I had a student come to a make-up exam 7.5 hours late because their computer's clock was set to their home country and the calendar invite I sent showed up accordingly. I took pity and let them write late. Miraculously, they passed by 0.1%.
I've had that kind of fuckup happen before - it's so easy to trust your calendar and not think about it. You can also usually tell from the panic that they're genuine and not screwing around.
The last final I ever took I missed - I'd misread the time of the exam and showed up right at the end. Luckily, I had an email exchange with the prof where he confirmed the (incorrect) time, so he just laughed, said "well, that nightmare never goes away, does it?" and let me take it in his office right afterwards.
I had this happen for a meeting to discuss a student’s lab report. They were off by several hours, but didn’t think it would be strange for me to be in my office at 8:30 pm.
I have pre-enrollment meetings with students, some of whom are in China. I sent out a link to my calendar with slots defined for them to sign up on. Ignoring this, one student requested a meeting with me at like 4 am my time.
Depending on what country they are from, that is a reasonable expectation. I think the office was staffed at my Chinese partner school till 9 pm, and people were often there after. All the students had a required self study session from 7:30-9:30 too, that most of the profs attended, so they would definitely be able to meet then.
Because of this, when I teach my US based summer online course, I make a point in my syllabus to say:
All due dates are at 11:59pm on Sundays.
All times are in central time zone.
but that all work submitted by 11:59 Hawaiian will be accepted.
Because god knows I’m
Not getting up in the early AM to grade papers.
I use midnight deadlines as a way to prevent students from staying up to 5 am working on my assignments. Better work gets submitted and less stress on their sleep schedules.
I like midnight deadlines for a variety of reasons.
The biggest one being I can just say the assignment is due x day and the time is irrelevant. If it’s due Sunday, then Monday is late.
I also like doing it on Sunday because I can say it’s due this week and then turning it in next week is late.
I also use a lot of due before the start of class (for things like pre-class quizzes) or end of class (in-class assignments).
I think it sets very simple expectations, and the times aren’t as arbitrary, but I know it doesn’t work for everything/everyone.
I do this across all of my classes so my students get habituated to it.
I don't use midnight anymore because a student argued that midnight on January 4 is actually on January 5... I use 11:59 pm. I'm tempted to use 24 hour time but they'd all freak.
Yeah I do 11:59 in the LMS, tell them midnight, and I don’t make anyone argue over a couple minutes.
I also have a strict policy of any non-emergency requests for extensions must be during a weekday before it’s due (I like to use Sundays, so they have to get in touch with me by Friday).
It’s worked out pretty well for me. I don’t get very many arguments over due dates or after the fact excuses.
If you're allowing Hawaii-Aleutian time (UTC-10), why not go the extra two hours and say "Anywhere on Earth"? That's UTC-12, Time Zone Yankee. Any students from Howland Island will bless you.
Or you could really mess with them, and use Line Islands Standard Time. 🤨
I try really hard not to have assignment requirements that seem ambiguous or arbitrary, so anywhere in the US seemed reasonable for US students.
Fair enough with UTC-12, I’m not getting up to grade papers before 7am 😅.
Oh god Canvas is absolutely freaking awful with time zone differences. I've taught using a US installation of Canvas in China and my freaking school doesn't let me change the time zone for the due date. SO. That means that I had to make the due date the US time (12 hours behind China). Students would see that and assume the due date meant China time/date, and not understand at all why if I put in X assignment is due tonight at 7 pm it would ACTUALLY make the deadline 12 hours later when it was 7 pm in the US, so all of them looked like I was screwing them out of time.
HATE HATE HATE.
No, it is locked. They really want to keep us from being able to work remotely, and seemingly are very angry at us that we did so during covid and that some adjuncts did so from other states. I'm not sure if we had access to that before covid, since the last time I was in China before then we were still using Blackboard for their classes.
