nice. I LOVE the vast majority of my students, but I hate the fact that the minority of them who do things like can taint my mood with even a little bit of negativity. To me, I serve them best with high expectations rather than by making things as easy as I possibly can, but I end up in the second category far too often for my comfort.
It does not come across as unkind or bitter. It's setting very acceptable, appropriate boundaries and expecting graduate students to be....you know....GRADUATE students!!
Tell us how you really feel!
I've learned that many of mine simply have decided they don't need to read anything because they can just ask me to tell them. Then of course there is the set that supposedly "reads" clear instructions, then decide "I do what I want." I've just taken to putting in grades that they don't like.
ga2500ev
being from slytherin, i would start giving assignments that had some very annoying parts
and then send out announcements saying things like, “you don’t have to do part e, subsection iv”
and eventually they will start reading
Idk, but I've also frequently seen professors miss emails and announcements, show up completely unprepared for meetings and defenses, etc.
I think it's just a product of general information overload. I've worked in other industries, and higher ed is atrocious in terms of constantly bombarding people with information (much of which is not necessary).
If this is a "standard" announcement for the course (you make it at roughly the same point, about the same thing, etc.) and you're familiar with Canvas' conditional-viewing features -- basically: you make X task a prerequisite for doing Y next assignment -- you could program these in as something students HAVE to see (even if they just click through) to get to a necessary element of the course.
Depends on the LMS.
In some, Canvas for example, you can set announcements as the landing page. They may not read them, but they will see them.
In D2L you can do this, but they released an ap that works completely differently.
Students using the ap won't see announcements.
I deliberately put important stuff in announcements. I tell them that I will. Last year, a student asked me if I was going to post xyz file. Classmate turned to her and said "she put it in an announcement on canvas last week"
I kept a straight face in front of lab, but I snickered a tiny bit later.
It is so bad on my end I have a quiz with one question about announcements and then another one as part of a larger syllabus quiz and a statement of student responsibility in the syllabus that lets them know any failure to comply with an announcement that costs them points will not be amended by doing something later down the line. -- But in the end I still get way too many issues which stem from not reading the announcements. I just plan for it, and take some pleasure in my response that tells that the issue at hand was addressed already in an announcement and to go read them.
Just yesterday I had a student come up to me and ask when will the in-class test be held. Convo went more or less like this:
Them: when’s the test?
Me: details are in the announcement page on Canvas
Them: the… announcement?
Me: yes, on Canvas
Them: what announcement page?
Me: on Canvas. Where all the other announcements are.
Them: oh. The announcement page?
Me: go and check Canvas.
Them: ok *walks away* the announcement page?
Read this out, word for word, and very slowly in class:
"According to access reports on the LMS, most of (you) never visited the fucking announcement I posted. I take pains to communicate with my students in writing so they can refer back to what I wrote instead of just going by their memory. Yet, (apparently) I'm the asshole because I didn't magically beam the shit into (your) fucking hollow skulls."
Then just look up expectantly, waiting for the first in-class question that follows. Which is probably "will this be on the test"?
I think the current generation of Students has been so normalized to electronic communication, in all its many forms: texting, email, snapchat, instagram, youtube, twitter, TV, streaming, etc., that they only pay selective attention, now. They can't pay attention to EVERYTHING. And why would they prioritize academic communication? It's not fun.
I liked things in the old days, with paper syllabi and no cell phones or internet. That's how I grew up, and I miss it.
My daughter is 15 and the way she communicates with her friends astounds me. Texting with the basic messenger app that all phones have - she only uses that for her Dad and me. We only found this out because she was having an odd issue where we would get her texts three times. When I asked her if her friends experienced the same thing she looked at me like what are you on about. She messages her friends through snapchat or other apps that require her to be online which seems stupid to me. They send voice recordings to each other a lot rather than texting. She also never checks her email which apparently is so normal that the school actually emails the parents to say your daughter has X assignment due in LMS, please remind her to check her email.
It is astounding to me how much parents are now involved in their children's High School academics. My mother just retired after decades of being a HS teacher, and listening to her, I could not fathom dealing with parents daily as a part of my job.
When I was in HS, my parents had absolutely zero knowledge of my academic activities, except for quarterly grade reports. My family is weird - me and my siblings actually got paid cash on an ascending scale for good grades!
Of course, that was before the ever present existence of e-mail / cell phones. Different times...
I'm in the camp of it's her job to remember assignments/tests. Luckily she is a good kid and doesn't really need the reminders, but my son I think will (he just started high school so another couple of years before he is at the real assessment stage).
