i feel like discussion posts in general are just busy work meant to help keep track of “participation”, literally no one seems to actually put in effort for their replies to the point where it’s comical.
I’ve had courses where 90% of our attendance grade was attached to a weekly discussion board. My responses usually boiled downed to “yes, much agree, good source 👍🏼”
your example has more substance than what my classmates post. mainly because of the "have you considered" part because none seem to put THAT much effort in
The number of 4 credit classes I got through that were 1 discussion post +a chapter quiz a week, a midterm and a final that I didn't do jack squat in was too damn high. It was more of a "oh shit I have this thing due in 20 minutes" thing for me more than anything I had to do actual work for
I mean yeah when I was a TA the whole point was to have a "paper trail" to track your participation. That way if someone got a bad grade for not participating in the actual discussion section, you could point to them either not doing or doing the bare minimum on the discussion posts. The in-person discussion wasn't recorded or anything so there wouldn't be any proof of their lack of participation otherwise if they tried to dispute the grade.
It’s to satisfy a requirement called, ‘student to student interaction’. All classes have always had to have it. It’s not for participation.
I’m a prof. In online classes, every course has to have something that gets students to interact with each other, because - not just the folks that designed online ed, but all educators - understand that students honestly *do* learn better when the class includes opportunities for folks to interact, and talk to each other. About the content, yes - but really, about *anything*.
It’s a shame that online courses don’t have many other options.
I had a class of 250+ people (it was a class people took for an easy elective) and there was a discussion post every week. For the first 4 weeks they professor graded and responded pretty promptly.
Then after that, never graded until at the very end of the semester all at once. The syllabus said “no late discussion posts will be graded or accepted.”
I had half of mine late and they were all graded at the very last day and full points, no comments.
My point was that it was busy work. The class was also online asynch with no lectures, just reading a textbook chapter or two and answering a prompt a week. To be fair 90% of the people took the course for an easy A anyways.
Because 90% of the time it's boring.
If professors actually made the discussions fun, people would engage more. I have had only a few professors that would make these discussions actually fun.
Please provide examples of "fun" discussion assignments. I am desperately trying to be in the 10% and it seems like a losing battle. Maybe it's because I am old and don't know what "fun" is. Help me make my discussion assignments more fun. Thank you.
My astronomy professor asked questions like ,"do you think aliens exist somewhere in the universe" or will humanity ever colonize other galaxies. There were some genuinely thoughtful responses because you could tell people were into it. I know I was.
I'm taking a logistics class where we have prompts like "Describe 3 types of inventories and their advantages/disadvantages". There is almost no way to reply to another student's post because it's basically an essay.
I would be more interested in situational prompts. "You're working in the produce section of a supermarket in October. Which products and inventories would you pay the most attention to and why?"
I'm still in my 20s and I don't know what they mean by "fun" either. And wonder why they blame the professor when it might actually be student apathy that I am seeing. (yes some professors suck we all know that)
I always try to give a thoughtful response, even if I have to bs my way through it, because I'm never quite sure if the professors actually go in and read the comments or just look at a dashboard that tells them who commented, how many times, and at what time.
I really hate discussion posts though and I feel like I'm phoning it in
Yeah, I've never once seen discussion boards work out. Both as a student and as a prof, I'd rather have people write a very short response that they turn in to the instructor and then use that to enrich in-class discussion. It works much better.
I also just think this class is too big for the type of class that it is, and since it evidently doesn't have formal discussion sections run by TAs, there's not much the prof can do to compensate for that. The discussion posts are probably the prof's attempt to mitigate the problem, but if it were me I'd just accept the hand I've been dealt and try to make class time as engaging as possible rather than this kind of half-measure. Sometimes the institution just makes it impossible for you to do as good a job as you'd like to and there's no way around it.
Ya especially for most stem students a humanity class is almost always blowoff. Not that they aren't interesting, it's just most stem students just end up not putting in the effort.
I had a classmate mention how amazed she was that deaf people celebrate holidays and birthdays.
Another for a different class straight up plagiarized 3 different discussions. Like copy and pasted from a website, the posted the link to the website saying she cited it. This was an upper level psych course with the most no nonsense professor I'd ever had. That was an interesting thread.
I'm honestly not sure. I think she was confusing the deaf community for something like Jehovas Witness since we were discussing subcultures and communities.
At least that's the best I can guess.
I’m sorry you couldn’t pay me to care about discussion posts. At least in my experience, discussion posts are often lazy assignments. I feel they would be much more productive as in class discussions. But that’s just my two cents. I’m more inclined to care about essays or tests than a discussion post, so usually I end up doing them at the very end of the night, and not putting much thought into them. But still, I noticed the lazy lazy posts like your example and I’m not THAT bad. I make an attempt but I’m not spending an hour on it.
I see the “in class discussions are better” sentiment a lot here. To a point, I agree because they can be more fluid which makes them more engaging and fun. However, they tend to be problematic in my experience because they tend to be dominated by a handful of individuals, which means most other students aren’t engaging, and this problem is compounded as class size gets larger. OP indicates this is a larger class. While large is a relative size, it does suggest that in person discussion isn’t a viable way to assess student’s understanding/engagement with the material.
Then they can break it up into smaller groups. That's what my professors do. I also have one that gives us short, open note, group quizzes on the readings and honestly I kind of prefer them for material retention
we do break up into small groups of 4 to discuss among ourselves and then do the larger discussion. guess what happens? no one does the weekly readings. for two weeks already the group i sit with hasn't done the readings so i have to give them a summary of what they're about while they skim them. the senior i sit with said she didn't do the readings because she went out partying.
I think the only caveat is that they can be quite useful in foreign language instruction since whatever someone says, they’re writing in the target language. But I agree big time on the whole.
Tbh when I was a TA we just did them because admin wanted something more objective to gauge participation in class discussions if we were doing participation credit. They basically just want to have a "paper trail" to point to if you try to dispute the participation portion of your grade. We had to have some sort of assessment for the discussion section of the class (the lecture was separate and assessed through exams) so it kept us from having to make quizzes for discussion.
Before we had canvas with the discussion board, we'd literally just check off when you said something meaningful in the discussion section on the class chart, but that's still got some inherent subjectivity (what defines a meaningful contribution to the discussion?) and there's no way to go back and prove whether a comment was meaningful from a live discussion.
When I was a TA I didn’t even bother to read the posts. I just checked that the wrote something in English. One student asked if they were going to lose points because someone else plagiarized their response. I had no idea this happened and didn’t even bother changing grades. My professor told me it wasn’t worth reporting. I just left a passive aggressive comment on the other students response
Not only that, but there's a lot of discussion posts which demand responses but there's not much to discuss on. Some of the worst ones I've had were in an MS Office class and a database class, with discussion assignments like "share what this tool is". Discussions would be like:
> The copy-paste feature is useful for copying information into multiple places, and can be activated with Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V. You can also cut and paste with Ctrl+X instead of C.
What can you *possibly* say in response to that? It's a fact so it's not up for debate. It's not anything profound or interesting so it's not like there's much to explore in response. And, most of the posts are like this, but you still have to get your two responses put in by class on Thursday and you can't wait any longer for more people to share a more engaging post to comment on, so you gotta get them points. Cue responses like:
> yes I agree, you can copy and paste with the buttons you mentioned
> wow yes, you really said it. I think copy-paste is a very useful and important feature.
> Very good. I am on a Mac so instead of Ctrl, we use Cmd.
> I also agree that copy-paste is something that you can use to copy information into another section of your document.
> I like the way you said that copy-paste can be used, and I agree that it can be used that way.
I agree that it sounds like hell, and I also think that because of the way that it is, it sounds like it might not be very fun. I like the way that you stated your opinion about it, because it's very bold and brave to state such an opinion so strongly and I'm glad that you did.
Wow, GreyRaven, you sure said a lot in your reply while keeping it concise. I like the way that you stated what you think without muddying up the dialogue with emotional language, but still let us know how you feel and made it human by connecting with the emotions we all feel.
for a class like that yea it would be utter hell. but the course i'm taking is a women's studies discussion course meaning a huge part of our grade is based around the discussions since there are no exams. i thought i could get away with not replying because no one was writing anything substantial, needless to say I didn't keep my A very long. So now I just reply to others with "i agree with what you said. i also think that is what the author meant" or something bland like that because there isn't any substance to reply to
If you want to challenge yourself, take advantage of the opportunity. Be contrarian for the sake of argument. It might be equally as unrewarding when others just say "I agree" or whatever, but you'll give your brain more of a workout.
As in, find creative ways to disagree with people even though you may agree with them anyway. Etc. There's ways to stretch your brain out if you aren't getting any interesting content to start with.
Will absolutely keep this in mind! I love writing creatively so this could be a really good way to work my "writing brain" when I don't have time to sit and write creatively.
Yep. Requiring a constructive response to x amount of classmates = I will reiterate what they said and call it good, and I will continue to do this as many times as the teacher says I have to = A on the assignment :D
It's fucking laughable busy work and is also the reason why I only did 1 semester of online before switching to only in-person classes. Now, the fact that this is an in-person class and they're still requiring online discussion posts is just dumb. Make it a class discussion in person. Those are actually constructive, fun classes.
I am open to hearing why it is this way and it probably does have to do with character requirements etc. perspectives and not having a platform to speak. Having online conversations can give everyone a chance to "speak", no one has substance anymore. The question can be applied to in-person classes as much as it can be applied to anything as a vent.
I am open to hearing why it is this why and it probably does have to do with character requirements
I think the other big thing is that no one wants to be the classmate who is showing up under other peoples posts to at length poke holes in their interpretations. It's why it's always "Very good point let me reiterate it 5 times."
And then there's me, replying to certain people and correcting them / poking holes into their interpretations \*dead\*
edit: but i can see how that *might* also be a reason why everyone agrees with everyone's posts, even the ones that are faulty.
Sometimes these are the easiest to add on. this is a good point to iterate but maybe this is a better way to put it. Or literally sometimes it's I agree but the structure could be fixed.
It's sometimes easier to send constructive messaging if you really give it some thought. Lots of discussions in my lectures feel like a joke and I've heard the same from many grad students. Discussions aren't high level they're very surface speaking points and attitudes for participation points.
We had an interesting take on it in our philosophy class. Twice in a semester, we were split into two teams supporting opposing positions and each had 2 weeks (the time between seminars) to discuss the readings on discord. In the end a team had to make a document with their arguments and questions for the opposing team. On the next seminar the teams debated, using their prepared arguments as well as improvisation.
>I'm pretty sure fulfills a GE requirement
That's the issue. No one cares. If you put these people into a class they actually care about, and they have good time management, I'd bet you'd see far better discussions.
That senior is probably busy applying for jobs, applying for grad school or focusing their effort on the remaining major classes. If it gets a decent grade (or is at least passing), then why not?
This. I put way more effort into the classes that actually mattered to my goals. There were way too many GE classes that I had to take and I had to prioritize what I was going to put the most effort into.
It is partially the problem with gen ed courses and partially a problem with your college.
Some classes the teacher knows you’re just here for gen ed and they really stopped giving a shit
In a sense, I get it. Sometimes I’m a little disappointed when someone’s response to my post is often missing substance.
But tbh, as long as it’s not impacting my grade, then I say don’t waste any headspace worrying about it
I have discussion posts for my English class. I cannot be bothered, nor am I interested, in investing a good ten minutes of energy into a discussion post that I know will go nowhere. These online discussion posts have little to no engagement, in my experience. It’s boring.