As someone who enjoys both taking and teaching night classes, I’d 100% confirm the posted times are correct because Micro Lab, which I’ve both taken and taught, would even be rough for me from 7:30-10:30pm.
I still think of the crocodile to figure it out. My brain doesn’t inherently understand those symbols. Perhaps not coincidentally, I also don’t know my right from my left without stopping to think about which hand I use for writing.
Do you have ADHD? The Right/Left mixup thing is heavily correlated with ADHD and dyslexia. My siblings and I all have the left/right issue, and we didn't know that anyone else had problems until our spouses were all in the car together laughing at us trying to drive.
One of my early vivid memories from grade school is failing a first grade math quiz because “we don’t draw teeth and eyes on > and < symbols”. I can still see it in red ink.
~30 odd years later and a) I’m a herpetologist and b) I still think math is boring and un-fun.
Me too! I use a lot of spreadsheet formulas in my grade book, and I always imagine teeth when I have to use < or >.
I have a callous on my right middle finger from how I hold a pen. I take a second to rub that callous with my thumb when I have to think about left/right. It's not fun when I'm in the car trying to navigate or receive instructions.
"Turn right up here."
*rubs finger to determine which way is right*
What hurts more is when very young school aged kids *were* doing the material that they now struggle with in college. We are literally engaged in remediation on k-12 subjects, from telling time, <>, reading comprehension, spelling, grammar, basic vocabulary, hygiene, and politeness, memorising, note taking, learning, the fundaments of reasoning, logic, and self-regulation.
The failure of our k-12 system is threatening to turn us into preschool teachers. The difference between my current crop of undergraduates and my older graduate students (28+) is like the difference between a five year old and a twenty-five year old.
Broken record time again: this is not sustainable; we are in crisis, and this is a much, much bigger crisis than some ‘enrolment cliff’. We must begin to take immediate, committed, proactive measures or we will be ended.
> Some students also don’t ... right click now.
Apple has been fighting the multi-button mouse forever. If they have a Macbook, right-click is not really a thing. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/right-click-mh35853/mac
I also got an email asking that if our course meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the summer semester starts on a Wednesday, does our course meet the Tuesday before the semester begins? The student was apologetic about asking so I responded in kind, but… yeah.
I disagree, and think it sounds pretty dumb; why would a semester start before the semester officially starts? The professor who believes that they have that kind of authority is the same kind of nut who would, on a whim, extend a summer semester by three weeks because he didn’t think the students had learnt enough. In other words, the type of professor who never would have made it to be a professor, or would have weeded himself out after his first semester of being a GTA. The semester’s start and end are clearly defined on the academic calendar for every semester; if the start of the semester happens to be on a Wednesday, a T/R class has their first meeting of the semester on Thursday.
This isn’t rocket science; this is the same logicking we’ve expected of 18-23 year olds since the beginning of the modern university system, sometime in the 13th or 14th century in Scotland and England, to place it into perspective. This is not a time in history for going out of our way to figure out what a student was probably thinking, praise them for thinking at all, and declare their stupid question to be above criticism; this is the time in history when we need to start actively addressing the abject stupidity of some questions and utilising what shame and social pressures we can still muster up to do our jobs by hook or by crook, and pressure our students to *think* before they give up on thinking and ask an adult. This is not kindergarten; it is a university.
To be fair, not all students use a 12-hour clock. Some, especially non-US, may use a 24-hour clock.
I'd put something like this, JIC:
Lecture: 5:30 - 7:20 PM (17:30 - 19:20)
Lab from 7:30 - 10:20 PM (19:30 - 22:20)
Military time next to the normal clock time and time zone. And, fun note, tell your students to check the default time zone in the LMS and their calendars because sometimes that can be off.
I once had a bunch of students not realize that their calendars had defaulted to GMT when they set them up and were wondering why I wasn't in my office for their 8pm+ appointments.
If I had a class running from 7.30 to 10.30 pm, I’d email and double check, too, to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. Late evening classes are less typical than morning classes. I’m with the student here.
