Incompetent teacher, what to do?

Rhino

My teacher is fairly in incompetent. I'm taking a hybrid course, which is half online and half offline. The online stuff she really sucks at. I could go on a big rant of what she has (or hasn't done), but lets just say she runs the online part like a monkey. I've tried talking to her but she keeps getting really defense "well, that's what the IT told me so that's the way I'm doing it" and "it's not my problem if you have technical issues submitting your grades" [which actually, she is the one that caused the technical issue in the first place].

A lot of energy is just going into fighting her and the online system. In stead of studying I'm having to keep going back and forth with her on very simple things.

I feel like the course is more dramatic bullshit instead of learning the material. I feel if I sat down and learned it on my own I would be far better off then learning it in this environment.

This is at a CC. What recourse do I have? There isn't any class I could transfer in and if I drop I lose the tuition.

Esh

How exactly is her "incompetence" affecting your work in class? Why are you submitting your own grades?

TychoCelchuuu

Do your best and try to get a good grade.

Chanus

You could complain to her department head, I suppose... but, really, it's just one semester... slog through it. It's good real-world practice to put up with incompetence in order to get the job done. :P

Esh

Unless it's adversely affecting you somehow, just do your work, turn it in, and forget about it. It sounds more like you're the one taking the time away from your own studies to fight battles that just aren't worth it.

Forbe!

The real solution is to suck it up. You are probably wasting your time trying to fight her. Unless your grades suffer because of her problems, leave it alone.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

you are lucky that you are in CC where the professor can even take the time to talk to you
I wouldn't worry about it too much and make sure you aren't coming off as superior

MushroomStick

I think the OP is going to have to be more specific about what the problem is. For all we know, the teacher could be trying to run live lectures through dial-up or something.

Gilbert0

Most institutions don't have a choice as to what type of online course system they use. They would have bought one that probably is not very good / stable / intuitive. It might not be her fault.

If there are technical issues, talk to the department or the online support staff.

Forbe!

Also, what level course is it.

Druhim

Honestly, you're going to a community college so yeah you should expect that some of your professors are going to suck. Walk it off, welcome to the real world. When you get out into the job market, you're not going even going to have a dean who doesn't really care about your complaints when you have a boss you don't like.

naporeon

On the other hand, many colleges and universities have an ombudsman to lend you a hand in the event that your gripe is legit. I would check to see if your college offers this service.

Rhino

Esh wrote:

How exactly is her "incompetence" affecting your work in class? Why are you submitting your own grades?

one of many examples. We submit grades into a 'grade box' online. But she has to manually open it and it has an automated close date.

Generally we are suppose to have a week to submit our homework, but she keeps forgetting to open it. Last week she opened it an hour before it closed, so a lot of students weren't able to submit their work (11 pm at night, closed at midnight). She gave them all incompletes because "technical problems aren't my problems" even though it was her that failed to open the box on time. It's states in the syllabubs that we have a week to submit homework.

Another example, she submited the homework in a compressed jpg format. No one could read it. But since it was a "technical problem" she gave everyone incomplete. Her reply was "I did it according to IT instructions, not my problem, take it up with IT if you can't figured it out". I emailed IT and they were like "yea, she needs to use png or stop using compression on jpgs". I forward that to her and she disagreed, stating she had an email from IT from 2 years saying to do it that way and that is "how I've always done it". It's a blurry mess.


So instead of studying we are trying to figure this shit out.

Rhino

week 2 homeowrk, not kidding: http://i.imgur.com/IKOVN.jpg

The Crowing One

Rhino, I hate to be this guy, but you need to suck up and find ways to manage her rather than allowing her to manage you. Get your assignments in before the last moment. Stop worrying about other students and just work around the issues. I can tell you that in the long course of your life, you'll be forced to deal with much bigger issues than this instructor and the real takeaway is that she's teaching you to deal with things most college graduates tend to get floored by the first time around. She isn't doing you any favors, but this is one hell of a learning opportunity. For four months, you can deal with it and learn to roll with the punches.

Rhino wrote:

week 2 homeowrk, not kidding: http://i.imgur.com/IKOVN.jpg

I missed the above, and if that's the case, then you need you contact IT and let them know that she's not getting it done.