Our daughter gets paid too :) This is her first year of NCEA (the stupid NZ curriculum assessment for HS kids) and she gets $20 for every excellence (students get excellent, merit, achieved, or not achieved). Originally we were also paying for merits but she was meriting everything so had to adjust the bar for our wallets' sake.
Students are also not technically literate, and I have discovered that they just cope by not doing things.
I am at an R1 and we use gmail. Pretty basic. I had to get into my gmail account during class and a student stopped me before I could navigate away, asking me "how do you get it to do that?"
"That" was flags. And, it turns out, using labels. And using "snooze." The task list. Filters. And being able to to google calendar directly -- students were not using because they were getting to it via email and getting lost in the email first and then forgetting what they needed to do.
They were juniors. It never occurred to them that email could be more then just a never ending page of stuff. And since it never crossed their minds, they never thought to ask how.
Two weeks later I had student stop me to tell me for the first time she was able to keep on the important things in her email.
It was very sad, but also very eye opening to me to realize it. I now also talk to my new colleagues because some of them don't really realize that email can be used effectively.
I TOTALLY understand as I’m going through the same thing in an online class. I put all due dates on the syllabus and on the course calendar. I also send two reminder emails each week. Yet, I still had students miss their midterm because they were confused about the due date.
Some most of my class is failing, simply because they don’t want to do the work or communicate with me. The ones that have reached out and interacted in my Q&A sessions are doing much much better than other squid not I started recording my lectures and use Edpuzzle to force them to go through it. In the lecture I was going on and said if any of you can tell me what this means without googling you will get a bonus on the next test. Soooooo I just (as in two hours ago) put the answer to to the bonus point question in the announcement. But they have to read the entire thing to get the answer. 🤷🏼♀️
I have to put everything in writing so that nobody can come at me with the “you didn’t tell us that “
My favorite was I posted announcement after our last exam saying if you’d like to go over this you could book here to schedule an office appointment with me if none of those times work contact me. I had at least 10 students ask when they could meet with me and I said did you click the link? “What link” I didn’t think a red bold highlighted link would be that difficult to see but what do I know? 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️
Listen. I did voice to text for that response. And I can’t help but laugh at some of those AutoCorrect. It makes me not want to change them so if it doesn’t make sense, please let me know. 😂
We use Blackboard and even when I make sure it emails them, they don’t see announcements. I am waiting for these platforms to have texts. But by that time something else will have come along.
I will have to check it out. In small classes I have had students us GroupMe, which is nice for both me and the students. Thank you for the heads up. I am lecturer and teach 4 classes a semester.
I put in the syllabus that they’re responsible for all info posted to announcements, and they should check in to the course every day to make sure they don’t miss anything.
Having said that, I also do try not to post anything critical there because many won’t check.
I do my best to anticipate what they will need to know and communicate it in the Modules.
What kinds of things are you communicating in the Announcements that are critical/time-sensitive? I wonder if email might be more effective.
I only use the announcements for things like where and when the exams are (these are scheduled for us as the semester progresses). Less critical things go in the weekly update on the course website, or very occasionally as an extra piece of news there. I tell my students that the course website is where they should be looking for information about the course.
I post assignments in the announcements each week. If I don’t put a hyperlink directly in the announcement, someone will email me to say they can’t find the assignments. It’s maddening.
I send a follow up announcement and email with the subject line "many of you seem to have reading comprehension problems" and I copy and paste the original message. At the bottom of it I add in caps for them to read the message 3 more times.
But they somehow see announcements saying that there’s an extension on an assignment. It’s kind of mind boggling to me.
Folks, while what I’m seeing here is certainly distressing, I feel so much better knowing it’s not just my experience.
Students do not read emails anymore. I suspect many do the entire coursework on their phones. I know this because I had several complain that I didn’t post assignments and I think they were trying to read a syllabus assignment schedule on their phone and not as a Word or pdf document on a lap top screen.
You can only do so much. At some point you have to say it is your responsibility to check announcements and read. You can't care more about their education than they do.
The same students who won't read the announcements or your emails but will then email you asking about (something already posted) and get mad when you don't respond in 5 minutes.
This is the redditification of life. They also won't read the prior reddit post but will ask a question to get a direct response.
Information overload.
They get so many announcements from you, their other professors, and 15 different offices on campus, that they don't pay attention anymore.
I recommend a tech-lite approach. I use the LMS only for submission of assignments. All announcements are made in class.
We're competing with TikTok and every other website that wants to send notifications. Students only have so much attention and are not taught how to modulate their attention between them.
We all understand ..does anyone have a clause in the syllabus that says something like if the information is in the syllabus or in the announcements the email will not be responded to?
