A professor hid $50 on campus and put the location in the syllabus. No student read it

boing
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The assumption of the OP, was an “alternate theory” that because their prof didn’t do the work on their end, that it must be the case for all of us. That we’re all lazy, entitled assholes who don’t do the work for our students…

I promise you, I am very average. Plenty of us bend over backwards to do all we can for our students, only to have it thrown in our faces that we don’t do enough.

Many, MANY of us are overworked, since many MANY of us are part-timers with no job security. But we’re still expected to be on top of everything at all times, or we can easily be out of a job and out of academia as failures.

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I’m in Wisconsin, so thanks to Walker’s budget cuts, the state colleges here are losing good professors quickly. I’m actually happy for the professors I’ve kept in contact with that have been offered better, more stable positions, but I do think it’s a loss for the UW system and it’s going to cost the state in the long run. I know all too well that it’s the same the situation across the country.

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That’s long been the goal - gut the professoriate, put in easily replaceable contingent workers, and then you can put money into football and MBA programs… Then a liberal arts education can once again be reserved for the elite white class who can afford it rather than being part of a democratic society with actual social mobility and equity. Contingent instructors who can’t afford to teach less than a half dozen classes a semester doesn’t have time to produce much worthwhile scholarship that helps to improve society. And of course many students have come out of their public school K-12 education with a sense of hostility to their educators and carry that into college. Plus, they are being told that education is a “commodity” that they (or their parents) are paying for, and that we, as college instructors, simply exist to give them grades. We’ve become service sector workers who are not here to produce knowledge, but to help students get jobs.

So, I guess now we’re also expected to read our entire syllabus to our classes, word for word, or we’re “not doing our job properly”…

TLDR, we’re all fucked - and not just us useless college professors, either… I mean all of us. Because if the only people who can produce knowledge are the elite class, then nothing will ever change.

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Well then how do they explain grown-ass adults who don’t read what they are supposed to either? A few years ago I started doing some part time managerial-type work, and boy-howdy people love to ask questions that I already sent the answer for. At first it was alarming but now it’s just part of my assumptions. We spend so much time writing emails with information people need that no one bothers reading, it’s rather depressing to think about.

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I’m a super nerd about this stuff, and currently taking grad school classes off and on, and I could’ve very easily missed this clue. The article said it was buried in a paragraph that is copy/pasted into every syllabus, so it was pretty much a trick.
Every class I sign up for, I print and read and mark up the syllabus, and make notes on my calendar. But if I’m taking 3 classes in a semester, and there’s boilerplate language in each one, damn straight I’m not reading it every time. :woman_shrugging:t2:
This has nothing to do with “kids today” or the professor’s skills. It was just a fun experiment, and now a bunch of students are going to pore over their syllabi next semester. Win, win.

(Or is it “pour over”??? Both seem weird, suddenly.)

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Egads, I’ll stop after this until others weigh in, but don’t even get me started about reading comprehension in professional adults. The saving grace of email is that at least you have written records of, “well, yes, Chad, we had discussed this and you said to go ahead…”

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My morning pore over coffee suddenly takes on new dimensions.

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I did have one student actually get up in the middle class and rant at me for five minutes for having the nerve to change the order of the answers in the multiple choice section, because he’d memorised the pattern of A,B,C,B,D,A,C,… from the previous year’s midterm, and I made him fail! He was going to file a complaint with the head of the University! He seemed to think this was an appropriate thing to do in the middle of a lecture with 80 other students all staring at him like he was some kind of alien. If I had’t known which test was his instantly (it’s hard to get a 1 out of 80 on my tests, but he put in the work and managed it), I’d have thought he was a student in the Drama department doing some kind of “getting over stage fright” exercise.

Of note, not only did I straight-up tell the whole class every year that I made fresh new midterms and exams (web design is a constantly changing field) to deal with course content changes, but I also tell them outright that there are at least two versions (usually more) of the test in the room, and that the tests next to them are different from their own. I had far too many people fail because they weren’t willing to read their own questions, and due to assigned seating, I could track who they copied their answers from.

There’s always going to be people who don’t pay any attention to anything, and no amount of waving it in front of them, jumping up and down and waving your arms, and yelling it are going to get them to notice. (I tried that one year, still had four people fail because they wouldn’t read their own tests.)

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I want to say something here in defense of my colleagues in the Humanities and other ‘writing’ fields.