The bottom line is that if it's a problem, enough students will get behind it being a problem. If no one submits work because it was unreadable, then there's an issue. If you're worried about the kids who go last minute and get locked out, you can work around that. You never get a bump in grade by pointing out a superior's mistakes.

If you want to talk to someone, talk to Student Services (Student Affairs, at most places). Reslife can also act a 3rd party to facilitate if it's that sort of school.

Esh

I still don't understand what you mean by "submitting grades". Do you mean "submitting homework"?

If you have a week to turn it in, and at the beginning of that time period, the "box" isn't open, e-mail her and tell her it needs to be open. I can't imagine how you could possibly have been made unaware of this unless you were turning it in at the last minute?

If you can't read the homework, tell her. Take it to her office. Show her the problem. No one, no one, is so incompetent that they would tell you to where to stick it and that it's not their problem when it's right in front of their nose. Ask her to directly email you the .jpeg that she's using. If that doesn't work, keep copies of all correspondence and take it to someone above her in the department.

DevoutlyApathetic

Go talk to the Dean of the department. Show him that image. Mention that nobody in the class fulfilled the assignment because it was impossible.

Rhino

Esh wrote:

I still don't understand what you mean by "submitting grades". Do you mean "submitting homework"?

Yes, it's called a grade box. But yes, it's a homework box. You upload your homework. She reviews it and then posts a grade for it. It'll also show your cumulative grade for the class and other stats in regards to your performance.

Esh wrote:

If you have a week to turn it in, and at the beginning of that time period, the "box" isn't open, e-mail her and tell her it needs to be open. I can't imagine how you could possibly have been made unaware of this unless you were turning it in at the last minute?

I emailed her at start of week, she replied "Sounds like a technical problem and technical problems are not my problems". I forwarded to campus IT they said "we can't open it, she has to open it with her id." (apparently IT and her have a long long history). I forward that to her and her and IT go back and forth a bunch (with me awkwardly CCed). IT basically telling her she needs to click a button and her refusing to even try it (very defensively) saying that she had already clicked it last week and didn't need to click it this week. It ended with director of IT said he would stop by her office and I never heard anything else from her on it till it opened 1 hour before close (on a holiday weekend no less).

There was a thread about 20 replies long asking her to open it. She locked the thread half way though the week without reply.

If you can't read the homework, tell her. Take it to her office. Show her the problem. No one, no one, is so incompetent that they would tell you to where to stick it and that it's not their problem when it's right in front of their nose.

There was a thread about 60 replies (175 total students in the class, so about a third posted in that thread and probably a lot via email too). I wasn't the only one having problems or letting her know it didn't work. That 60 post thread, she locked it and replied " It was fine before I put it into the computer, therefore it's a computer problem and technical problems aren't my problems. Contact IT".

Another kid made a new thread on the subject and posted an email from IT basically saying she was doing it wrong. It wasn't even a mean or rude thread, it was "this is what IT said, can you try uploading it like that?". About 4 other students replied before she locked it and gave them all 0 for class participation for disturbing the "class room".

From what I gather, she is an old person and refuses/hates computers. Her and IT also apparently have some type of long standing feud. Just bring up her name to the IT guys gets very deep sighs and painful expressions.

The Crowing One

Rhino, take this to your Dean of Student Affairs. That's the right dept.to handle this and there isn't anything more we can do for you. Don't deal with IT, and don't deal with the instructor. If this is as much of any issue as you say it is you can have the whole class in the room to give a statement.

Essee

Yeah, there is clearly a problem here... In an ordinary situation where you've got a crappy teacher, it's fine to just suck it up and move on, but it's pretty obvious that this is FAR beyond "crappy teacher" territory-- no one can actually be properly graded in this situation. Perhaps, since so many other students had the same problem, you could gather a bunch of students together (as many as would be available at one time) and go complain to your ombudsman or whoever it is that's in charge of student complaints at your college? You should probably provide all the information that proves she's making it impossible for people to be properly graded in the course if you do. Are you able to contact the students in the class through your online learning environment? Usually there's some sort of mail system on these things that allows you to select all students to send e-mails to through the service, so you could then get in contact with a bunch of your peers. It's a pity that the discussion forums for these things can always be viewed by instructors, or that would be a good, easily visible place to organize (obviously, from what you described, she's already been petty about people trying to fix her problems before, so posting publicly would be far too risky). Similarly, if you do this, make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN the instructor and her TAs don't show up in the list of people you're messaging. Sometimes the instructor has both a teacher account and a student account, for testing purposes, and you really don't want to accidentally CC her about this.