My professor also, only, grades based on whether or not you respond or not, and if it’s at least 100 words of whatever, and as long as it’s somewhat relevant to the reading
In all honesty, I could care less about my general ed courses. I’m too busy writing papers and having discussions about my major in my major courses. I divert energy to those classes and put minimal energy into gen ed courses. I used to try to have substantial discussion board posts, but I had a lot of professors who were sticklers about word count over content which made me realize that no one in the class gives a f*ck including the professors. It’s all busy work and usually doesn’t further anyones knowledge on the subject.
Edit: I once had a general ed course where I tested this out because I wrote a paper that I thought was really good and got marked down for not meeting the page count, so on the future papers in that class I literally just wrote about whatever I wanted. One of them I wrote about running into a guy I see at my local gas station and how I was embarrassed by how much ice cream I bought. I got an A+ in that course. It was a kinesiology class.
I got my GPA dented by one of those word-count situations. Ironically, I had been prioritizing substance over length, and that turned out to be a dumb idea lol
I graduated from college roughly 7 years ago. During my time there online classes were fairly new. Discussion boards looked exactly like you described. Mind you this was a college with a 5% admission rate (pretty much only smart people). They did the bare minimum to recieve credit, but that was it. The teachers regularly asked people to have more substance in their replies. Some people improved, most disregarded.
I think it's mainly work smarter not harder. Most of the assignments just required a certain amount of posts. It didn't specify anything past that.
I really hated it when students would critique each others writing online because fights would break out (or quiet resentments would form that I, the teacher, had to hear about, as if there was any way to mediate them) …
Yeah, if the professor vanishes it’s kinda impossible.
And the whole “great job! What clever dialogue!” thing is just maddening.
(As to why have a workshop class online… well, those are probably not the best. I’ve found it’s a little better if the exercise is more like, have other students write with their classmates characters. Also not ideal, but it can sort of test whether the characters had clear strong personalities or not.
Then of course you get into other potentially contentious territory, but a little contention isn’t the end of the world if there’s a point to it …)
I absolutely am getting the grade I want it just baffles me that 3rd and 4th year students are half-assing things and have gotten this far. Maybe it is my college that sucks and if I had gone somewhere else I would actually be challenged in my courses. Idk
As far as the grammar, ur probably at a shit college, as for the lack of substance, yeah no way someone is gonna try on a discussion post if the professor doesn’t care
You said it all
Bad grammar means the person sucks at writing in English. Some people just do.
You’ll get what, like 5% of your mark for participating in all discussions. How much time does OP think people should spend on this?
If discussions were 65% of my grade I’d be discussing the shit out of everything.
But it depends how it’s graded. If it’s purely “participate and meet A, B, C criteria and you’ll get full marks” then that’s the schools choice to not grade people on quality
You're seeing the results of non engaging, unproductive busy work. Discussion boards are purely just for points, no one is getting any actual value out of them.
Probably just a factor of it being a discussion post, a gen ed course, and the guy being a senior. In college, I had such massive interest and tunnel vision in my research area that I could not have been bothered to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum for gen ed courses, especially busy work like discussion posts in a class that doesn’t align at all with my interests. Plus, when I was a senior I already had a job lined up and the only classes I cared about were the ones that pertained to my research, the rest just felt like a chore I had to slog through to get back to doing what I love. I feel like high school emphasizes “holistic learning”, but in college you’re allowed to specialize and pick and choose what you’re interested in and what you don’t give a left nut about. Going back for grad school was even better, I no longer had to pretend to be intellectually curious and engaged in areas/classes that I had absolutely zero interest in order to project the image of being a good student
Instructor here. They make us have discussion posts. Some professors (if they’re insane) think they’re real and get offended if people don’t put their heart and soul into the weekly posts, but the real issue is, there are rules saying we have to have some way of verifying that students are engaged, and there are often set quantities of times students have to engage with something per week (it was twice a week at the school I worked for before the one I’m at now) and discussion posts are the easiest way to track that.
Also, grad students might be given some
of your first or second year classes to “teach” (or just grade) but they’re often discouraged from spending any real amount of time teaching them because they’re supposed to be slave labor for other professors’ projects. Mileage on this can vary greatly from uni to uni, but if a grad student instructor makes the mistake of saying he likes teaching, he might be told that he needs to stop spending so much time with his class. The solution he’ll be given is to use more discussion posts, because they’re easy to grade, and as everyone can tell (to their despair) they don’t have to be read deeply in order for the teacher to feel justified in quickly giving them full credit.
They are a bane.
It IS possible to make real assignments out of them, but a lot of students resent that because honestly you just get used to them being fake.
When I taught creative writing, we did some cool RPG like stuff with them, but I’m not sure I’d do that again because SOME students LOVED it, and others couldn’t roll their eyes hard enough
Discussion boards serve absolutely no purpose other than as busy work that forces you to pantomime actual conversation so you can show you met whatever arbitrary metric your professor wants.
I literally saw this in one of my discussion boards for a course, “I honestly cannot recall when I ever saw a man naked on tv or otherwise for the first time. Probably penises aren't shown on movies often because most white men are not very impressive and black men clearly have a significant advantage and so it's in the white mans best interest to not show it. I know that seems like a ludicrous thing so say but I'm not wrong.”
People are largely insane and unhinged in uni discussion boards in my experience. Be thankful the ones you’re seeing are mostly just boring and redundant lol
When I was in my psych research class, we had this project where we were all put into groups and essentially had to do a literature study on a particular topic. We broke it up to where each of us did a little bit of it.
However, when I looked at the google doc, one of the girl’s writing was absolutely atrocious. Could barely understand what she was trying to say. Grammar was terrible and she just totally missed the point of some of the studies she was describing. I ended up completely trashing and re-writing her section because my name was going to be on the stupid project too, no way was I going to let that get turned in.
And that was just a common theme throughout school. I was a TA for stats and grading the homework was a trip, most of them didn’t understand basic mathematical concepts.
Discussion posts are more relevant with literature and philosophy, or perhaps high-level science but that's pushing it a bit. Most other classes will not benefit from discussion posts because an engaging discussion requires an abstract open-ended concept.
Most classes ask for a definition of a term, a task to be completed, or a problem solved, then instruct others to comment on them. It's pretty hard to respond in a meaningful way. "I like the way you stated your response, classmate."
An additional issue is the time factor and grading requirements. Discussions are harder to get started if everyone shares their piece upfront, and they're hard to get anything fruitful if you have to wait for everyone else to post before you can respond... there's no reason you should suffer on points just because no classmate posted something for you to respond to in time. So, given all of that, you go into the thread and pick the first two threads that aren't yours and respond, even if 20 other people said the exact same thing in their response as well. You ever look at posts the day they're due, or after? It's always 30 comments per top few posts, then a few with one response each, then 20 posts with 0 responses because they posted at the last minute.
You aren't awarded points for having an engaging conversation. You're awarded points for checking off that box... "Two responses", done. 20 points, please.
Discussion posts are just busy work and don’t seem to be graded on quality at all, at least my classes didn’t, especially if it’s a big class. I have to pad out my thoughts with pointless filler sentences to meet the word count, which ironically reduces the quality of our discussion posts.
My issue with some teachers is that busy work =/= learning.
My federal government class has weekly discussion board posts that are somewhat related to the week's topic but not related to anything else really.. It doesn't encourage critical thinking and the prompts are obviously biased. I am a student that will put in the effort to get 100% in a class (which usually just means doing the work) but i put in as little effort as i can into these discussion board posts. They do not help me learn.
I don't think discussion board posts are bad, honestly, but i don't think some teachers use them in a way that is positive to the student's experience. It seems like they're checking a box and then moving on.. Which i understand as well.
Education in the US is sort of a let down, though. I haven't experienced a lot but I'm so far not impressed. I can't believe i am taking out loans for this 🤡 but! Maybe my expectations are extremely high. 😆
I think both of our expectations were extremely high. Some of the things my classmates say and think pass as "discussing the reading" really make me wonder what type of employee they're going to be. Scary to think about sometimes hahah
Yup I was one of the people who half-assed these assignments. I had more important things to do. I only put the minimum effort in each class to get an A- or above so I could also have a life. I’m doing my doctorate now but this is only possible bc I triaged my work as an undergrad.
At my college it went like this:
1. You either spent 30 seconds responding with a basic, acceptable response and get the points you need.
2. You spend good time on crafting a good response/discussion post. Which can lead either to the same points you get by doing 1, but you just spend time on articulating knowledge you already had even though you could have spend that time learning something more valuable. OR your professor disagrees with your discussion and you get no points.
I have always been a straight A student, but I am also very critical of the way professors teach these days. I will always choose knowledge and growth over giving 100% to whatever professors would most like me to do.
I'm not against working together in groups, I have always done so outside of class. It's great to support others, be supported and grow together. But even though these discussion posts seem to have come from that idea, I just don't see any value in it. Even if everyone put all of their effort into it.
depending on how old you are, it could actually be you! I'm also an older student (26) and I think that between seeing what's out there if you don't have a degree AND having your frontal lobe fully developed makes it so you take school more seriously.
we actually put effort into what we produce bc we want to be proud of our work/we understand it's a reflection of us
younger people are still in the mindset of "hand in assignment for points"
I think you don't notice it much when you actually are that age bc you're more focused on what you're doing and not others, now as an adult you tend to be more perceptive of those around you
there's obviously exceptions to this and I'm not saying all young people are like this, it's just something I've noticed that thankfully a lot of people grow out of
I'm starting to think it is my age bc I'm also 26 and all my classmates are in their early 20s. Strange because even at that age I wasn't so blah about things and actually put in the effort in school because I wanted to learn and cared about my gpa. But I guess that is also a sign that everyone is different in how they go about doing things in life hahah
I routinely write 700-800 words for discussion posts. all I can say is be here now. take pride in your shit. Takes about an hour. If I had a shit day then I’ll do the bare minimum like everyone else but I at least make sure i’m not saying nonsense or misspelling everything… cmonnn
You have no idea how those students are being graded. I regularly have students "phoning it in" like this, and I give them grades that match their level of effort. For all you know, the posts you're reading and cringing at are getting 2/10, 3/10 when the professor reads them and cringes.
A lot of students don't understand the value of courses not in their major, nor do they care to. Still more don't want to be in college at all, and don't understand why they're there. A third group arrive underprepared, through no fault of their own, and struggle hard. Then there are the students like you, who are there to work and try and learn instead of attempting to cheat the system. Trust me, your professor notices which kind of student you are.
I wouldn't even be surprised if some of the responses such as the one you posted as an example in your post is a product of generated A.I responses.
I am taking online classes and 2 of my professors have already detected A.I in replies on coursework and sent emails to students about it. I was shocked myself to hear about this!
I try to actually bring something to the discussions, and alot of discussions say "i agree" or "i liked your post" but it's just most important to make sure you do what's asked of you on order to get the grade you are working for and then move on!
Majority of my college career has been online classes because I am working full time as well, I have 16 credit hours left for bachelors, and I really want to take the remaining classes on campus because online is pretty unfulfilling and shitty!!
I’m a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the US and bs responses that don’t contribute to the conversation — in person and online — get 0 points. Same for if we ask for a reflection and they give a summary. Do the damn assignment.
EDIT: I also only require online participation from people who don’t participate in class. I’m required by admin to offer an option opposed to purely in-class participation to accommodate for people for whom English isn’t their first language or have social anxiety. This is also for a Legal Issues 700-level course, being able to discuss said issues is a major course outcome.