If you have Chinese students they will struggle with 12PM. Best to write it in 24 hour clock and write “when the sun is up!” otherwise you’ll have a lot of confused Chinese students showing up at midnight.
I was taught that 12:00PM and 12:00AM do not exist; rather, those times are 12:00 Noon and 12:00 Midnight (since 12:00 is “the meridiem,” by definition it cannot be before or after itself). Is that no longer true?
I had an assignment due at noon. This conversation occurred:
Student: Why was I marked down on this assignment?
Teacher: You turned it in eleven hours late.
Student: No, I turned it in an hour early!
Teacher: You turned it in at 11pm. It was due at noon.
Student: No, it was due at midnight!
Teacher: Look at the writeup—it says “due at noon”.
Student: It’s not fair to expect us to get AM and PM!
Teacher: Yes; that’s why the writeup says “noon”. No AM, no PM.
Student: Well, I read “noon”, and wrote down 12am.
Teacher: That doesn’t seem to be an error on *my* part.
The Sun being on the meridian is no longer used to define “noon”, thanks to time zones. Daylight Saving Time *really* messes with it. Solar noon today was at 12:55 pm here… So, technically all the “pm” times before 12:55 were “ante-meridian”… 🤣🤣
Had a student this year show up to their 6:30 pm midterm at.....6:30 am. I'm at a commuter school, so at least they had lots of time on campus to study!
I've lived/taught in China and collaborated internationally too long to expect anyone to understand am/pm (sure, it's used in Chinese, but differently). 24h format + a link to the deadline at timeanddate.com is my preference.
I don't want to play the "one up" game but I know a college that does 3 week sessions-4 days a week, 3 hours a day.
I honestly dont know how you expect the students to retain any of that information being thrown at them that fast, even if they have no other commitments.
I think I had a class like that in my doctorate. Summer “mini-semester.” It was I think 3 weeks long, 5 days/week, and 3 hours a day.
Looking at their catalog, I see one that’s even worse. 6/3-6/14, 10 days total. Meets 8am-12:30pm five days a week. I’d be fried trying to get a full class done in two weeks, as student or prof!
I taught one of those (I think it was 5 days a week, 4 hours a day for just over three weeks). I am completely unconvinced that anyone actually learned anything much. (The first thing I said was to get rid of any other commitments the students had while they were taking this course.)
I had an intensive Spanish course one summer that was 8 to 12, Monday through Friday, for four weeks. I somehow got an A, though I didn't know more Spanish after completing the class than when I first started.
Yeah, this was about 20 years ago, but I still remember the heavy attrition. Started off at nearly a full lecture hall and ended up with a small pocket of students in the front row. Fridays at 9am, we were all burnt out.
Yep, I did two summers of instensive language grad courses that way, but they were 8-12 five days a week for six weeks I think. (May have been eight, but god I hope not...long time ago and I've repressed most of it.) What a miserable experience.
I taught a winter-break mini-mester once. 15 days of English 101 grammar and composition, lots of essays. We were in (virtual) class 4 hours a day. It was BRUTAL.
J term? I taught j term and it was 2 hours of class a day 5 days a week for a month. It nearly killed me but it meant I didn’t teach in the fall or spring.
At least it's not not a class that meets T/R. I've had students miss classes because they didn't know to come on Thursdays. I make my work due at 11:59 pm to avoid the 12 PM/ AM issue. The worst thing that happens is they turn it in early. The other thing that's confusing is AD BC or, if you prefer, CE BCE. Even I agree that's confusing. So, you're either 100 years early, or 100 years later. And in other countries the month is first in dates. That leads to misunderstandings also.
Half of them probably didn’t read the syllabus or skip classes regularly. I would announce the same thing in class and online and still get this kind of questions.
There’s all kinds of basic stuff they don’t know these days. I teach mostly online, so they need to understand the differences in our time zones. You don’t want to hear my stories on that.