I think part of it is students are using the apps to access the LMS and it's really just not set up the same way and they miss these announcements quite easily. Not an excuse, but I'm saying it's not as self-evident as people think. And I have to be very clear with my online students that they must access the LMS on a computer and not their phone because the phone app only gives them a bare minimum of what they need. You would be surprised the number of students who try to complete courses especially online only courses using a smartphone and not a computer. I didn't realize this until I started using a proctoring system that required a computer and realize so many of my students didn't actually have a computer and had no way to come to campus to use the computer labs. I like trying to be accessible but at that point I can't really help. And of course don't discount the number of students that actually get your messages but they pretend they don't and they lie about it trying to Garner sympathy because it has worked in their High School.
I agree it is painful. I post weekly announcements with all sorts of updates and hints. Nothing seems to work for the masses. For the few who take advantage it has a way of making it seem worthwhile, at least for a moment.
We had a storm come through and knock out power for basically the entire town this week.
The university sends out alert that the campus is closed.
I send out an announcement that class is cancelled.
Later that day I still get emails asking if we have class that day...
With all the people complaining students don't check their email, I wonder how many do, but just not their school email?
One thing I've discovered is that many students don't bother to check their school email, which of course is what our LMS uses, and I'll often get email from these students sent from their personal Gmail accounts.
I tell them the first day of class that for privacy reasons I will only send email to their university email and only respond to emails sent from their university email account, but I always have a couple that didn't seem to get the memo. Is this common for others?
Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Do you have a massive text list for classes? Some institutions do and you can send out the announcement as a text to the class.
Ding ding, point to Able Parking. -41 to MountRose.
The downvotes are sending me. Obviously not from my personal phone. Professors are bricks, like absolute bricks.
Many/most of them do not read LMS announcements or emails. From what I've seen, they often just interact with the LMS on their phones, which doesn't offer the same content/interface as the web, or they simply ignore everthing that isn't an "ASSIGNMENT DUE TODAY!!!!!!" link for submission. (And they ignore a lot of those too.) On day one in every class I tell them they are reponsible for checking the LMS announcements AND their campus email accounts every class day. Anything they miss is on them and I will not take questions or excuses resulting from their failure to maintain basic contact with course communication. It's not really a problem with older students, but lots of fall first-years are still used to having high school teachers coddle them at every turn so they need to learn their lesson somehow.
I was so surprised to discover how many of my students only interact with the LMS on their phones. It's obvious I'm an old, because I can't fathom doing assignments and asking questions and taking tests with no keyboard
My oldest just graduated high school and its so bad that the school was talking about bringing back typing classes based on feedback from employers and universities.
I'm old (47!) and I've lived before and after the internet. The best class I ever took in high school was typing/keyboarding. I can still type around 100wpm!! :)
Remember the games on the big black floppy disks? Until an embarrassingly age to realize that a floppy disks and hard disks weren't the black floppys and hard plastic ones.
I was amazed to learn that some systems still run on floppy discs. Some Boeing 747s have critical updates loaded this way and there is some train system in the US that requires them too.
What if I told you I use DOS daily and will for the next 10-20 years unless I leave my job.
For what? I barely remember DOS but I know my first computer was DOS based, I just never really used it. My memories of truly starting to use computers are around 2000 and therefore Windows dominated.
My real job is for the federal government and we have some inventory and accounting systems that run on them. There are some GUI interfaces but some of the work still needs to be done in DOS itself. Once you understand the logic it runs fast and very rarely crashes.
My husband works in IT. When I told him about your comment he said it makes sense if you want a streamlined system with singular jobs.
I miss DOS. Have you considered Linux?
Mavis Beacon teaches typing!
fuck yea, the little running race where you typed as fast as you could, and the runner dude beefed it if you screwed up. those were the days.
We had this awesome high school typing class that was like an off-brand Wheel of Fortune typing game. It was so much fun! And hey, I can type now.* *Likely unrelated.
I can’t understand why they ever stopped? It’s not an innate skill
Bc a generation of teachers who had been taught to type saw kids texting at lightning speed and working out how to program a video remote, both of these being skills the teachers had not mastered, and decided that Kids These Days just learn how to handle tech rather as they learn to breathe. "Digital natives" was the buzzword.
I hate accessing LMSs on my phone. You can't see everything (unless I am using incorrect settings or something) and nothing frustrates me more than trying to access the top right upper corner and can't. Because I am on my phone. So I always use the computer. Like the old fart I have become.
This was a big insight for me a while back, because I work on laptop/desktop OS most of the time, so now I regularly check my courses on both the teacher and student Canvas apps.