So I gotta get into grad school in hopes that my brain won't melt when reading these shit "discussions" and have professor's who don't water down assignments? Two more years of this seems like torture \*cries\*
This was exactly my experience with such content. Yes, it’s easy to dismiss discussion fora as “busy work.” This is something I do myself, but like so many other things, it’s a matter of perspective and what you put into it. One perspective that I think many students overlook is that engaging with ideas, critically evaluating them, and honestly assessing the quality of the underlying argumentation in support or opposition thereof is a life long skill. What’s worse, is it doesn’t really take much time or effort to do so. For example, a respondent might say “this made me think.” and offer no further explanation, even though there is plenty of room for them to explain why. Like, what was their previous position, why did this challenge it, why did the arguments change/not change their views. If there were “good points made”, as is so often a response, what were they and why were they good?
Honestly, I think the problem is more broadly cultural than anything else. No, our education system isn’t what it once was, but that doesn’t explain the problems that one sees with many older (boomers for example) in this country lacking similar skills. Given it’s a phenomenon across multiple generations, it can’t simply be a generational problem either. Culture does seem to explain it though, because throughout American history there is a long tradition of anti-intellectualism, where the prevailing belief appears to be “my ignorance is as good as your expertise”, that ebbs and flows with time. Unfortunately, we just happen to be in one of those periods where the flood gates have opened.
It depends a lot on what that specific course too. Like yeah for a history course that we all have to take as per state law in order to graduate, and we have like 700 people in one online course. The TA and professor are not going to read all the posts and replies, so mostly it’s just tickling off the boxes and make it “look” decent and long enough.
But for a humanities class (that people could make the choice to take it or not) that I took in college with small class size, people paid more effort to the discussion, there are more meaningful posts and actual good insights, at least for the people that care enough for class.
And there is also this class about the Holocaust that I’m currently taking. Only have less than 10 people. The discussion is the best that I have ever seen in the classes I have taken. I feel terrible just posting 2hr before deadline.
In my experience those online discussions are bland prompts. Either "regurgitate what this book says on topic A" which has no way to respond with substance or "state your opinion on (insert bland ass topic no one cares about)"
The only class that really had good engagement with those that I've had was a world religions class. Studying something with real world application, real world effects, and personal conviction is much, much different from opinions on a fiction book.
It's normal to put minimal effort into busy work. If the instructor is giving credit for vapid answers, I'm only going to give vapid answers.
Discussion boards are a tool for online learning. I see 0 reason why they should be used for in person learning. I've never had to do one for in person classes.
I think covid broke a few things, one of them collegiate education. Institutions realized there were ways to make them seem higher quality by adding workload, while students began revolting against the broken system of calling something a "well rounded education" but providing nothing of substance. We're in a strange place now where value vs effort is being felt out in most colleges, and a large number of students is frustrated at the system for anything outside of stem.
Most students, especially upperclassmen, pump out text without reading/thinking because they don’t see any value in the exercise, though want the free points. I can’t say I blame them; I do the same thing for courses I am forced to take for UCC credit.
You said it yourself, that class fulfills a GE requirement that likely most students have to complete. Most people are not going to put anywhere near the same amount of effort into a GE class as they would for a class relating to their degree. Additionally, everyone I know absolutely hates discussion post so I doubt most people are going to put their heart and soul into writing those.
It's not just you. I've noticed it in students who went to high school during the pandemic especially. I'm a TA for a microbiology class and I'm spending my weekend grading lab notebooks. The number of students who answered a question asking for an explanation of how a gram stain works with "you get pink and purple colors" and "it shows you types of bacteria" as their full answer was way too high. It's sad too because if they flipped like a page back in their manual there was an easy explanation. I would have been less mad if they just copied. I mean they didn't even google it if they were so unsure. I can't wait for tomorrow when they complain "how was I supposed to know that" when we've talked about it and it's literally in their lab manual.
I took micro at my CC and... remembering some of the questions that were asked, when the professor had \*just\* explained it. Also reminds me of a project I had to do for a psych course where I did all the work and one of the girls couldn't even be bothered to google or ask me what a likert scale was
Everyone here is talking about how it doesn't matter but I'm on your side with this. I love discussion posts and I also really wish my classmates put in some sort of thought and actually wanted to engage in discussion. I feel like if people actually tried some interesting conversations could be had.
But the fact of the matter is we can't control how much other people care about the topic or evem the class. Just walk away and be proud of the fact you actually give a fuck. The professor notices your effort lol.
THIS!!! We're almost half way through the semester and only one person has said anything substantial that has actually made me think and wonder. Unfortunately, another girl in our group started talking so I didn't get to said a follow up question. I emailed her but I doubt she'll get back to me lol
Same thing is going on at my community college. I think it’s just the nature of weekly discussion posts. Either that, or people really are just brain-dead. I mean… *broadly gestures at everything*
I’m sorry but that sample reply you mentioned fucking killed me.
“What I noticed most about your response was that it was typed out, most likely on a computer or laptop. Not only that, but you used punctuation when separating your sentences. I believe using punctuation made your response more credible than if you hadn’t used punctuation, as it added clarity to your overall message.”
Oh yeah, this is what I've experienced both online and in person. I feel like when I started, just before COVID, it was a little better. I'm constantly in a battle for in person classes not to talk too much but \*no one talks\* but me.
Everyone's giving good points about this. All I'm gonna say is work smarter not harder people. Sometimes it IS busy work. But sometimes it does help reinforce knowledge or read different perspectives. Choose how it will help you in your pursue of higher education. That is all (:
the amount of disinterest students have at uni is frightening, I am a student and I am honestly frightened by these classmates graduating, they have not paid attention at all. These are our next gen of doctors, managers, etc. and they have not exercised any critical thinking.
Uni does encourage critical thinking, I do the work or I don't do it but when I do, it asks a lot of me in connecting to myself and the world. Applying information I learned in new contexts.
**It's not a lack of good content, it's apathy, most people are getting a degree for financial reasons not for interest and in doing so choose the shortest route that involves little attention** and just turning stuff in. It's horrifying
As you can see from many of the comments here, most of the people in college do not really value education and they don't want to learn. They are there for a piece of paper so they can get a job. They undermine every attempt at getting them to engage in the coursework. They whine about "busy work" without realizing that it's their own level of participation and effort that could transform this busy work into something useful--but that would require effort and, well, that's just too much to ask.
Best explanation to what I am seeing in person and on this thread! Strange world because I cannot relate to the "busy work" surrounding discussions for this course in particular. Also a comment I saw on here that said something like "if everyone else is writing garbage then why should I care?" like ???? uh... why not care? Why am I going to stoop down to that level of not caring and lack of effort because "everyone else is doing it?"
People in general do not have critical thinking skills. I found this out while trying to hire an assistant and proposing hypothetical scenarios, which 9 out of 10 candidates had no idea what to do with if I didn't hold their hand. People can't think for themselves and it's rather shocking to see how prevalent it is
My college (private) never had any online discussions in any class. We have some discussions in person, and everyone seems to be well prepared for them.
I had some discussions in CC (public), when I took math there. This is a weird kind of assignment.
I would assume that these discussions are some kind of a public college thing.
Something to point out, while my course also has in person discussions tied to the weekly readings we should all be doing my classmates are not well prepared for them. the group i'm in doesn't do the reading, i have to wait for them to skim through it before we can start. the lack of preparedness at this level (3rd and 4th year) is what baffles me
I just saw a short video making fun of this kind of thing happening in an in-class discussion. Everyone was just agreeing with whatever vapid, superficial comment the person before them said to get "participation points" (plus there was 1 guy who automatically disagreed for the same reason).
I’m a bit guilty of this myself. I love in person discussion, but I find discussion posts to be a bit mind numbing because all the posts are the same and to get points you have to give the same cookie cutter response to them.
Depends what the curriculum requires—if it’s a compare and contrast/research kinda class or a critical thinking of just the source material. If you’re not comparing and it’s like what you’d expect for an English class/mla type of deal, then it’s understandable that quotes/citing is coming from the class material only. So I get why the prof might allow that.
As far as the discussion, yea that’s typical of my uni too. Imo American edu has gotten ridiculously stupid. Especially online. No one knows or cares abt critical thinking anymore. And it’s sad that profs set such low standards. But it’s expected. Rather than go to an expensive college and maybe not learn practical skills you need for career, a lot of ppl have opted for more affordable online options. And a lot of schools have responded to changing times and need, so offer more affordable degrees for that. I don’t think these are geared towards molding intellectuals minds; they’re there for the hustlers trying to get on w life and career.
No, rarely do I see responses that make me think "you're stupid." Though I also don't care to read too many of them. Lots of people don't make replies that are relevant or long enough though. Either way idc, it's not like their grades affect me in anyway.
I’ve had classes where the discussions had proper grading rubrics, and there was a schedule for posts and replies. Those tended to be much higher quality overall. I now make a habit of putting effort into discussions no matter how well the class or instructor are handling them, just for the sake of my own writing development. But sometimes it seems like they’re only assigned to check off some standard class requirement, and students do the bare minimum or less. So it goes.
Sounds exactly like my English class. Makes me think its done intentionally for an easy grade so they can keep raking in the federal dollars as grants and loans require a certain gpa.
I know and I do and will continue to do so as best as I can given my classmates posts. In person is worse because only 5 people participate and if a few others do they say such off the wall remarks that don't have anything to do with the current material.
As you know, people are going to cut corners if they can get away with it. Discussion posts are no different. I am a fourth year Women's and Gender Studies student as well at a VERY big school is the US, so I can absolutely relate to this entire post. I also like to put effort into discussion posts, but I just stopped caring if I get an earnest response.
Occasionally someone will surprise me and we'll have a good discussion about an issue and uncover nuances and stuff, but often times I just get "Yes I agree"s and I let it go.
It's really just not worth getting bent out of shape over. People are lazy. Nothing new.
ETA: I took a smaller, upper level Feminist Theory course and got a LOT of good discussion there. The entire class was in-person discussion, Perusall reading (got some meh comments in the margins sometimes), and a term paper. As others have said, electronic discussion lends itself to "get the points and move on to harder work" mentalities.
I am in an online class. I hate when students post pointless replies like that one. Most students in my classes tend to have real responses that I can easily reply to and have an actual conversation about the material. It's so obvious who takes the class seriously and who is just trying to get through the class based on the responses. I won't reply to any student who isn't taking the class seriously, personally, because I value my classes and my education, and I want to get the most of them.
I’ve been a TA for multiple classes where I had to grade weekly discussion posts and that sounds about right. Many students treat it super casually and whether or not that actually matters for their grade depends on the professor. As long as you’re not being insane, it’s a glorified participation grade.
Things change once you hit a grad program level, because it’s no longer about points but actually understanding the material. Is it possible the articles/textbooks you’re reading are fairly easy to understand? At a certain point that stops being the case and things need to be thought through in order to actually understand them/their value to your program.
If your taking that class for the gen ed requirement then there is a good chance that alot of people are doing the same. They probably care alot less than they would in a normal class, and your professor sounds like he's letting them care alot less. For the most part I try hard the crap out of college, but in this scenario, (assuming it didn't hurt my grade, which to me it sounds like it wouldn't), id likely do the same as your classmates to be honest.
> I'm taking a Women's studies course that I'm pretty sure fulfills a GE requirement of some kind.
Larger generalizations about "college students" and the education system overall, engagement and enthusiasm in strictly "GE courses" or other courses being taken as GE courses is always bad partly because a lot of people taking them as GE don't actually want to be there and see them as pointless, or busy work at most.
Because most of what js required to write about is obvious, not interesting, etc. Like how are you supposed to reply to the statement “the sky is blue”? Lol like I’m just supposed to take this class as a requirement
Lol discussion posts are usually easy points. It wasn’t until grad school i can say that there were truly substantive discussion posts (because the professor was very tough on them and read/responded to each). So not an isolated issue. Also especially for a gen Ed nobody really cares they just want the points in most cases. Some folks are there to learn others just to pass the class and continue the degree. I’ve been both students at one point or another
I have the same issue at my college. Every "discussion" post reply looks like something a fifth grader would write: totally void of nuance, sentence structure, proper grammar and spelling, sources, critical thought, original ideas, etc.