As a math professor at a major university I’m extremely fortunate, as assignments are generally not difficult to grade and my classes are not huge. Still, being careful (which I try to be) makes grading a long and tedious chore. My colleagues in the writing fields, especially those with large classes, are faced with a backbreaking grading load. Especially for something like “English 100” (or whatever it is called in any given school), where students need to write great deal to become proficient, and modern teaching methods encourage us to adopt homework strategies that mean multiple rewrites, and therefore multiple reads, for each assignment.

The grading “tricks” recommended in practically every “how to survive college teaching” guide - books, forums, etc – involve scanning papers, looking for key points instead of close reading the submission. The purpose of the assignment is not to tax the professor, but to give the student practice in writing, and the points of grading – feedback on key points, and evaluation for the grade – can often be done successfully with such superficial scanning.

The “chicken” thing – if it actually happened – should have be caught, of course, though I can imagine situations where this kind of thing can slip through the cracks.

As for the original post about syllabi: I can certainly see this happening. Some syllabi are more detailed than others, and some of the language in syllabi is there for legal reasons and not that important for the students. (For example, I once had a dean who wouldn’t help me report a student who cheated because I didn’t have “do not cheat” in my syllabus.) I do wish that students with questions about things like how much exams count for the grade would look at the syllabus before emailing me, but even if they read the syllabus carefully at the beginning of the semester there’s no reason why they should remember the answer by the end.

I used to put “read the instructions” tricks in my exams (such as “the answer to problem 6b is 42”), but at some point I grew up and realized that that kind of thing centers the professor, and doesn’t really advance the main goal of an exam, which is to evaluate what the student has learned in the class.

(Edited to correct a mistake that lipped through the cracks.)

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The Chicken example was a submission in a computer science class. I do not absolutely know if the student “really” submitted the document in question, but it was what was in his student upload folder when he was telling the story in the CS lab. I have no doubt about it, at least.

Oddly enough, in my classes that intersected with Humanities and other heavy writing subjects, I have reason to believe he would not have gotten away with it.

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Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo…

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In a move similar to this, the administration at a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon; a sort of text-based MMO) I once moderated for had a signup and entry procedure that required the user to read and agree to an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). At the very end of the AUP was a specific command phrase that the user had to type in to join the game proper. Sadly It was fairly common to see a prospective new player complaining they couldn’t figure out how to complete the registration process.

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That he has that additional slide ready and waiting kills me every time I watch this.

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I used to put “read the instructions” tricks in my exams (such as “the answer to problem 6b is 42”), but at some point I grew up and realized that that kind of thing centers the professor, and doesn’t really advance the main goal of an exam, which is to evaluate what the student has learned in the class.

It may not be the point of an exam to test general life skills, but “read the instructions” (or the related “answer the question that was asked”) is a hugely important piece of advice in many contexts that too many people skip. I’m a lawyer and it comes up all the time in the legal context - are you being deposed? Answer the question that was asked. Are you participating in some sort of consultation process? Answer the question that was asked. But even outside of the strictly legal stuff, it’s not uncommon for me to ask someone a question in email and get back two pages of text which does not actually address the question that I asked.

So yeah, maybe it feels a bit tricksy and isn’t the point of an exam, but I do think “read the instructions” is a valuable skill that too many people lack.

As someone who spent too long in school, I do super appreciate you trying to center the students though.

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Kenan Thompson Reaction GIF by Saturday Night Live

We should all do that, but at some point, they have to do the work. I bend over backwards for them, but I can’t do the work for them.

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I claim my present.

That is not how people read a novel.

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Exactly. Designing high-quality instruction can only go so far. Educators can’t do the actual learning for them. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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I do all I can to put the student at the center of my classes. I really do. I work with them, because many of them are working class, they hold full time jobs, many have kids or they have to care for other family members… I tell them, you show up, do the work, let me know when you’re struggling, and I’ll do all I can to help you get through the class so you can get through your degree. But they have to meet me somewhere… but all too often, the onus is entirely on the professor to “produce results” in the modern, corporate college/university. It’s so little on actual learning now, that it’s depressing.

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If they lose points on part of my exam with topical substance because they haven’t read the instructions, then that’s deserved. Putting an artificial “read the instructions” problem on a math exam because it is a life skill seems like going out of one’s way to trap the student. It also seems like a skill that should be taught and tested before they get to University, or perhaps in a "how to succeed in college " course (which are increasingly part of core curricula).

The point of quizzing students on the syllabus – which I don’t do, but is quite common – is to force the students to read it, and therefore make sure they understand their course responsibilities before it is too late for them to correct themselves. I don’t see that putting a treasure hint in the syllabus and not telling the students about it accomplished this (though it might for his future students who see the story).

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