Honestly I want to use my phone for it a lot more. Not for long written sections, but I would love to be able to grade on my phone or tablet, pull information, update short announcements, etc. unfortunately, a lot of that doesn’t work well in the app
You can with Canvas. I have done all that on my tablet and my phone.
66 and I can't read their phones! They'll come up after class and say, "I have a question about this" while pointing at their phones.
omg, similar age, and my students do the same thing! I can barely even read their laptops when they point to those, definitely can't read their phones. Between that and students mumbling questions from the back of the room (when I truly cannot hear them that well) . . . I sometimes wonder if I am too infirm to be around 20yos.
Me to a student who isn’t seeming to get announcements: “it’s on the front page of the learning management system.” (I literally get on and show him where.) Him: “I access it on my phone. I have a different front page.” Me: “It might be good to check on a laptop or computer then?” Him: “I don’t have a laptop or computer.” Me: “How do you finish assignments?” Him: “I type them on my phone.” Me: ……
This is exactly right. On top of me making this announcement, I refer back to it when I receive those whiny emails. I also post a required reading (as in- can’t open the rest of the module until you read it) titled “high school vs college” that I made from a bunch of other online sources.
As a high school teacher, we try so hard to get students to check their emails and LMS announcements. I even make my students do an assignment about using the LMS. Don’t blame us. It’s just pure laziness on their end
It's the lack of accountability that's the problem-- I do blame the high school culture because that's clearly where the ball is being dropped. 10 years ago we got students who were held accountable in high school; they no longer are. I don't blame the teachers though; most I know would prefer to hold students to reasonable standards. It's the admins and parents who insist there be no consequences and all students earn Cs or better for simply showing up that are the problem. Still, the *system* is failing our students before they get to college. If HS teachers could (and did) penalize students who don't do the work, don't follow directions, don't open the LMS, don't do the readings, etc. etc. the problem could be addressed before they end up wasting $40K on a year of failed college courses. But from what my students tell me that isn't happening-- and my teacher friends all say they basically aren't being *allowed* to fail students even when they do nothing at all in class.
I think part of it is that they just don't use email. They have no reason to do so before entering school, so the whole idea is foreign to them.
I don't care if they read the announcements or not. Once it is written - I have done my due diligence. **WE ARE NOT BABYSITTING TODDLERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**
Exactly! And the whole 'they don't read email' thing is a them problem, not a you (or me) problem.
Yep, you’ve got your receipt
Canvas automatically sends them announcements as emails also. Is there a way you can set your LMS to do that? (It might not help, but...)
A lot of the students still won't read them, even as emails.
I think this has to be configured in their settings. I always cover this in my first day syllabus review, and tell them to set their notifications settings to push certain things to whatever medium they prefer and will see asap. I also mention that, if there should be an unexpected need for me to cancel class, I will post that as a canvas announcement. Thus, it is in their interest to make sure that they are seeing those promptly!
I'm guessing my university has it configured to push those on our end, because it seems to be automatic.
Same here. A lot of my students have quite the drive so I tell them day one to set the Canvas announcements to push on their phones.
At some point, if you send too many of these (and *all* of their professors are doing this), it all just becomes "spam" and it's hard to sort out which of those "announcements/emails" are actually important, like all the campus-wide "junk emails" admins constantly send around all the time.
I get that, which is why I send one announcement every Monday morning (only, unless it’s something urgent).
We use Canvas.
Our university in their wisdom decided that the default should be all announcements arrive at the end of the day as a single digest. This is fine unless the announcement you are sending out is class is canceled or the room is changed. The rationale was less information for students to read. In the first two weeks of classes I send out a couple of messages to first-year students, after that I only use announcements for things that students need to know immediately and cannot wait until the next class. Makes me wonder how many announcements other people send out.
I send one a week, on Monday with reminders for the week, unless something really urgent comes up.
We use Moodle, so I edit the first topic each Friday with a weekly focus. Reminders go there and it is up to the students to look each week. It also means other staff associated with the course can add things. For example, my lab tech added a form for students to request their DNA samples back. She could have emailed me and then I had to do it, but this way less emails for me!
>(It might not help, but...) What is this "email" thing you speak of, grandma?
It’s a setting, but I “think” it’s the default.
It was astounding how many students this past semester failed to read announcements or assignment descriptions. They'd of course lose points resulting in *shocked Pikachu face* and an email full of complaints
Can't stand it. I spell stuff out so any moron could just accidentally do things right, but I can tell they have no idea what the assignment even was. Stupid.
I post deadlines on announcements and make step by step tutorials on how to complete the assignments, I still get students that get the assignments wrong.