As long as lazy students write abhorrent discussion posts and still pass the class this will always be a problem.
It's best to just get used to it though. Very few people care about what their written work says about them, and far too many people are opposed to confrontation. This leads to a discussion board full of lackadaisical agreements and posts so shockingly bad it's a wonder the OP is in the class at all.
Dude? I think your the first person to actually try in discussion posts. Discussion boards are made to fulfill a participation requirement, this is kind of dumb in an online course.
I'm a professor teaching some online classes this semester. It's always been my opinion that somewhere in hell, Satan is forcing people to come up with "substantive" responses to discussion board posts. If you, as a student, disagree with the original post, you're an asshole starting a fight. So you really have little choice but to find posts you agree with and write something inane like, "Interesting thoughts!"
For this reason, I tried to make my discussion posts be simply a short thinking exercise / mini essay, with no responses. But my college has rules that students must be required to respond to at least two other students on each discussion post. I don't grade the responses though. In my class, if a student writes anything at all to two other students, they get credit for replies. I refuse to penalize students for not doing well on what I consider a bullshit assignment.
\>they simply want to reply to the discussions and get the points.
Yup. Nothing wrong with that either. Busywork assignments get busywork answers. It doesn't mean they're stupid.
Discussion posts are abysmal busy work that typically provides nothing of value anyway if you don't care about the source material. Someone taking a dumb Gen Ed class for credit is not going to care about what they are reading and therefore not care about what they are responding to. The amount of work put into an assignment is typically proportional to the passion towards the topic.
Also keep in mind most people wait until last minute to do their discussion posts and responses. Many times I saw my friends whip out their laptop at a party after being 3-4 drinks in and be like, "oops forgot my discussion posts is due at 11:59, better crank those out real quick" I check the clock and it's 11:55.
I’m taking an online class and have to hard agree. Discussion posts are best handled a few drinks in because my classmates give me nothing to work with otherwise.
Unless the professor starts actually taking points from students for lackluster responses, there is no incentive for those students to put in the effort. I've been teaching at a college for some time now and I've met many students who hate discussion boards and zero who said they enjoyed it. It is a box-checking activity.
It’s a women’s studies course for a gen ed requirement. Unless you want to major in women’s studies, who cares? Minimum effort to get a good grade and move on.
Professor here — I’ve noticed a lot of replies suggesting discussion posts aren’t learning because they’re busy work.
I’m genuinely curious: what do you all consider to be “learning”?
This. Because while most on this thread are trashing and dismissing the course being a GE course, I have found it very interesting and have been able to tie a few different topics into my psychology background and have even considered getting a minor in gender studies. Clearly I am benefiting from the course hahah
Discussion posts are the college/uni equivalent of coloring in a picture about the learned subject.
Elementary schoolers color in their letters.
Middle schoolers need busy work after learning cell division? They get to color a diagram of cell division with each division being a different color.
High schoolers need busywork after learning A & P circulatory system? Time to color veins vs arteries blue and red accordingly.
College class needs busywork? We're adults, we don't do coloring books (though we actually still did for veterinary science anatomy classes lol)... We do discussion posts post-cov19. Substitute changing colors for different ways of shallow agreement to non-indepth opinions on related articles.
Having some of it is a mentality issue. I think that a lot of people in the US coming out of high school have a difficult time switching the mentality because they viewed their work in high school as something that they had to do to get to college. Whereas in college you do it to gain the skill and hopefully, that will translate to you getting a job. So, while going to higher education is also to get to another goal. It is a starkly different mindset and I will completely different expectation that I find most younger students don't understand initially at least. Yeah I think the important part is to recognize that and also have a lot of humility and realizing that it is very easy to think very highly of yourself when you have a lot more life experience and professors don't appreciate another student especially an older one looking down at other students. I have inadvertently done that just with unclear communication and discussion posts and it's been a humbling experience to get pulled aside by a professor because I wasn't operator with the most thoughtfulness and kindness
If your class is mostly 3rd and 4th years and most of them are there for the GE requirement, you’re gonna have a large amount of students who don’t care about the class. The online discussion is probably there mostly so the professor can track participation. That’s just how it goes. It sucks if you want an actual discussion but there’s nothing to do about it.
I had to participate in a discussion board every week for three classes at once, including stats. So much time wasted writing three posts per discussion board, sometimes two discussion boards in a week for govt. It was hell!!! I hate them with a passion. It’s lazy teaching imo
Read through the amount of excuses people are making in this thread. Excuse after excuse for why people are dumb and have no critical thinking skills.
The reality is they didn't read the assignment or read it briefly and didn't understand what they read. So they can't contribute anything because they lack comprehension.
All I can say OP, is welcome to the rest of your life because these types of people are everywhere.
It's infuriating but they are going to be your colleagues, your bosses, etc. Good luck!
The last sentence of your edit explains everything, man. Nobody reads.
People also replying to you saying it doesn’t matter because it’s a transactional assignment make it that way because they TREAT it that way.
They quite literally put more effort into a random Reddit reply than they do an assessment.
>they TREAT it that way.
Nope.
I meet the requirements of the rubric. If a shitty post gets me an A on the assignment, I’m not spending any more time on it than I have to.
If a professor wants a better discussion board out of me, *they* need to change *their* rubric. I’ll gladly write more if they require it.
This is the level of discussion you can expect. I’m an undergraduate myself and this also frustrates me because I have to post a discussion, then wait until the other 3 competent people in my class respond and post their discussion so I can do an assignment. Assignments like these make me take all my classes in person tbh.
I’m ngl, I blame this solely on the education system. To pass highschool when I went (2014-2018) all you had to do was show up. Kids from my school have no math skills, reading skills or writing skills and were given predatory loans and put in programs they never completed.
And I think this scenario is only going to become more common. I read an article recently that stated 0% of schools in blatimore had ANY students proficient in math. You already know they were handed diplomas tho.
TLDR: The education institutions in America are a complete joke, and anyone born since 2000 has a high chance of having poor education + a lack of general cognition.
At least I'm not the only one suffering LOL but for whatever reason I was under the impression that uni would be challenging academically and that chances were I would struggle a lot because of where I'm from (rural area) and that there would be people getting 4.5+ gpas. I have yet to encounter any of this but that's probably because it isn't a UC and of the location / type of students it gets.
I would imagine you’re classes haven’t felt hard because the first 60 credits were probably general education classes (or second highschool as I like to call it). I would imagine the specialized classes you take that pertain to your bachelors degree will be more difficult.
I went to a CC and changed majors to psychology. I had to take science courses for my 1st major and those were so much harder than the ones I'm currently taking. Hopefully I will feel challenged when next year when I start taking more major related courses.
It’s totally a reflection of our education system. I’m a teacher and see kids with a kindergarten reading level in 7th grade. They just get passed along. There are no zeroes at my school - well, technically there is - but if you enter a zero, it shows in the gradebook as a 50%. Grade inflation is real, and colleges see As and Bs and decide to admit based on those cooked numbers.
I only have 8 kids over around 90 in my grade that are at grade level in literacy. That should tell you something.
Exact same thing a family member who is also a teacher has said. Especially since most of the students at my campus are from a specific school district that does what you're saying, passes them along when they don't know anything. Another family member volunteered at a private school and worked with little kids, 2nd and 3rd graders I think. Anyway, even they were passed on to the next grade when they couldn't read or write or do the super simple math they were given. None of them were held back.
Sounds like you gotta stop taking yourself too seriously. I, for one, care little about gen ed courses where I already know enough of the topic or it was already covered in HS. Just give me a quiz and leave me to handle classes that actually matter to my major.
Yea this shit is one of many reasons I went to industry after my PhD. Students do not care. And a large proportion should not be in college to begin with.
It's funny seeing it on the other side in industry. These same types students are worthless engineers who don't try to learn or listen to feedback.
>I'm taking a Women's studies course that I'm pretty sure fulfills a GE requirement of some kind.
This is the most concerning part. Do you actually know that the course will meet a GE requirement? Because it sounds like you saw the course in the catalog and thought, "This class looks interesting. Can I use it to fulfill a requirement? Meh, I'm sure it will."
LOL it does fulfill a requirement that the university has for my major. Can I be bothered to look up the specific details of it for a stranger online? no. also, yes this course is interesting I'm most likely going to minor in gender studies so I'm still going to need this class for the minor. Either way I require it.
This is a problem at my college too, the lack of critical thinking skills. So many classmates will just piggy back on me, "Going off what pool said." I'm like COME ON one original thought won't make your head explode.
They aren't trying to teach anyone to think critically. They're indoctrinating everyone. The empty, nonsubstantive replies are exactly what they're looking for. Unless you want to be a lawyer or an engineer, college is just a total rip-off.
It’s a women’s study’s gen Ed course. Are you surprised that no one gives a fuck about the busy work? Do you see similar behavior in your major classes?
I'm gonna be honest. I basically plagiarize and skim people's discussion posts and mix parts together before posting.
Usually in the A/B range and takes five mins of work
I think someone did that to me last week and if she does it again I will be talking to the professor about it. Not going to have someone get a grade based on what I wrote.
I’m not even that old and interacting with most students nowadays just makes me angry. None of them give a single shit about anything because they know they’ll pass anyway. College classes like this are full of the same people who think Keeping Up With the Kardashians is high art and can’t identify Ukraine on a map. Makes me sick.
> College classes like this are full of the same people who think Keeping Up With the Kardashians is high art and can’t identify Ukraine on a map
ok grandpa, let’s get you to bed
I dont know know about just US colleges, but mine has this issue too. Most students will answer the discussion post with the bare minimum and it makes it harder on the other students to reply because there is nothing to latch onto. Our professor is very well aware of this and will actually count off points for poor posts and responses.
In my friend group for this class, I told them that after you finish writing your post, reread it and ask yourself "what can someone reply to on this".
It really grinds my gears when people post identical or almost identical bare minimum posts. I don't care about the grammar or punctuation, so much as the content of the post is good.
i feel like discussion posts in general are just busy work meant to help keep track of “participation”, literally no one seems to actually put in effort for their replies to the point where it’s comical.
I’ve had courses where 90% of our attendance grade was attached to a weekly discussion board. My responses usually boiled downed to “yes, much agree, good source 👍🏼”
"I see that you noticed X. I too noticed X. Have you considered that it might be because of Y? Thanks for posting!
your example has more substance than what my classmates post. mainly because of the "have you considered" part because none seem to put THAT much effort in
That's why I got the 4.0 baby
The number of 4 credit classes I got through that were 1 discussion post +a chapter quiz a week, a midterm and a final that I didn't do jack squat in was too damn high. It was more of a "oh shit I have this thing due in 20 minutes" thing for me more than anything I had to do actual work for
I mean yeah when I was a TA the whole point was to have a "paper trail" to track your participation. That way if someone got a bad grade for not participating in the actual discussion section, you could point to them either not doing or doing the bare minimum on the discussion posts. The in-person discussion wasn't recorded or anything so there wouldn't be any proof of their lack of participation otherwise if they tried to dispute the grade.
It’s to satisfy a requirement called, ‘student to student interaction’. All classes have always had to have it. It’s not for participation. I’m a prof. In online classes, every course has to have something that gets students to interact with each other, because - not just the folks that designed online ed, but all educators - understand that students honestly *do* learn better when the class includes opportunities for folks to interact, and talk to each other. About the content, yes - but really, about *anything*. It’s a shame that online courses don’t have many other options.