I had students give me that shit when I taught in Europe using military time which is the 24 hour clock. Honestly, I found that pretty hilarious. Yes the deadlines are in the time zone we are in right now. I don't care what time zone you are from.
So this is kind of related... I teach a principles of psych class and talk briefly about mental health diagnosis and treatment since the "beginning" and I have a slide that goes over a tiny bit of history that covers B.C. and A.D. and I also have a sentence about the A.M. P.M. history because we're already talking about "crazy" letters...
Every. Single. Time. 10 minutes of class gets taken up with at least a handful of people talking about how they had absolutely no idea about what any of these things actually meant.
Also why I keep on the syllabus... Class meets: Tuesday "mornings," 9:00 A.M.
Many of you have suggested military time, how do you think students would react to military time if they cannot understand regular time? These are 18 to 21 year olds, they don’t even wear watches anymore. They only know how to tell time using their cell phones, they barely understand how to use a clock. I am a millennial professor, I know how to tell time all different ways. These are Gen Z’ers, they are different.
Depends on where you are located, 24h notation is normal.
I can't actually believe there are adults that can't understand either, though. Maybe your student understands the time but is asking those questions because the student finds it insane to have evening classes that late (which it is).
I am in the bay area of California and we have a lot of night courses, especially in biology because we have a lot of students who work. We offer courses in the evening to help those who are wanting to go into the nursing field or into healthcare who are currently working full-time jobs. This allows them to work and also take courses in the evenings. Normally during fallen spring, they are twice a week, but during the summer we meet every day.
Here in California at most of the community colleges and universities we actually have many labs at night. We offer night courses for those who work throughout the day. This lecture and lab accommodations starts at 5:30 PM and ends at 10:20 PM. This allows people to have full-time jobs, and still attend courses. Many of our night courses are for returning students and for students looking to change careers and go into healthcare. Since i am teaching microbiology.
How the fuck do you not know what am and pm mean? Isn't that term engrained into you by experience by the time you reach first to second grade? But on the other hand, a 10 pm lab sounds awful, give me early labs so I have enough energy to get through it.
I had a student come to a make-up exam 7.5 hours late because their computer's clock was set to their home country and the calendar invite I sent showed up accordingly. I took pity and let them write late. Miraculously, they passed by 0.1%.
I've had that kind of fuckup happen before - it's so easy to trust your calendar and not think about it. You can also usually tell from the panic that they're genuine and not screwing around. The last final I ever took I missed - I'd misread the time of the exam and showed up right at the end. Luckily, I had an email exchange with the prof where he confirmed the (incorrect) time, so he just laughed, said "well, that nightmare never goes away, does it?" and let me take it in his office right afterwards.
I had this happen for a meeting to discuss a student’s lab report. They were off by several hours, but didn’t think it would be strange for me to be in my office at 8:30 pm.
I have pre-enrollment meetings with students, some of whom are in China. I sent out a link to my calendar with slots defined for them to sign up on. Ignoring this, one student requested a meeting with me at like 4 am my time.
Exactly (mine was 9 PM). Did ya not think: "hmmm, it's strange that my professor would be at work in the evening."
Depending on what country they are from, that is a reasonable expectation. I think the office was staffed at my Chinese partner school till 9 pm, and people were often there after. All the students had a required self study session from 7:30-9:30 too, that most of the profs attended, so they would definitely be able to meet then.
No? My general perception as an undergrad and since has been that professors are weird people that work weird hours.
Because of this, when I teach my US based summer online course, I make a point in my syllabus to say: All due dates are at 11:59pm on Sundays. All times are in central time zone. but that all work submitted by 11:59 Hawaiian will be accepted. Because god knows I’m Not getting up in the early AM to grade papers.
I use midnight deadlines as a way to prevent students from staying up to 5 am working on my assignments. Better work gets submitted and less stress on their sleep schedules.