I can handle poor basic skills, and overthinking and all the rest - the apathy and lack of self-respect is hard to take.
I teach an asynchronous summer course and only one student has been watching my videos. It takes me three four hours to prepare the materials and record the lectures. It was disappointing when I first checked.
I was thinking of doing my own videos and after reading multiple comments like this I decided to curate existing ones instead.
Yup, it’s not worth the time, I make less than 15 an hr with our summer stipend. I know all the students and they’re nice students in person, but it was disappointing when I found out that I was wasting my time.
I would recommend at the present time for Gen Z to just add supplementary material and not engage in any extensive labour like reworking entire videos; ask your IT if you can’t see the stats; odds are very few, if any, are actually watching lectures.
Yeah; every single time I check the stats on my online classes’ video or audio lectures (and supplementary material I upload) to see who/how many times they’ve been accessed and played all the way through or downloaded, it’s always discouraging. Two (?) summers ago I had an online class of 40 where zero students accessed the lectures until after the second test, and then two did, played them for a few minutes to partway through, one skipped to a couple different ones and watched for a few seconds then closed it out, and then nobody accessed them for the rest of the semester. It’s definitely discouraging to look at the stats of access or have IT pull them for you. I could be uploading videos of SpongeBob SquarePants and not wasting my own time, for all they care. It’s ridiculous. Most classes I’ll have about five who regularly watch/listen, but the majority ignore it.
For my first lecture, I made a one hr video explaining in depth of the concepts and materials, one student watched it. For the second video, I shortened it to 30 mins, still one person watched it. It takes me around 3 hrs to make the ppt from scratch and another hr to record it. Now I just type the class assignment instructions instead of making slides. I make around 15 dollars an hr for this summer course with the amount of time I’m putting into it.
Currently going through this with my summer class. It’s funny how after I give them a zero, they send an email 5 minutes later asking to complete the assignment late. It’s really getting old.
Happens to me all the time and with the lamest excuses. I had a student ask me if I could reopen the midterm exam for her because she worked night shift on the night that it was due on got home late. The exam had been available for a whole week…
They don't read anything. I have no idea what they consider "studying" anymore. I had a student come to my office, complaining about how they aren't doing well despite studying "so hard"...but it turns out that they hadn't read anything in the book or the LMS. They don't take notes in class. This particular student "studied" by watching YouTube videos. It's insane.
Ha, student complained my class was too hard cause I had “20 slides” for my lecture. My intro class exams are 100% based on the lecture notes. Some of them just come in to the classroom, set up their laptop, and play with their phones.
I've got more and more students who show up with...nothing. Just absolutely nothing. Not a laptop, not a notebook, not even a bag. They just sit in the desk and zone out.
Let them flunk. All appearances aside, they are adults with the privileges and burdens thereunto attached. It's on them to engage with the material and assignments.
Sounds about right. I’m fine with them doing whatever as long as they’re content with their grades, the worst ones are the ones who get Cs and Ds cause of missed assignments and classes then blame it on you.
I had someone study entirely using flashcards they found on coursehero for a different professors version of a class
I use D2L. Every assignment is set to not open unless certain other tasks are completed first. It is somewhat successful.
I just did this for my summer class and I loved it. Of course Chuck complained that he couldn't see Quiz 3 but Chad could. Yeah buddy Chad completed 1 and 2, and you haven't even gone through the syllabus quiz yet.
How can this be done?
When you create an assignment, in the control section to the right, you can choose conditions for assignment access.
This can also be done on Moodle
the internets generation
My chair says we can’t expect students to read announcements or emails. Even for online classes. Welp.
I'm teaching a course with an online synchronous component and had to cancel recently because of a family situation. I posted two announcements a few days prior and then a third an hour before the class would have started. Yup, right as I was boarding my flight, my phone started lighting up with emails wondering why I wasn't there. Seriously, at least 1/3 of the class somehow missed all three announcements. Oh, and I forgot! I even inserted another reminder into the module for that week. So naturally, I put my phone into airplane mode and ordered a drink.