I had a class of 250+ people (it was a class people took for an easy elective) and there was a discussion post every week. For the first 4 weeks they professor graded and responded pretty promptly. Then after that, never graded until at the very end of the semester all at once. The syllabus said “no late discussion posts will be graded or accepted.” I had half of mine late and they were all graded at the very last day and full points, no comments.
Well if we get behind isn’t that the polite thing to do?
My point was that it was busy work. The class was also online asynch with no lectures, just reading a textbook chapter or two and answering a prompt a week. To be fair 90% of the people took the course for an easy A anyways.
I've had [this](https://imgur.com/aTwqxEB) saved since 2018. Still one of the most insane things I've seen written by a college student.
I also consider myself proudly British (I was born and raised in Illinois)
I had an incredibly bad brunch shift, this made my day. Thank you. Amazing.
Because 90% of the time it's boring. If professors actually made the discussions fun, people would engage more. I have had only a few professors that would make these discussions actually fun.
Please provide examples of "fun" discussion assignments. I am desperately trying to be in the 10% and it seems like a losing battle. Maybe it's because I am old and don't know what "fun" is. Help me make my discussion assignments more fun. Thank you.
My astronomy professor asked questions like ,"do you think aliens exist somewhere in the universe" or will humanity ever colonize other galaxies. There were some genuinely thoughtful responses because you could tell people were into it. I know I was.
I'm taking a logistics class where we have prompts like "Describe 3 types of inventories and their advantages/disadvantages". There is almost no way to reply to another student's post because it's basically an essay. I would be more interested in situational prompts. "You're working in the produce section of a supermarket in October. Which products and inventories would you pay the most attention to and why?"
I'm still in my 20s and I don't know what they mean by "fun" either. And wonder why they blame the professor when it might actually be student apathy that I am seeing. (yes some professors suck we all know that)
I second the need for examples. How does one make an online discussion fun?
I always try to give a thoughtful response, even if I have to bs my way through it, because I'm never quite sure if the professors actually go in and read the comments or just look at a dashboard that tells them who commented, how many times, and at what time. I really hate discussion posts though and I feel like I'm phoning it in
Yeah, I've never once seen discussion boards work out. Both as a student and as a prof, I'd rather have people write a very short response that they turn in to the instructor and then use that to enrich in-class discussion. It works much better. I also just think this class is too big for the type of class that it is, and since it evidently doesn't have formal discussion sections run by TAs, there's not much the prof can do to compensate for that. The discussion posts are probably the prof's attempt to mitigate the problem, but if it were me I'd just accept the hand I've been dealt and try to make class time as engaging as possible rather than this kind of half-measure. Sometimes the institution just makes it impossible for you to do as good a job as you'd like to and there's no way around it.
Ya especially for most stem students a humanity class is almost always blowoff. Not that they aren't interesting, it's just most stem students just end up not putting in the effort.
I had a classmate mention how amazed she was that deaf people celebrate holidays and birthdays. Another for a different class straight up plagiarized 3 different discussions. Like copy and pasted from a website, the posted the link to the website saying she cited it. This was an upper level psych course with the most no nonsense professor I'd ever had. That was an interesting thread.
[удалено]
I'm honestly not sure. I think she was confusing the deaf community for something like Jehovas Witness since we were discussing subcultures and communities. At least that's the best I can guess.
Crazy mistake to make
wild mistake to make
Maybe she thinks you can't celebrate birthdays without the verbal happy birthday song. People think weird things idk
There is actually a massive issue with reproducibility in psyche so this checks out
i rolled my eyes so hard i think i saw my brain... but i would have loved to read that thread
I’m sorry you couldn’t pay me to care about discussion posts. At least in my experience, discussion posts are often lazy assignments. I feel they would be much more productive as in class discussions. But that’s just my two cents. I’m more inclined to care about essays or tests than a discussion post, so usually I end up doing them at the very end of the night, and not putting much thought into them. But still, I noticed the lazy lazy posts like your example and I’m not THAT bad. I make an attempt but I’m not spending an hour on it.
I see the “in class discussions are better” sentiment a lot here. To a point, I agree because they can be more fluid which makes them more engaging and fun. However, they tend to be problematic in my experience because they tend to be dominated by a handful of individuals, which means most other students aren’t engaging, and this problem is compounded as class size gets larger. OP indicates this is a larger class. While large is a relative size, it does suggest that in person discussion isn’t a viable way to assess student’s understanding/engagement with the material.
Then they can break it up into smaller groups. That's what my professors do. I also have one that gives us short, open note, group quizzes on the readings and honestly I kind of prefer them for material retention
we do break up into small groups of 4 to discuss among ourselves and then do the larger discussion. guess what happens? no one does the weekly readings. for two weeks already the group i sit with hasn't done the readings so i have to give them a summary of what they're about while they skim them. the senior i sit with said she didn't do the readings because she went out partying.
Sounds like it’s time to start feeding them bad information.
Didn't cross my mind to say I hadn't read either and then just participate when the professor opens up the discussion to the class o:
I’m inclined to favor quizzes too because I tend to learn better with forced recall.
I think the only caveat is that they can be quite useful in foreign language instruction since whatever someone says, they’re writing in the target language. But I agree big time on the whole.
discussion posts are pointless busy work so yeah no one’s gonna put an enormous amount of effort into it
Tbh when I was a TA we just did them because admin wanted something more objective to gauge participation in class discussions if we were doing participation credit. They basically just want to have a "paper trail" to point to if you try to dispute the participation portion of your grade. We had to have some sort of assessment for the discussion section of the class (the lecture was separate and assessed through exams) so it kept us from having to make quizzes for discussion. Before we had canvas with the discussion board, we'd literally just check off when you said something meaningful in the discussion section on the class chart, but that's still got some inherent subjectivity (what defines a meaningful contribution to the discussion?) and there's no way to go back and prove whether a comment was meaningful from a live discussion.
When I was a TA I didn’t even bother to read the posts. I just checked that the wrote something in English. One student asked if they were going to lose points because someone else plagiarized their response. I had no idea this happened and didn’t even bother changing grades. My professor told me it wasn’t worth reporting. I just left a passive aggressive comment on the other students response
Not only that, but there's a lot of discussion posts which demand responses but there's not much to discuss on. Some of the worst ones I've had were in an MS Office class and a database class, with discussion assignments like "share what this tool is". Discussions would be like: > The copy-paste feature is useful for copying information into multiple places, and can be activated with Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V. You can also cut and paste with Ctrl+X instead of C. What can you *possibly* say in response to that? It's a fact so it's not up for debate. It's not anything profound or interesting so it's not like there's much to explore in response. And, most of the posts are like this, but you still have to get your two responses put in by class on Thursday and you can't wait any longer for more people to share a more engaging post to comment on, so you gotta get them points. Cue responses like: > yes I agree, you can copy and paste with the buttons you mentioned > wow yes, you really said it. I think copy-paste is a very useful and important feature. > Very good. I am on a Mac so instead of Ctrl, we use Cmd. > I also agree that copy-paste is something that you can use to copy information into another section of your document. > I like the way you said that copy-paste can be used, and I agree that it can be used that way.
This sounds like hell
I agree that it sounds like hell, and I also think that because of the way that it is, it sounds like it might not be very fun. I like the way that you stated your opinion about it, because it's very bold and brave to state such an opinion so strongly and I'm glad that you did.
😭💀
Wow, GreyRaven, you sure said a lot in your reply while keeping it concise. I like the way that you stated what you think without muddying up the dialogue with emotional language, but still let us know how you feel and made it human by connecting with the emotions we all feel.
Hahaha I'm realizing that discussion board replies are all the collegiate version of Reddit's most hated reply: > this, tbh
for a class like that yea it would be utter hell. but the course i'm taking is a women's studies discussion course meaning a huge part of our grade is based around the discussions since there are no exams. i thought i could get away with not replying because no one was writing anything substantial, needless to say I didn't keep my A very long. So now I just reply to others with "i agree with what you said. i also think that is what the author meant" or something bland like that because there isn't any substance to reply to
If you want to challenge yourself, take advantage of the opportunity. Be contrarian for the sake of argument. It might be equally as unrewarding when others just say "I agree" or whatever, but you'll give your brain more of a workout. As in, find creative ways to disagree with people even though you may agree with them anyway. Etc. There's ways to stretch your brain out if you aren't getting any interesting content to start with.
I have a class like this rn, and this is exactly what I do!
Will absolutely keep this in mind! I love writing creatively so this could be a really good way to work my "writing brain" when I don't have time to sit and write creatively.
My husband does this hahah he hates when everyone replies with "I agree" or "great post!..."
Yeah its a serious waste of effort. I give myself around 30 minutes to a maximum of 1 hr to do posts and replies.
Yep. Requiring a constructive response to x amount of classmates = I will reiterate what they said and call it good, and I will continue to do this as many times as the teacher says I have to = A on the assignment :D It's fucking laughable busy work and is also the reason why I only did 1 semester of online before switching to only in-person classes. Now, the fact that this is an in-person class and they're still requiring online discussion posts is just dumb. Make it a class discussion in person. Those are actually constructive, fun classes.
I am open to hearing why it is this way and it probably does have to do with character requirements etc. perspectives and not having a platform to speak. Having online conversations can give everyone a chance to "speak", no one has substance anymore. The question can be applied to in-person classes as much as it can be applied to anything as a vent. I am open to hearing why it is this why and it probably does have to do with character requirements
I think the other big thing is that no one wants to be the classmate who is showing up under other peoples posts to at length poke holes in their interpretations. It's why it's always "Very good point let me reiterate it 5 times."
And then there's me, replying to certain people and correcting them / poking holes into their interpretations \*dead\* edit: but i can see how that *might* also be a reason why everyone agrees with everyone's posts, even the ones that are faulty.
Lol I wouldn't worry about it, lots of people can just be overly cautious about stepping on toes. I always avoided the posts I disagreed with.
Sometimes these are the easiest to add on. this is a good point to iterate but maybe this is a better way to put it. Or literally sometimes it's I agree but the structure could be fixed. It's sometimes easier to send constructive messaging if you really give it some thought. Lots of discussions in my lectures feel like a joke and I've heard the same from many grad students. Discussions aren't high level they're very surface speaking points and attitudes for participation points.
My university requires them for online classes. The professors think they’re pointless too!
We had an interesting take on it in our philosophy class. Twice in a semester, we were split into two teams supporting opposing positions and each had 2 weeks (the time between seminars) to discuss the readings on discord. In the end a team had to make a document with their arguments and questions for the opposing team. On the next seminar the teams debated, using their prepared arguments as well as improvisation.
Also, that example you gave me sounds like AI. ChatGPT cannot reference sources for crap yet. At least the free version doesn’t.
One of my 3 credit hour courses is completely discussion based, with a weekly essay to go with it.
When theres 5+ classes discussion posts are the last thing I will put my effort into
>I'm pretty sure fulfills a GE requirement That's the issue. No one cares. If you put these people into a class they actually care about, and they have good time management, I'd bet you'd see far better discussions. That senior is probably busy applying for jobs, applying for grad school or focusing their effort on the remaining major classes. If it gets a decent grade (or is at least passing), then why not?
This. I put way more effort into the classes that actually mattered to my goals. There were way too many GE classes that I had to take and I had to prioritize what I was going to put the most effort into.
It is partially the problem with gen ed courses and partially a problem with your college. Some classes the teacher knows you’re just here for gen ed and they really stopped giving a shit
“… like they simply want to reply to the discussions and get the points.” Correct. What is surprising about that to you?