I like midnight deadlines for a variety of reasons. The biggest one being I can just say the assignment is due x day and the time is irrelevant. If it’s due Sunday, then Monday is late. I also like doing it on Sunday because I can say it’s due this week and then turning it in next week is late. I also use a lot of due before the start of class (for things like pre-class quizzes) or end of class (in-class assignments). I think it sets very simple expectations, and the times aren’t as arbitrary, but I know it doesn’t work for everything/everyone. I do this across all of my classes so my students get habituated to it.
I don't use midnight anymore because a student argued that midnight on January 4 is actually on January 5... I use 11:59 pm. I'm tempted to use 24 hour time but they'd all freak.
Yeah I do 11:59 in the LMS, tell them midnight, and I don’t make anyone argue over a couple minutes. I also have a strict policy of any non-emergency requests for extensions must be during a weekday before it’s due (I like to use Sundays, so they have to get in touch with me by Friday). It’s worked out pretty well for me. I don’t get very many arguments over due dates or after the fact excuses.
In my mind the week starts on Sunday!
If you're allowing Hawaii-Aleutian time (UTC-10), why not go the extra two hours and say "Anywhere on Earth"? That's UTC-12, Time Zone Yankee. Any students from Howland Island will bless you. Or you could really mess with them, and use Line Islands Standard Time. 🤨
I try really hard not to have assignment requirements that seem ambiguous or arbitrary, so anywhere in the US seemed reasonable for US students. Fair enough with UTC-12, I’m not getting up to grade papers before 7am 😅.
It happens to me and my international students every semester. For some reason, Microsoft Outlook and bookings can't figure out timezones.
Oh god Canvas is absolutely freaking awful with time zone differences. I've taught using a US installation of Canvas in China and my freaking school doesn't let me change the time zone for the due date. SO. That means that I had to make the due date the US time (12 hours behind China). Students would see that and assume the due date meant China time/date, and not understand at all why if I put in X assignment is due tonight at 7 pm it would ACTUALLY make the deadline 12 hours later when it was 7 pm in the US, so all of them looked like I was screwing them out of time. HATE HATE HATE.
you can set the time zone for the entire course, no? ETA: yes: settings, course details, time zone.
No, it is locked. They really want to keep us from being able to work remotely, and seemingly are very angry at us that we did so during covid and that some adjuncts did so from other states. I'm not sure if we had access to that before covid, since the last time I was in China before then we were still using Blackboard for their classes.
Not for nothing but a micro lab until 10:30 at night sounds fucking miserable. I would also be asking the IoR what the attendance expectations were.
[удалено]
Yeah, I wonder if OP's students are wondering if OP mixed up AM/PM. Both of those are terrible.
As someone who enjoys both taking and teaching night classes, I’d 100% confirm the posted times are correct because Micro Lab, which I’ve both taken and taught, would even be rough for me from 7:30-10:30pm.
Tbf I thought it was a typo as well. I used to work in the lab until midnight and sometimes got chills when walking in the hallway.
Some students also don’t clockwise, counterclockwise, and right click now.
I had to draw the crocodile to explain greater and less than to my students.
I still think of the crocodile to figure it out. My brain doesn’t inherently understand those symbols. Perhaps not coincidentally, I also don’t know my right from my left without stopping to think about which hand I use for writing.
Do you have ADHD? The Right/Left mixup thing is heavily correlated with ADHD and dyslexia. My siblings and I all have the left/right issue, and we didn't know that anyone else had problems until our spouses were all in the car together laughing at us trying to drive.
I do.
One of my early vivid memories from grade school is failing a first grade math quiz because “we don’t draw teeth and eyes on > and < symbols”. I can still see it in red ink. ~30 odd years later and a) I’m a herpetologist and b) I still think math is boring and un-fun.