On the rare occasions I've needed to cancel my synchronous Zoom classes over the years, I always post an announcement on the LMS (which forwards to their school emails), update the syllabus (which I have in webpage form that they can click and instantly see - I even put the date of the latest update in the title), and mention it in advance during class whenever I have sufficient notice. I make sure to post an asynchronous replacement of the lesson in the weekly module, which is generally a narrated version of the PPT I was already going to use and a DB task, so it's especially important they get the message and complete what they need to complete. Every time, I get at least three emails alerting me that a student has joined my meeting room. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I used to email those students (generally from my phone, as I canceled class for a reason) reminding them that class had been canceled, but I don't do that anymore. It's like shouting into the void. It didn't even work most of the time, as those students would sometimes STILL ask me the following week during class why no one had been in the Zoom room. They just weren't checking their emails or the LMS announcements. Ever. My favorite is when I get questions about upcoming assignments regarding how they should it be formatted, what needs to be included, etc. when I've both extensively reviewed the requirements during class as well as made sure to write extremely detailed assignment descriptions and rubrics - once again, all of which are posted on the LMS and readily available to students. It's so frustrating! I've sent literal screenshots of the rubric or syllabus before via email to answer their questions, which I know might come across as passive aggressive, but if I'm going back to check what I wrote to reply to their email, why can't they do the same? It's all already there! This isn't all of my students, of course, but it's enough of a pattern that it's been concerning me. Do y'all remember how college used to be, when we showed up Day 1, got a paper syllabus for our binders, and deadlines were never mentioned again by most professors? There was no LMS or course information made available in advance (aside from the catalog blurb). I'm not saying that was ideal, but it certainly taught us how to take charge of our semester. Now, I get students emailing me asking for a syllabus a month or two in advance of a new semester so they can "consider whether the workload will fit their schedule". When this is for a course I've taught before I just send it along, but for new courses I don't always have a syllabus ready yet and don't want to feel as though I need to scramble. It's also not as if I teach elective courses that can and should be carefully considered and chosen based upon their workload. I teach GRADUATE courses, all of which students are taking because they're required by their programs. So why do they need to see the syllabus in advance? Most don't have multiple sections, so I'm the only option. I feel as though this comes across as me being unkind and bitter, but if anything I've always been too nice. I LOVE the vast majority of my students, but I hate the fact that the minority of them who do things like can taint my mood with even a little bit of negativity. To me, I serve them best with high expectations rather than by making things as easy as I possibly can, but I end up in the second category far too often for my comfort.
It does not come across as unkind or bitter. It's setting very acceptable, appropriate boundaries and expecting graduate students to be....you know....GRADUATE students!!
Tell us how you really feel! I've learned that many of mine simply have decided they don't need to read anything because they can just ask me to tell them. Then of course there is the set that supposedly "reads" clear instructions, then decide "I do what I want." I've just taken to putting in grades that they don't like. ga2500ev
being from slytherin, i would start giving assignments that had some very annoying parts and then send out announcements saying things like, “you don’t have to do part e, subsection iv” and eventually they will start reading
Isn't it amazing how their helplessness magically melts away when a sufficient motivation appears? I've seen this happen several times.
Idk, but I've also frequently seen professors miss emails and announcements, show up completely unprepared for meetings and defenses, etc. I think it's just a product of general information overload. I've worked in other industries, and higher ed is atrocious in terms of constantly bombarding people with information (much of which is not necessary).
If this is a "standard" announcement for the course (you make it at roughly the same point, about the same thing, etc.) and you're familiar with Canvas' conditional-viewing features -- basically: you make X task a prerequisite for doing Y next assignment -- you could program these in as something students HAVE to see (even if they just click through) to get to a necessary element of the course.
Depends on the LMS. In some, Canvas for example, you can set announcements as the landing page. They may not read them, but they will see them. In D2L you can do this, but they released an ap that works completely differently. Students using the ap won't see announcements.
If I need them to know it I put it on a quiz and they get graded.
They dont read anything ever that’s why
I deliberately put important stuff in announcements. I tell them that I will. Last year, a student asked me if I was going to post xyz file. Classmate turned to her and said "she put it in an announcement on canvas last week" I kept a straight face in front of lab, but I snickered a tiny bit later.
Some will never show up to class nor read the announcement and blame you for their behavior. I used to never take attendance and I’m now enforcing it.
It is so bad on my end I have a quiz with one question about announcements and then another one as part of a larger syllabus quiz and a statement of student responsibility in the syllabus that lets them know any failure to comply with an announcement that costs them points will not be amended by doing something later down the line. -- But in the end I still get way too many issues which stem from not reading the announcements. I just plan for it, and take some pleasure in my response that tells that the issue at hand was addressed already in an announcement and to go read them.
Just yesterday I had a student come up to me and ask when will the in-class test be held. Convo went more or less like this: Them: when’s the test? Me: details are in the announcement page on Canvas Them: the… announcement? Me: yes, on Canvas Them: what announcement page? Me: on Canvas. Where all the other announcements are. Them: oh. The announcement page? Me: go and check Canvas. Them: ok *walks away* the announcement page?