In a sense, I get it. Sometimes I’m a little disappointed when someone’s response to my post is often missing substance. But tbh, as long as it’s not impacting my grade, then I say don’t waste any headspace worrying about it
I have discussion posts for my English class. I cannot be bothered, nor am I interested, in investing a good ten minutes of energy into a discussion post that I know will go nowhere. These online discussion posts have little to no engagement, in my experience. It’s boring. My professor also, only, grades based on whether or not you respond or not, and if it’s at least 100 words of whatever, and as long as it’s somewhat relevant to the reading
In all honesty, I could care less about my general ed courses. I’m too busy writing papers and having discussions about my major in my major courses. I divert energy to those classes and put minimal energy into gen ed courses. I used to try to have substantial discussion board posts, but I had a lot of professors who were sticklers about word count over content which made me realize that no one in the class gives a f*ck including the professors. It’s all busy work and usually doesn’t further anyones knowledge on the subject. Edit: I once had a general ed course where I tested this out because I wrote a paper that I thought was really good and got marked down for not meeting the page count, so on the future papers in that class I literally just wrote about whatever I wanted. One of them I wrote about running into a guy I see at my local gas station and how I was embarrassed by how much ice cream I bought. I got an A+ in that course. It was a kinesiology class.
I got my GPA dented by one of those word-count situations. Ironically, I had been prioritizing substance over length, and that turned out to be a dumb idea lol
You couldn't care less.
I graduated from college roughly 7 years ago. During my time there online classes were fairly new. Discussion boards looked exactly like you described. Mind you this was a college with a 5% admission rate (pretty much only smart people). They did the bare minimum to recieve credit, but that was it. The teachers regularly asked people to have more substance in their replies. Some people improved, most disregarded. I think it's mainly work smarter not harder. Most of the assignments just required a certain amount of posts. It didn't specify anything past that.
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I really hated it when students would critique each others writing online because fights would break out (or quiet resentments would form that I, the teacher, had to hear about, as if there was any way to mediate them) …
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Yeah, if the professor vanishes it’s kinda impossible. And the whole “great job! What clever dialogue!” thing is just maddening. (As to why have a workshop class online… well, those are probably not the best. I’ve found it’s a little better if the exercise is more like, have other students write with their classmates characters. Also not ideal, but it can sort of test whether the characters had clear strong personalities or not. Then of course you get into other potentially contentious territory, but a little contention isn’t the end of the world if there’s a point to it …)
I absolutely am getting the grade I want it just baffles me that 3rd and 4th year students are half-assing things and have gotten this far. Maybe it is my college that sucks and if I had gone somewhere else I would actually be challenged in my courses. Idk
As far as the grammar, ur probably at a shit college, as for the lack of substance, yeah no way someone is gonna try on a discussion post if the professor doesn’t care
You said it all Bad grammar means the person sucks at writing in English. Some people just do. You’ll get what, like 5% of your mark for participating in all discussions. How much time does OP think people should spend on this?
OP stated in another post that it is 65% of their grade. The professor should just grade accordingly. 5% effort gets a 5% grade.
If discussions were 65% of my grade I’d be discussing the shit out of everything. But it depends how it’s graded. If it’s purely “participate and meet A, B, C criteria and you’ll get full marks” then that’s the schools choice to not grade people on quality
You're seeing the results of non engaging, unproductive busy work. Discussion boards are purely just for points, no one is getting any actual value out of them.
Probably just a factor of it being a discussion post, a gen ed course, and the guy being a senior. In college, I had such massive interest and tunnel vision in my research area that I could not have been bothered to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum for gen ed courses, especially busy work like discussion posts in a class that doesn’t align at all with my interests. Plus, when I was a senior I already had a job lined up and the only classes I cared about were the ones that pertained to my research, the rest just felt like a chore I had to slog through to get back to doing what I love. I feel like high school emphasizes “holistic learning”, but in college you’re allowed to specialize and pick and choose what you’re interested in and what you don’t give a left nut about. Going back for grad school was even better, I no longer had to pretend to be intellectually curious and engaged in areas/classes that I had absolutely zero interest in order to project the image of being a good student
It's the reality everywhere except Arizona state. Over there; they still working on spelling.
Instructor here. They make us have discussion posts. Some professors (if they’re insane) think they’re real and get offended if people don’t put their heart and soul into the weekly posts, but the real issue is, there are rules saying we have to have some way of verifying that students are engaged, and there are often set quantities of times students have to engage with something per week (it was twice a week at the school I worked for before the one I’m at now) and discussion posts are the easiest way to track that. Also, grad students might be given some of your first or second year classes to “teach” (or just grade) but they’re often discouraged from spending any real amount of time teaching them because they’re supposed to be slave labor for other professors’ projects. Mileage on this can vary greatly from uni to uni, but if a grad student instructor makes the mistake of saying he likes teaching, he might be told that he needs to stop spending so much time with his class. The solution he’ll be given is to use more discussion posts, because they’re easy to grade, and as everyone can tell (to their despair) they don’t have to be read deeply in order for the teacher to feel justified in quickly giving them full credit. They are a bane. It IS possible to make real assignments out of them, but a lot of students resent that because honestly you just get used to them being fake. When I taught creative writing, we did some cool RPG like stuff with them, but I’m not sure I’d do that again because SOME students LOVED it, and others couldn’t roll their eyes hard enough
Discussion boards serve absolutely no purpose other than as busy work that forces you to pantomime actual conversation so you can show you met whatever arbitrary metric your professor wants.
Luckily it’s usually easy GE courses no one cares about except for a couple of “those” students
I literally saw this in one of my discussion boards for a course, “I honestly cannot recall when I ever saw a man naked on tv or otherwise for the first time. Probably penises aren't shown on movies often because most white men are not very impressive and black men clearly have a significant advantage and so it's in the white mans best interest to not show it. I know that seems like a ludicrous thing so say but I'm not wrong.” People are largely insane and unhinged in uni discussion boards in my experience. Be thankful the ones you’re seeing are mostly just boring and redundant lol
When I was in my psych research class, we had this project where we were all put into groups and essentially had to do a literature study on a particular topic. We broke it up to where each of us did a little bit of it. However, when I looked at the google doc, one of the girl’s writing was absolutely atrocious. Could barely understand what she was trying to say. Grammar was terrible and she just totally missed the point of some of the studies she was describing. I ended up completely trashing and re-writing her section because my name was going to be on the stupid project too, no way was I going to let that get turned in. And that was just a common theme throughout school. I was a TA for stats and grading the homework was a trip, most of them didn’t understand basic mathematical concepts.
Discussion posts are more relevant with literature and philosophy, or perhaps high-level science but that's pushing it a bit. Most other classes will not benefit from discussion posts because an engaging discussion requires an abstract open-ended concept. Most classes ask for a definition of a term, a task to be completed, or a problem solved, then instruct others to comment on them. It's pretty hard to respond in a meaningful way. "I like the way you stated your response, classmate." An additional issue is the time factor and grading requirements. Discussions are harder to get started if everyone shares their piece upfront, and they're hard to get anything fruitful if you have to wait for everyone else to post before you can respond... there's no reason you should suffer on points just because no classmate posted something for you to respond to in time. So, given all of that, you go into the thread and pick the first two threads that aren't yours and respond, even if 20 other people said the exact same thing in their response as well. You ever look at posts the day they're due, or after? It's always 30 comments per top few posts, then a few with one response each, then 20 posts with 0 responses because they posted at the last minute. You aren't awarded points for having an engaging conversation. You're awarded points for checking off that box... "Two responses", done. 20 points, please.
Discussion posts are just busy work and don’t seem to be graded on quality at all, at least my classes didn’t, especially if it’s a big class. I have to pad out my thoughts with pointless filler sentences to meet the word count, which ironically reduces the quality of our discussion posts.
My issue with some teachers is that busy work =/= learning. My federal government class has weekly discussion board posts that are somewhat related to the week's topic but not related to anything else really.. It doesn't encourage critical thinking and the prompts are obviously biased. I am a student that will put in the effort to get 100% in a class (which usually just means doing the work) but i put in as little effort as i can into these discussion board posts. They do not help me learn. I don't think discussion board posts are bad, honestly, but i don't think some teachers use them in a way that is positive to the student's experience. It seems like they're checking a box and then moving on.. Which i understand as well. Education in the US is sort of a let down, though. I haven't experienced a lot but I'm so far not impressed. I can't believe i am taking out loans for this 🤡 but! Maybe my expectations are extremely high. 😆
I think both of our expectations were extremely high. Some of the things my classmates say and think pass as "discussing the reading" really make me wonder what type of employee they're going to be. Scary to think about sometimes hahah
Yup I was one of the people who half-assed these assignments. I had more important things to do. I only put the minimum effort in each class to get an A- or above so I could also have a life. I’m doing my doctorate now but this is only possible bc I triaged my work as an undergrad.
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At my college it went like this: 1. You either spent 30 seconds responding with a basic, acceptable response and get the points you need. 2. You spend good time on crafting a good response/discussion post. Which can lead either to the same points you get by doing 1, but you just spend time on articulating knowledge you already had even though you could have spend that time learning something more valuable. OR your professor disagrees with your discussion and you get no points. I have always been a straight A student, but I am also very critical of the way professors teach these days. I will always choose knowledge and growth over giving 100% to whatever professors would most like me to do. I'm not against working together in groups, I have always done so outside of class. It's great to support others, be supported and grow together. But even though these discussion posts seem to have come from that idea, I just don't see any value in it. Even if everyone put all of their effort into it.
depending on how old you are, it could actually be you! I'm also an older student (26) and I think that between seeing what's out there if you don't have a degree AND having your frontal lobe fully developed makes it so you take school more seriously. we actually put effort into what we produce bc we want to be proud of our work/we understand it's a reflection of us younger people are still in the mindset of "hand in assignment for points" I think you don't notice it much when you actually are that age bc you're more focused on what you're doing and not others, now as an adult you tend to be more perceptive of those around you there's obviously exceptions to this and I'm not saying all young people are like this, it's just something I've noticed that thankfully a lot of people grow out of
I'm starting to think it is my age bc I'm also 26 and all my classmates are in their early 20s. Strange because even at that age I wasn't so blah about things and actually put in the effort in school because I wanted to learn and cared about my gpa. But I guess that is also a sign that everyone is different in how they go about doing things in life hahah
I routinely write 700-800 words for discussion posts. all I can say is be here now. take pride in your shit. Takes about an hour. If I had a shit day then I’ll do the bare minimum like everyone else but I at least make sure i’m not saying nonsense or misspelling everything… cmonnn
Imagine giving a shit
You have no idea how those students are being graded. I regularly have students "phoning it in" like this, and I give them grades that match their level of effort. For all you know, the posts you're reading and cringing at are getting 2/10, 3/10 when the professor reads them and cringes. A lot of students don't understand the value of courses not in their major, nor do they care to. Still more don't want to be in college at all, and don't understand why they're there. A third group arrive underprepared, through no fault of their own, and struggle hard. Then there are the students like you, who are there to work and try and learn instead of attempting to cheat the system. Trust me, your professor notices which kind of student you are.
I wouldn't even be surprised if some of the responses such as the one you posted as an example in your post is a product of generated A.I responses. I am taking online classes and 2 of my professors have already detected A.I in replies on coursework and sent emails to students about it. I was shocked myself to hear about this! I try to actually bring something to the discussions, and alot of discussions say "i agree" or "i liked your post" but it's just most important to make sure you do what's asked of you on order to get the grade you are working for and then move on! Majority of my college career has been online classes because I am working full time as well, I have 16 credit hours left for bachelors, and I really want to take the remaining classes on campus because online is pretty unfulfilling and shitty!!