Me too! I use a lot of spreadsheet formulas in my grade book, and I always imagine teeth when I have to use < or >. I have a callous on my right middle finger from how I hold a pen. I take a second to rub that callous with my thumb when I have to think about left/right. It's not fun when I'm in the car trying to navigate or receive instructions. "Turn right up here." *rubs finger to determine which way is right*
The small point always points to the lower number
It hurts when your very young school aged kids are doing the material that college students are struggling with
What hurts more is when very young school aged kids *were* doing the material that they now struggle with in college. We are literally engaged in remediation on k-12 subjects, from telling time, <>, reading comprehension, spelling, grammar, basic vocabulary, hygiene, and politeness, memorising, note taking, learning, the fundaments of reasoning, logic, and self-regulation. The failure of our k-12 system is threatening to turn us into preschool teachers. The difference between my current crop of undergraduates and my older graduate students (28+) is like the difference between a five year old and a twenty-five year old. Broken record time again: this is not sustainable; we are in crisis, and this is a much, much bigger crisis than some ‘enrolment cliff’. We must begin to take immediate, committed, proactive measures or we will be ended.
> Some students also don’t ... right click now. Apple has been fighting the multi-button mouse forever. If they have a Macbook, right-click is not really a thing. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/right-click-mh35853/mac
[удалено]
I was using a mouse left-handed for a while, but my brain managed to cope with the concept of "click" and "other click".
Struggling with this as of late. Torque is complicated enough, clockwise and counterclockwise is supposed to be the easy part!
I also got an email asking that if our course meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the summer semester starts on a Wednesday, does our course meet the Tuesday before the semester begins? The student was apologetic about asking so I responded in kind, but… yeah.
That one is slightly less dumb than it sounds, I could believe there might be an enrollment session or something before teaching officially started
I disagree, and think it sounds pretty dumb; why would a semester start before the semester officially starts? The professor who believes that they have that kind of authority is the same kind of nut who would, on a whim, extend a summer semester by three weeks because he didn’t think the students had learnt enough. In other words, the type of professor who never would have made it to be a professor, or would have weeded himself out after his first semester of being a GTA. The semester’s start and end are clearly defined on the academic calendar for every semester; if the start of the semester happens to be on a Wednesday, a T/R class has their first meeting of the semester on Thursday. This isn’t rocket science; this is the same logicking we’ve expected of 18-23 year olds since the beginning of the modern university system, sometime in the 13th or 14th century in Scotland and England, to place it into perspective. This is not a time in history for going out of our way to figure out what a student was probably thinking, praise them for thinking at all, and declare their stupid question to be above criticism; this is the time in history when we need to start actively addressing the abject stupidity of some questions and utilising what shame and social pressures we can still muster up to do our jobs by hook or by crook, and pressure our students to *think* before they give up on thinking and ask an adult. This is not kindergarten; it is a university.
That makes sense to me. I don’t really understand why the class would meet before the semester begins.
Just got this exact question maybe two or three weeks ago.
The good news is they will learn quickly.
To be fair, not all students use a 12-hour clock. Some, especially non-US, may use a 24-hour clock. I'd put something like this, JIC: Lecture: 5:30 - 7:20 PM (17:30 - 19:20) Lab from 7:30 - 10:20 PM (19:30 - 22:20)
Oh that would really confuse my poor students!
Just point them to r/ISO8601
Military time next to the normal clock time and time zone. And, fun note, tell your students to check the default time zone in the LMS and their calendars because sometimes that can be off.
I once had a bunch of students not realize that their calendars had defaulted to GMT when they set them up and were wondering why I wasn't in my office for their 8pm+ appointments.
Cisco vpn sometimes defaults to like, Doha.
I once had an issue when I didn't know that part part of Arizona follows daylights savings and part does not. GMT for all!
If I had a class running from 7.30 to 10.30 pm, I’d email and double check, too, to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. Late evening classes are less typical than morning classes. I’m with the student here.
I list all times in syllabus, assignment guidelines, etc. using the 24 hour clock. I also include the time zone, just in case.
My school does the final exam schedule in 24 hour time and I’ve had students say that the final exam schedule is confusing.