Read this out, word for word, and very slowly in class: "According to access reports on the LMS, most of (you) never visited the fucking announcement I posted. I take pains to communicate with my students in writing so they can refer back to what I wrote instead of just going by their memory. Yet, (apparently) I'm the asshole because I didn't magically beam the shit into (your) fucking hollow skulls." Then just look up expectantly, waiting for the first in-class question that follows. Which is probably "will this be on the test"?
I think the current generation of Students has been so normalized to electronic communication, in all its many forms: texting, email, snapchat, instagram, youtube, twitter, TV, streaming, etc., that they only pay selective attention, now. They can't pay attention to EVERYTHING. And why would they prioritize academic communication? It's not fun. I liked things in the old days, with paper syllabi and no cell phones or internet. That's how I grew up, and I miss it.
My daughter is 15 and the way she communicates with her friends astounds me. Texting with the basic messenger app that all phones have - she only uses that for her Dad and me. We only found this out because she was having an odd issue where we would get her texts three times. When I asked her if her friends experienced the same thing she looked at me like what are you on about. She messages her friends through snapchat or other apps that require her to be online which seems stupid to me. They send voice recordings to each other a lot rather than texting. She also never checks her email which apparently is so normal that the school actually emails the parents to say your daughter has X assignment due in LMS, please remind her to check her email.
It is astounding to me how much parents are now involved in their children's High School academics. My mother just retired after decades of being a HS teacher, and listening to her, I could not fathom dealing with parents daily as a part of my job. When I was in HS, my parents had absolutely zero knowledge of my academic activities, except for quarterly grade reports. My family is weird - me and my siblings actually got paid cash on an ascending scale for good grades! Of course, that was before the ever present existence of e-mail / cell phones. Different times...
I'm in the camp of it's her job to remember assignments/tests. Luckily she is a good kid and doesn't really need the reminders, but my son I think will (he just started high school so another couple of years before he is at the real assessment stage). Our daughter gets paid too :) This is her first year of NCEA (the stupid NZ curriculum assessment for HS kids) and she gets $20 for every excellence (students get excellent, merit, achieved, or not achieved). Originally we were also paying for merits but she was meriting everything so had to adjust the bar for our wallets' sake.
Students are also not technically literate, and I have discovered that they just cope by not doing things. I am at an R1 and we use gmail. Pretty basic. I had to get into my gmail account during class and a student stopped me before I could navigate away, asking me "how do you get it to do that?" "That" was flags. And, it turns out, using labels. And using "snooze." The task list. Filters. And being able to to google calendar directly -- students were not using because they were getting to it via email and getting lost in the email first and then forgetting what they needed to do. They were juniors. It never occurred to them that email could be more then just a never ending page of stuff. And since it never crossed their minds, they never thought to ask how. Two weeks later I had student stop me to tell me for the first time she was able to keep on the important things in her email. It was very sad, but also very eye opening to me to realize it. I now also talk to my new colleagues because some of them don't really realize that email can be used effectively.
I TOTALLY understand as I’m going through the same thing in an online class. I put all due dates on the syllabus and on the course calendar. I also send two reminder emails each week. Yet, I still had students miss their midterm because they were confused about the due date.
Some most of my class is failing, simply because they don’t want to do the work or communicate with me. The ones that have reached out and interacted in my Q&A sessions are doing much much better than other squid not I started recording my lectures and use Edpuzzle to force them to go through it. In the lecture I was going on and said if any of you can tell me what this means without googling you will get a bonus on the next test. Soooooo I just (as in two hours ago) put the answer to to the bonus point question in the announcement. But they have to read the entire thing to get the answer. 🤷🏼♀️ I have to put everything in writing so that nobody can come at me with the “you didn’t tell us that “ My favorite was I posted announcement after our last exam saying if you’d like to go over this you could book here to schedule an office appointment with me if none of those times work contact me. I had at least 10 students ask when they could meet with me and I said did you click the link? “What link” I didn’t think a red bold highlighted link would be that difficult to see but what do I know? 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️
Listen. I did voice to text for that response. And I can’t help but laugh at some of those AutoCorrect. It makes me not want to change them so if it doesn’t make sense, please let me know. 😂
In my experience, this sort of thing varies by institution. The more expensive and prestigious, the spoiled and coddled.
You can shove a book in a horse's face but you can't make them read.
We use Blackboard and even when I make sure it emails them, they don’t see announcements. I am waiting for these platforms to have texts. But by that time something else will have come along.
I use remind to send texts and it’s amazing.
I will have to check it out. In small classes I have had students us GroupMe, which is nice for both me and the students. Thank you for the heads up. I am lecturer and teach 4 classes a semester.