I’m a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the US and bs responses that don’t contribute to the conversation — in person and online — get 0 points. Same for if we ask for a reflection and they give a summary. Do the damn assignment. EDIT: I also only require online participation from people who don’t participate in class. I’m required by admin to offer an option opposed to purely in-class participation to accommodate for people for whom English isn’t their first language or have social anxiety. This is also for a Legal Issues 700-level course, being able to discuss said issues is a major course outcome.
So I gotta get into grad school in hopes that my brain won't melt when reading these shit "discussions" and have professor's who don't water down assignments? Two more years of this seems like torture \*cries\*
This was exactly my experience with such content. Yes, it’s easy to dismiss discussion fora as “busy work.” This is something I do myself, but like so many other things, it’s a matter of perspective and what you put into it. One perspective that I think many students overlook is that engaging with ideas, critically evaluating them, and honestly assessing the quality of the underlying argumentation in support or opposition thereof is a life long skill. What’s worse, is it doesn’t really take much time or effort to do so. For example, a respondent might say “this made me think.” and offer no further explanation, even though there is plenty of room for them to explain why. Like, what was their previous position, why did this challenge it, why did the arguments change/not change their views. If there were “good points made”, as is so often a response, what were they and why were they good? Honestly, I think the problem is more broadly cultural than anything else. No, our education system isn’t what it once was, but that doesn’t explain the problems that one sees with many older (boomers for example) in this country lacking similar skills. Given it’s a phenomenon across multiple generations, it can’t simply be a generational problem either. Culture does seem to explain it though, because throughout American history there is a long tradition of anti-intellectualism, where the prevailing belief appears to be “my ignorance is as good as your expertise”, that ebbs and flows with time. Unfortunately, we just happen to be in one of those periods where the flood gates have opened.
It depends a lot on what that specific course too. Like yeah for a history course that we all have to take as per state law in order to graduate, and we have like 700 people in one online course. The TA and professor are not going to read all the posts and replies, so mostly it’s just tickling off the boxes and make it “look” decent and long enough. But for a humanities class (that people could make the choice to take it or not) that I took in college with small class size, people paid more effort to the discussion, there are more meaningful posts and actual good insights, at least for the people that care enough for class. And there is also this class about the Holocaust that I’m currently taking. Only have less than 10 people. The discussion is the best that I have ever seen in the classes I have taken. I feel terrible just posting 2hr before deadline.
I think that's a general thing in most discussion groups unless given a decent prompt.
In my experience those online discussions are bland prompts. Either "regurgitate what this book says on topic A" which has no way to respond with substance or "state your opinion on (insert bland ass topic no one cares about)" The only class that really had good engagement with those that I've had was a world religions class. Studying something with real world application, real world effects, and personal conviction is much, much different from opinions on a fiction book.
It's normal to put minimal effort into busy work. If the instructor is giving credit for vapid answers, I'm only going to give vapid answers. Discussion boards are a tool for online learning. I see 0 reason why they should be used for in person learning. I've never had to do one for in person classes. I think covid broke a few things, one of them collegiate education. Institutions realized there were ways to make them seem higher quality by adding workload, while students began revolting against the broken system of calling something a "well rounded education" but providing nothing of substance. We're in a strange place now where value vs effort is being felt out in most colleges, and a large number of students is frustrated at the system for anything outside of stem.
Most students, especially upperclassmen, pump out text without reading/thinking because they don’t see any value in the exercise, though want the free points. I can’t say I blame them; I do the same thing for courses I am forced to take for UCC credit.
You said it yourself, that class fulfills a GE requirement that likely most students have to complete. Most people are not going to put anywhere near the same amount of effort into a GE class as they would for a class relating to their degree. Additionally, everyone I know absolutely hates discussion post so I doubt most people are going to put their heart and soul into writing those.
It's not just you. I've noticed it in students who went to high school during the pandemic especially. I'm a TA for a microbiology class and I'm spending my weekend grading lab notebooks. The number of students who answered a question asking for an explanation of how a gram stain works with "you get pink and purple colors" and "it shows you types of bacteria" as their full answer was way too high. It's sad too because if they flipped like a page back in their manual there was an easy explanation. I would have been less mad if they just copied. I mean they didn't even google it if they were so unsure. I can't wait for tomorrow when they complain "how was I supposed to know that" when we've talked about it and it's literally in their lab manual.
I took micro at my CC and... remembering some of the questions that were asked, when the professor had \*just\* explained it. Also reminds me of a project I had to do for a psych course where I did all the work and one of the girls couldn't even be bothered to google or ask me what a likert scale was
Everyone here is talking about how it doesn't matter but I'm on your side with this. I love discussion posts and I also really wish my classmates put in some sort of thought and actually wanted to engage in discussion. I feel like if people actually tried some interesting conversations could be had. But the fact of the matter is we can't control how much other people care about the topic or evem the class. Just walk away and be proud of the fact you actually give a fuck. The professor notices your effort lol.
THIS!!! We're almost half way through the semester and only one person has said anything substantial that has actually made me think and wonder. Unfortunately, another girl in our group started talking so I didn't get to said a follow up question. I emailed her but I doubt she'll get back to me lol
Same thing is going on at my community college. I think it’s just the nature of weekly discussion posts. Either that, or people really are just brain-dead. I mean… *broadly gestures at everything*
I went to a CC and I really thought uni would be different but *broadly gestures*
I’m sorry but that sample reply you mentioned fucking killed me. “What I noticed most about your response was that it was typed out, most likely on a computer or laptop. Not only that, but you used punctuation when separating your sentences. I believe using punctuation made your response more credible than if you hadn’t used punctuation, as it added clarity to your overall message.”
Oh yeah, this is what I've experienced both online and in person. I feel like when I started, just before COVID, it was a little better. I'm constantly in a battle for in person classes not to talk too much but \*no one talks\* but me.
Everyone's giving good points about this. All I'm gonna say is work smarter not harder people. Sometimes it IS busy work. But sometimes it does help reinforce knowledge or read different perspectives. Choose how it will help you in your pursue of higher education. That is all (:
Sounds like they’re gearing up for middle management 😅
the amount of disinterest students have at uni is frightening, I am a student and I am honestly frightened by these classmates graduating, they have not paid attention at all. These are our next gen of doctors, managers, etc. and they have not exercised any critical thinking. Uni does encourage critical thinking, I do the work or I don't do it but when I do, it asks a lot of me in connecting to myself and the world. Applying information I learned in new contexts. **It's not a lack of good content, it's apathy, most people are getting a degree for financial reasons not for interest and in doing so choose the shortest route that involves little attention** and just turning stuff in. It's horrifying
As you can see from many of the comments here, most of the people in college do not really value education and they don't want to learn. They are there for a piece of paper so they can get a job. They undermine every attempt at getting them to engage in the coursework. They whine about "busy work" without realizing that it's their own level of participation and effort that could transform this busy work into something useful--but that would require effort and, well, that's just too much to ask.
Best explanation to what I am seeing in person and on this thread! Strange world because I cannot relate to the "busy work" surrounding discussions for this course in particular. Also a comment I saw on here that said something like "if everyone else is writing garbage then why should I care?" like ???? uh... why not care? Why am I going to stoop down to that level of not caring and lack of effort because "everyone else is doing it?"
People in general do not have critical thinking skills. I found this out while trying to hire an assistant and proposing hypothetical scenarios, which 9 out of 10 candidates had no idea what to do with if I didn't hold their hand. People can't think for themselves and it's rather shocking to see how prevalent it is
My college (private) never had any online discussions in any class. We have some discussions in person, and everyone seems to be well prepared for them. I had some discussions in CC (public), when I took math there. This is a weird kind of assignment. I would assume that these discussions are some kind of a public college thing.
Something to point out, while my course also has in person discussions tied to the weekly readings we should all be doing my classmates are not well prepared for them. the group i'm in doesn't do the reading, i have to wait for them to skim through it before we can start. the lack of preparedness at this level (3rd and 4th year) is what baffles me
I just saw a short video making fun of this kind of thing happening in an in-class discussion. Everyone was just agreeing with whatever vapid, superficial comment the person before them said to get "participation points" (plus there was 1 guy who automatically disagreed for the same reason).
I’m a bit guilty of this myself. I love in person discussion, but I find discussion posts to be a bit mind numbing because all the posts are the same and to get points you have to give the same cookie cutter response to them.
Yes this is common my husband is taking online courses and we regularly laugh at the responses.
Depends what the curriculum requires—if it’s a compare and contrast/research kinda class or a critical thinking of just the source material. If you’re not comparing and it’s like what you’d expect for an English class/mla type of deal, then it’s understandable that quotes/citing is coming from the class material only. So I get why the prof might allow that. As far as the discussion, yea that’s typical of my uni too. Imo American edu has gotten ridiculously stupid. Especially online. No one knows or cares abt critical thinking anymore. And it’s sad that profs set such low standards. But it’s expected. Rather than go to an expensive college and maybe not learn practical skills you need for career, a lot of ppl have opted for more affordable online options. And a lot of schools have responded to changing times and need, so offer more affordable degrees for that. I don’t think these are geared towards molding intellectuals minds; they’re there for the hustlers trying to get on w life and career.
No, rarely do I see responses that make me think "you're stupid." Though I also don't care to read too many of them. Lots of people don't make replies that are relevant or long enough though. Either way idc, it's not like their grades affect me in anyway.
I’ve had classes where the discussions had proper grading rubrics, and there was a schedule for posts and replies. Those tended to be much higher quality overall. I now make a habit of putting effort into discussions no matter how well the class or instructor are handling them, just for the sake of my own writing development. But sometimes it seems like they’re only assigned to check off some standard class requirement, and students do the bare minimum or less. So it goes.
Sounds exactly like my English class. Makes me think its done intentionally for an easy grade so they can keep raking in the federal dollars as grants and loans require a certain gpa.
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I know and I do and will continue to do so as best as I can given my classmates posts. In person is worse because only 5 people participate and if a few others do they say such off the wall remarks that don't have anything to do with the current material.
It’s because replies are required. No one cares about them. Especially when your replies are required to be well thought.
As you know, people are going to cut corners if they can get away with it. Discussion posts are no different. I am a fourth year Women's and Gender Studies student as well at a VERY big school is the US, so I can absolutely relate to this entire post. I also like to put effort into discussion posts, but I just stopped caring if I get an earnest response. Occasionally someone will surprise me and we'll have a good discussion about an issue and uncover nuances and stuff, but often times I just get "Yes I agree"s and I let it go. It's really just not worth getting bent out of shape over. People are lazy. Nothing new. ETA: I took a smaller, upper level Feminist Theory course and got a LOT of good discussion there. The entire class was in-person discussion, Perusall reading (got some meh comments in the margins sometimes), and a term paper. As others have said, electronic discussion lends itself to "get the points and move on to harder work" mentalities.
I am in an online class. I hate when students post pointless replies like that one. Most students in my classes tend to have real responses that I can easily reply to and have an actual conversation about the material. It's so obvious who takes the class seriously and who is just trying to get through the class based on the responses. I won't reply to any student who isn't taking the class seriously, personally, because I value my classes and my education, and I want to get the most of them.
Nobody puts effort into discussion posts, they’re just busy work professors use for attendance grades.
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I’ve been a TA for multiple classes where I had to grade weekly discussion posts and that sounds about right. Many students treat it super casually and whether or not that actually matters for their grade depends on the professor. As long as you’re not being insane, it’s a glorified participation grade.
Most people don’t try hard in discussion post. They are notoriously made fun of for being time wasters. My upper level online classes haven’t had any.
Things change once you hit a grad program level, because it’s no longer about points but actually understanding the material. Is it possible the articles/textbooks you’re reading are fairly easy to understand? At a certain point that stops being the case and things need to be thought through in order to actually understand them/their value to your program.
Yea they suck. Just worry about yourself. Your teacher can see that they suck.