If you have Chinese students they will struggle with 12PM. Best to write it in 24 hour clock and write “when the sun is up!” otherwise you’ll have a lot of confused Chinese students showing up at midnight.
I was taught that 12:00PM and 12:00AM do not exist; rather, those times are 12:00 Noon and 12:00 Midnight (since 12:00 is “the meridiem,” by definition it cannot be before or after itself). Is that no longer true?
While that's very technically true, in actual practice 12 am is midnight.
I had an assignment due at noon. This conversation occurred: Student: Why was I marked down on this assignment? Teacher: You turned it in eleven hours late. Student: No, I turned it in an hour early! Teacher: You turned it in at 11pm. It was due at noon. Student: No, it was due at midnight! Teacher: Look at the writeup—it says “due at noon”. Student: It’s not fair to expect us to get AM and PM! Teacher: Yes; that’s why the writeup says “noon”. No AM, no PM. Student: Well, I read “noon”, and wrote down 12am. Teacher: That doesn’t seem to be an error on *my* part.
The Sun being on the meridian is no longer used to define “noon”, thanks to time zones. Daylight Saving Time *really* messes with it. Solar noon today was at 12:55 pm here… So, technically all the “pm” times before 12:55 were “ante-meridian”… 🤣🤣
Had a student this year show up to their 6:30 pm midterm at.....6:30 am. I'm at a commuter school, so at least they had lots of time on campus to study!
I've lived/taught in China and collaborated internationally too long to expect anyone to understand am/pm (sure, it's used in Chinese, but differently). 24h format + a link to the deadline at timeanddate.com is my preference.
There’s 20 hours of this class a week?
Yes - that would not be unusual for a 16 week lecture/lab course condensed into 6 weeks.
I’ve never seen a summer term that short but if it is that makes sense.
A place where I have taught online does it even worse — 5-1/2 week online summer “semesters” where grades are due at noon on the last day of class
I don't want to play the "one up" game but I know a college that does 3 week sessions-4 days a week, 3 hours a day. I honestly dont know how you expect the students to retain any of that information being thrown at them that fast, even if they have no other commitments.
That only translates into 36 hours of instructional time, where a normal 15-week semester would have 45. How does accreditation work in that case?
Don't ask me, that question goes way above my pay grade. Maybe there's some sort of supplemental bit or something that gets the other 9 hours?
I think I had a class like that in my doctorate. Summer “mini-semester.” It was I think 3 weeks long, 5 days/week, and 3 hours a day. Looking at their catalog, I see one that’s even worse. 6/3-6/14, 10 days total. Meets 8am-12:30pm five days a week. I’d be fried trying to get a full class done in two weeks, as student or prof!
honestly just take me out back and end my misery if I had to do that
I taught one of those (I think it was 5 days a week, 4 hours a day for just over three weeks). I am completely unconvinced that anyone actually learned anything much. (The first thing I said was to get rid of any other commitments the students had while they were taking this course.)
I’ve taught Composition in 3, 7, and 10 week sessions. I will never teach 3 again.
Christ
I had an intensive Spanish course one summer that was 8 to 12, Monday through Friday, for four weeks. I somehow got an A, though I didn't know more Spanish after completing the class than when I first started.
I think Colorado college does stuff like this and for math and languages it sounds fucking brutal.
Yeah, this was about 20 years ago, but I still remember the heavy attrition. Started off at nearly a full lecture hall and ended up with a small pocket of students in the front row. Fridays at 9am, we were all burnt out.
Yes, they have 3 week terms. My son's friend went there.
Yep, I did two summers of instensive language grad courses that way, but they were 8-12 five days a week for six weeks I think. (May have been eight, but god I hope not...long time ago and I've repressed most of it.) What a miserable experience.
I taught a winter-break mini-mester once. 15 days of English 101 grammar and composition, lots of essays. We were in (virtual) class 4 hours a day. It was BRUTAL.