I second Remind. Just be very careful not to send something with a wrong date because they will absolutely weaponize a mistake.
Same reason faculty don't read various emails and announcements. They're mostly boring.
I put in the syllabus that they’re responsible for all info posted to announcements, and they should check in to the course every day to make sure they don’t miss anything. Having said that, I also do try not to post anything critical there because many won’t check.
Then how do you communicate critical things?
I do my best to anticipate what they will need to know and communicate it in the Modules. What kinds of things are you communicating in the Announcements that are critical/time-sensitive? I wonder if email might be more effective.
I only use the announcements for things like where and when the exams are (these are scheduled for us as the semester progresses). Less critical things go in the weekly update on the course website, or very occasionally as an extra piece of news there. I tell my students that the course website is where they should be looking for information about the course.
I post assignments in the announcements each week. If I don’t put a hyperlink directly in the announcement, someone will email me to say they can’t find the assignments. It’s maddening.
I send a follow up announcement and email with the subject line "many of you seem to have reading comprehension problems" and I copy and paste the original message. At the bottom of it I add in caps for them to read the message 3 more times.
But they somehow see announcements saying that there’s an extension on an assignment. It’s kind of mind boggling to me. Folks, while what I’m seeing here is certainly distressing, I feel so much better knowing it’s not just my experience.
Students do not read emails anymore. I suspect many do the entire coursework on their phones. I know this because I had several complain that I didn’t post assignments and I think they were trying to read a syllabus assignment schedule on their phone and not as a Word or pdf document on a lap top screen.
Use emails, not your LMS’s “announcement” function — it just isn’t loud enough.
I enjoyed this. Sorry.
You can only do so much. At some point you have to say it is your responsibility to check announcements and read. You can't care more about their education than they do.
because its more efficient to wait until they need the information and then just ask you directly
The same students who won't read the announcements or your emails but will then email you asking about (something already posted) and get mad when you don't respond in 5 minutes. This is the redditification of life. They also won't read the prior reddit post but will ask a question to get a direct response.
Information overload. They get so many announcements from you, their other professors, and 15 different offices on campus, that they don't pay attention anymore. I recommend a tech-lite approach. I use the LMS only for submission of assignments. All announcements are made in class.
We're competing with TikTok and every other website that wants to send notifications. Students only have so much attention and are not taught how to modulate their attention between them.
We all understand ..does anyone have a clause in the syllabus that says something like if the information is in the syllabus or in the announcements the email will not be responded to?
I have recently concluded that the main reason for students doing poorly - both grad and undergrad - is that they don't read the directions.
I think part of it is students are using the apps to access the LMS and it's really just not set up the same way and they miss these announcements quite easily. Not an excuse, but I'm saying it's not as self-evident as people think. And I have to be very clear with my online students that they must access the LMS on a computer and not their phone because the phone app only gives them a bare minimum of what they need. You would be surprised the number of students who try to complete courses especially online only courses using a smartphone and not a computer. I didn't realize this until I started using a proctoring system that required a computer and realize so many of my students didn't actually have a computer and had no way to come to campus to use the computer labs. I like trying to be accessible but at that point I can't really help. And of course don't discount the number of students that actually get your messages but they pretend they don't and they lie about it trying to Garner sympathy because it has worked in their High School.
I agree it is painful. I post weekly announcements with all sorts of updates and hints. Nothing seems to work for the masses. For the few who take advantage it has a way of making it seem worthwhile, at least for a moment.
We had a storm come through and knock out power for basically the entire town this week. The university sends out alert that the campus is closed. I send out an announcement that class is cancelled. Later that day I still get emails asking if we have class that day...
With all the people complaining students don't check their email, I wonder how many do, but just not their school email? One thing I've discovered is that many students don't bother to check their school email, which of course is what our LMS uses, and I'll often get email from these students sent from their personal Gmail accounts. I tell them the first day of class that for privacy reasons I will only send email to their university email and only respond to emails sent from their university email account, but I always have a couple that didn't seem to get the memo. Is this common for others?
Considering the usual answers in this sub I'm amazed anyone in the States actually passes the courses much less graduates
[удалено]
That's what the announcements are for.
Ain’t nobody got time for that. Do you have a massive text list for classes? Some institutions do and you can send out the announcement as a text to the class.
From your personal phone? Because absolutely not.
My institution gives us a way to do it through the computer system, so the texts don't come from our phones, but I still don't choose to use it.
Is it a widely available software or does something that's specific to your school?
Ding ding, point to Able Parking. -41 to MountRose. The downvotes are sending me. Obviously not from my personal phone. Professors are bricks, like absolute bricks.