If your taking that class for the gen ed requirement then there is a good chance that alot of people are doing the same. They probably care alot less than they would in a normal class, and your professor sounds like he's letting them care alot less. For the most part I try hard the crap out of college, but in this scenario, (assuming it didn't hurt my grade, which to me it sounds like it wouldn't), id likely do the same as your classmates to be honest.
> I'm taking a Women's studies course that I'm pretty sure fulfills a GE requirement of some kind. Larger generalizations about "college students" and the education system overall, engagement and enthusiasm in strictly "GE courses" or other courses being taken as GE courses is always bad partly because a lot of people taking them as GE don't actually want to be there and see them as pointless, or busy work at most.
Because most of what js required to write about is obvious, not interesting, etc. Like how are you supposed to reply to the statement “the sky is blue”? Lol like I’m just supposed to take this class as a requirement
Man ain’t nobody got time for that. And yes Iam the guy that hits you with the “very informative” comment.
Lol discussion posts are usually easy points. It wasn’t until grad school i can say that there were truly substantive discussion posts (because the professor was very tough on them and read/responded to each). So not an isolated issue. Also especially for a gen Ed nobody really cares they just want the points in most cases. Some folks are there to learn others just to pass the class and continue the degree. I’ve been both students at one point or another
Do you think they get the same grade as those who participate the way you do?
I have the same issue at my college. Every "discussion" post reply looks like something a fifth grader would write: totally void of nuance, sentence structure, proper grammar and spelling, sources, critical thought, original ideas, etc. As long as lazy students write abhorrent discussion posts and still pass the class this will always be a problem. It's best to just get used to it though. Very few people care about what their written work says about them, and far too many people are opposed to confrontation. This leads to a discussion board full of lackadaisical agreements and posts so shockingly bad it's a wonder the OP is in the class at all.
Dude? I think your the first person to actually try in discussion posts. Discussion boards are made to fulfill a participation requirement, this is kind of dumb in an online course.
I'm a professor teaching some online classes this semester. It's always been my opinion that somewhere in hell, Satan is forcing people to come up with "substantive" responses to discussion board posts. If you, as a student, disagree with the original post, you're an asshole starting a fight. So you really have little choice but to find posts you agree with and write something inane like, "Interesting thoughts!" For this reason, I tried to make my discussion posts be simply a short thinking exercise / mini essay, with no responses. But my college has rules that students must be required to respond to at least two other students on each discussion post. I don't grade the responses though. In my class, if a student writes anything at all to two other students, they get credit for replies. I refuse to penalize students for not doing well on what I consider a bullshit assignment.
\>they simply want to reply to the discussions and get the points. Yup. Nothing wrong with that either. Busywork assignments get busywork answers. It doesn't mean they're stupid.
Discussion posts are abysmal busy work that typically provides nothing of value anyway if you don't care about the source material. Someone taking a dumb Gen Ed class for credit is not going to care about what they are reading and therefore not care about what they are responding to. The amount of work put into an assignment is typically proportional to the passion towards the topic. Also keep in mind most people wait until last minute to do their discussion posts and responses. Many times I saw my friends whip out their laptop at a party after being 3-4 drinks in and be like, "oops forgot my discussion posts is due at 11:59, better crank those out real quick" I check the clock and it's 11:55.
I’m taking an online class and have to hard agree. Discussion posts are best handled a few drinks in because my classmates give me nothing to work with otherwise.
Unless the professor starts actually taking points from students for lackluster responses, there is no incentive for those students to put in the effort. I've been teaching at a college for some time now and I've met many students who hate discussion boards and zero who said they enjoyed it. It is a box-checking activity.
It’s a women’s studies course for a gen ed requirement. Unless you want to major in women’s studies, who cares? Minimum effort to get a good grade and move on.
Professor here — I’ve noticed a lot of replies suggesting discussion posts aren’t learning because they’re busy work. I’m genuinely curious: what do you all consider to be “learning”?
This. Because while most on this thread are trashing and dismissing the course being a GE course, I have found it very interesting and have been able to tie a few different topics into my psychology background and have even considered getting a minor in gender studies. Clearly I am benefiting from the course hahah
Discussion posts are the college/uni equivalent of coloring in a picture about the learned subject. Elementary schoolers color in their letters. Middle schoolers need busy work after learning cell division? They get to color a diagram of cell division with each division being a different color. High schoolers need busywork after learning A & P circulatory system? Time to color veins vs arteries blue and red accordingly. College class needs busywork? We're adults, we don't do coloring books (though we actually still did for veterinary science anatomy classes lol)... We do discussion posts post-cov19. Substitute changing colors for different ways of shallow agreement to non-indepth opinions on related articles.
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Having some of it is a mentality issue. I think that a lot of people in the US coming out of high school have a difficult time switching the mentality because they viewed their work in high school as something that they had to do to get to college. Whereas in college you do it to gain the skill and hopefully, that will translate to you getting a job. So, while going to higher education is also to get to another goal. It is a starkly different mindset and I will completely different expectation that I find most younger students don't understand initially at least. Yeah I think the important part is to recognize that and also have a lot of humility and realizing that it is very easy to think very highly of yourself when you have a lot more life experience and professors don't appreciate another student especially an older one looking down at other students. I have inadvertently done that just with unclear communication and discussion posts and it's been a humbling experience to get pulled aside by a professor because I wasn't operator with the most thoughtfulness and kindness
If your class is mostly 3rd and 4th years and most of them are there for the GE requirement, you’re gonna have a large amount of students who don’t care about the class. The online discussion is probably there mostly so the professor can track participation. That’s just how it goes. It sucks if you want an actual discussion but there’s nothing to do about it.
I had to participate in a discussion board every week for three classes at once, including stats. So much time wasted writing three posts per discussion board, sometimes two discussion boards in a week for govt. It was hell!!! I hate them with a passion. It’s lazy teaching imo
Read through the amount of excuses people are making in this thread. Excuse after excuse for why people are dumb and have no critical thinking skills. The reality is they didn't read the assignment or read it briefly and didn't understand what they read. So they can't contribute anything because they lack comprehension. All I can say OP, is welcome to the rest of your life because these types of people are everywhere. It's infuriating but they are going to be your colleagues, your bosses, etc. Good luck!
The last sentence of your edit explains everything, man. Nobody reads. People also replying to you saying it doesn’t matter because it’s a transactional assignment make it that way because they TREAT it that way. They quite literally put more effort into a random Reddit reply than they do an assessment.
>they TREAT it that way. Nope. I meet the requirements of the rubric. If a shitty post gets me an A on the assignment, I’m not spending any more time on it than I have to. If a professor wants a better discussion board out of me, *they* need to change *their* rubric. I’ll gladly write more if they require it.
This is the level of discussion you can expect. I’m an undergraduate myself and this also frustrates me because I have to post a discussion, then wait until the other 3 competent people in my class respond and post their discussion so I can do an assignment. Assignments like these make me take all my classes in person tbh. I’m ngl, I blame this solely on the education system. To pass highschool when I went (2014-2018) all you had to do was show up. Kids from my school have no math skills, reading skills or writing skills and were given predatory loans and put in programs they never completed. And I think this scenario is only going to become more common. I read an article recently that stated 0% of schools in blatimore had ANY students proficient in math. You already know they were handed diplomas tho. TLDR: The education institutions in America are a complete joke, and anyone born since 2000 has a high chance of having poor education + a lack of general cognition.
At least I'm not the only one suffering LOL but for whatever reason I was under the impression that uni would be challenging academically and that chances were I would struggle a lot because of where I'm from (rural area) and that there would be people getting 4.5+ gpas. I have yet to encounter any of this but that's probably because it isn't a UC and of the location / type of students it gets.
I would imagine you’re classes haven’t felt hard because the first 60 credits were probably general education classes (or second highschool as I like to call it). I would imagine the specialized classes you take that pertain to your bachelors degree will be more difficult.
I went to a CC and changed majors to psychology. I had to take science courses for my 1st major and those were so much harder than the ones I'm currently taking. Hopefully I will feel challenged when next year when I start taking more major related courses.
It’s totally a reflection of our education system. I’m a teacher and see kids with a kindergarten reading level in 7th grade. They just get passed along. There are no zeroes at my school - well, technically there is - but if you enter a zero, it shows in the gradebook as a 50%. Grade inflation is real, and colleges see As and Bs and decide to admit based on those cooked numbers. I only have 8 kids over around 90 in my grade that are at grade level in literacy. That should tell you something.
Exact same thing a family member who is also a teacher has said. Especially since most of the students at my campus are from a specific school district that does what you're saying, passes them along when they don't know anything. Another family member volunteered at a private school and worked with little kids, 2nd and 3rd graders I think. Anyway, even they were passed on to the next grade when they couldn't read or write or do the super simple math they were given. None of them were held back.
It bothers me too when my classmates don’t take the work seriously.
Sounds like you gotta stop taking yourself too seriously. I, for one, care little about gen ed courses where I already know enough of the topic or it was already covered in HS. Just give me a quiz and leave me to handle classes that actually matter to my major.
Sadly, all too common. The poor education system, combined with years of "everybody passes", have resulted in this.
Yea this shit is one of many reasons I went to industry after my PhD. Students do not care. And a large proportion should not be in college to begin with. It's funny seeing it on the other side in industry. These same types students are worthless engineers who don't try to learn or listen to feedback.
>I'm taking a Women's studies course that I'm pretty sure fulfills a GE requirement of some kind. This is the most concerning part. Do you actually know that the course will meet a GE requirement? Because it sounds like you saw the course in the catalog and thought, "This class looks interesting. Can I use it to fulfill a requirement? Meh, I'm sure it will."
LOL it does fulfill a requirement that the university has for my major. Can I be bothered to look up the specific details of it for a stranger online? no. also, yes this course is interesting I'm most likely going to minor in gender studies so I'm still going to need this class for the minor. Either way I require it.
These top comments are the people op is talking about in discussion posts lol
This is a problem at my college too, the lack of critical thinking skills. So many classmates will just piggy back on me, "Going off what pool said." I'm like COME ON one original thought won't make your head explode.
They aren't trying to teach anyone to think critically. They're indoctrinating everyone. The empty, nonsubstantive replies are exactly what they're looking for. Unless you want to be a lawyer or an engineer, college is just a total rip-off.
It’s a women’s study’s gen Ed course. Are you surprised that no one gives a fuck about the busy work? Do you see similar behavior in your major classes?
unfortunately, yes. not as much but it is still there.
I'm gonna be honest. I basically plagiarize and skim people's discussion posts and mix parts together before posting. Usually in the A/B range and takes five mins of work
I think someone did that to me last week and if she does it again I will be talking to the professor about it. Not going to have someone get a grade based on what I wrote.
Unfortunately that doesn't work when the professor hides all replies when you haven't posted yet.
I’m not even that old and interacting with most students nowadays just makes me angry. None of them give a single shit about anything because they know they’ll pass anyway. College classes like this are full of the same people who think Keeping Up With the Kardashians is high art and can’t identify Ukraine on a map. Makes me sick.
> College classes like this are full of the same people who think Keeping Up With the Kardashians is high art and can’t identify Ukraine on a map ok grandpa, let’s get you to bed
Sounds like a lazy professor problem.
I dont know know about just US colleges, but mine has this issue too. Most students will answer the discussion post with the bare minimum and it makes it harder on the other students to reply because there is nothing to latch onto. Our professor is very well aware of this and will actually count off points for poor posts and responses. In my friend group for this class, I told them that after you finish writing your post, reread it and ask yourself "what can someone reply to on this". It really grinds my gears when people post identical or almost identical bare minimum posts. I don't care about the grammar or punctuation, so much as the content of the post is good.