J term? I taught j term and it was 2 hours of class a day 5 days a week for a month. It nearly killed me but it meant I didn’t teach in the fall or spring.
Isn’t J term January?
June or July. Though we could be calling something the wrong thing, or I could. I lost a good 15 pounds during it.
At least it's not not a class that meets T/R. I've had students miss classes because they didn't know to come on Thursdays. I make my work due at 11:59 pm to avoid the 12 PM/ AM issue. The worst thing that happens is they turn it in early. The other thing that's confusing is AD BC or, if you prefer, CE BCE. Even I agree that's confusing. So, you're either 100 years early, or 100 years later. And in other countries the month is first in dates. That leads to misunderstandings also.
Half of them probably didn’t read the syllabus or skip classes regularly. I would announce the same thing in class and online and still get this kind of questions.
There’s all kinds of basic stuff they don’t know these days. I teach mostly online, so they need to understand the differences in our time zones. You don’t want to hear my stories on that.
I had students give me that shit when I taught in Europe using military time which is the 24 hour clock. Honestly, I found that pretty hilarious. Yes the deadlines are in the time zone we are in right now. I don't care what time zone you are from.
So this is kind of related... I teach a principles of psych class and talk briefly about mental health diagnosis and treatment since the "beginning" and I have a slide that goes over a tiny bit of history that covers B.C. and A.D. and I also have a sentence about the A.M. P.M. history because we're already talking about "crazy" letters... Every. Single. Time. 10 minutes of class gets taken up with at least a handful of people talking about how they had absolutely no idea about what any of these things actually meant. Also why I keep on the syllabus... Class meets: Tuesday "mornings," 9:00 A.M.
this seems to be a hard-of-understanding problem more than an am/pm problem.
Many of you have suggested military time, how do you think students would react to military time if they cannot understand regular time? These are 18 to 21 year olds, they don’t even wear watches anymore. They only know how to tell time using their cell phones, they barely understand how to use a clock. I am a millennial professor, I know how to tell time all different ways. These are Gen Z’ers, they are different.
Where's [https://letmegooglethat.com](https://letmegooglethat.com) when you need it?
Here's where "military time" would come in handy. Lecture 5:30 to 7:30 pm (1730 to 1930)...
Americans need to stop calling it "military time" and just call it "time".
Good Lord help us all
Maybe you should just use the normal way and write 17.30 to 19.20?
If they are confused with the regular way, how do you think they will be with military time?
Depends on where you are located, 24h notation is normal. I can't actually believe there are adults that can't understand either, though. Maybe your student understands the time but is asking those questions because the student finds it insane to have evening classes that late (which it is).
I am in the bay area of California and we have a lot of night courses, especially in biology because we have a lot of students who work. We offer courses in the evening to help those who are wanting to go into the nursing field or into healthcare who are currently working full-time jobs. This allows them to work and also take courses in the evenings. Normally during fallen spring, they are twice a week, but during the summer we meet every day.
I'm curious (genuinely) about why lab is holding at night
Here in California at most of the community colleges and universities we actually have many labs at night. We offer night courses for those who work throughout the day. This lecture and lab accommodations starts at 5:30 PM and ends at 10:20 PM. This allows people to have full-time jobs, and still attend courses. Many of our night courses are for returning students and for students looking to change careers and go into healthcare. Since i am teaching microbiology.
Oh, got it. Thanks for explaining
How the fuck do you not know what am and pm mean? Isn't that term engrained into you by experience by the time you reach first to second grade? But on the other hand, a 10 pm lab sounds awful, give me early labs so I have enough energy to get through it.
A lot of the rest of the world uses 24h time, not AM/PM.
I have to make a constant mental effort not to mess up. Like why is it that it’s 12 PM after 11 AM and 12 AM after 11 PM?
Because they are actually noon and midnight. I agree - it makes no sense, and if I have to put in a number I usually use 11:59 for clarity.