I dunno, that was just my first thought, maybe people have other ideas. Obviously the class is getting screwed here, and since the IT department has already tried to get her to fix things, I don't think they'll be able to solve your problem with her, the way things are right now. It's possible that if they were convinced to spend the clearly MOMENTOUS time and effort to go to her office and retrain her in the use of the platform, they might get her to change her behavior that way, but it's questionable at best. You probably need to go up the chain a bit. Regardless of anything, this is a really terrible situation for you and the other students, and I hope it gets resolved (even if it's simply by her accidentally fixing her problems with the system through dumb luck).

The Crowing One

My only concern is that in my experience working in ResLife and Student Affairs, these things tend to get worked out before an issue. Perhaps the school is less able than I'm used to, but if there's an issue the Dean of Students/Dean of Student Affairs is the right person to bring a posse to.

sligmasta

I've dealt with a teacher similar to this. Luckily it didn't involve computers but basically our teacher would assign work then not collect or grade it, try to collect and grade work she had not assigned, missed a horrendous number of classes, and didn't even approach teaching the subject of the class, let alone what was on the syllabus.

You're best course of action is to go speak to the dean of the department (or other administrator above her) and make a formal complaint. Do this in person and bring all evidence with you. That jpg speaks volumes about what you're dealing with. When I went and spoke to the dean I made sure to mention that I was not learning what I needed from the class, how it would leave me unprepared for my future classes in that field, and how I was definitely not getting what I had paid good money for. Also encourage your classmates to go in and make similar complaints.

I know making complaints feels like you're just whining but it can get things done. In my case the teacher was removed and we got a great new teacher who basically was able to cover the whole semesters worth of material in the half semester we had left.

Riale

I would definitely speak to the dean about this, however beforehand I would speak to a few other students in the class and encourage them to do the same. My girlfriend had a similar issue with a teacher at community college a number of years ago, and it didn't get solved until the majority of the class complained to the dean. One voice alone is often not enough, especially if the CC is lax enough in the first place to assign a teacher to an online course that is obviously incapable of using the materials she's presented with. Make sure you have everything documented, and either go in as a group, or individually, but make sure the other students voice their opinion (and if everyone is experiencing this and getting multiple incompletes I'm sure many of them want to complain but don't know what outlet to use).

MegaMan001

This advice is coming from my mother, who is the office manager at Northern Illinois University and handles complaints and registration for the Biology Department. She registers students for classes, handles some IT stuff for the online sections of their classes, and is often the 'face' of the department to students.

You need to print out the appropriate e-mails, including the homework .jpegs, and make an APPOINTMENT with the dean of whatever department / school this class is for (guessing Math?)

Meet with that individual tell them what is going on (unfair incomplete assignments / failure to allow appropriate time to log your homework / whatever other failures you have).

The important thing is to do this EARLY and get your complaints in EARLY because if you have to appeal a grade after the semester you need a paper trail to back yourself up. If possible, get the other members of this class to do it as well.

A direct quote from my mother, "He needs to protect himself and his grade."

EDIT: From me: Don't try and 'suck this up' and 'work through' it as suggested above. It looks like you are not even being given an opportunity to succeed. Clearly that homework is impossible to complete, in fact, I imagine if you printed that off and handed it to her, she couldn't solve it either. Get your evidence, make an appointment with the dean and complain. If you don't, you're going to be on your own when you get a shitty grade and didn't say anything all semester.

Rhino

thanks guys. I found the contact info for Dean of her department. I will try to schedule something with him. I could easily find other students, but I'll talk to him directly before I rally a crew. I have lots of examples and stuff to print out now.

Skoal Cat

Don't "rally" but let people know to contact him and explain the situation in order to support your claims. You don't want a gang, but you do need more people.

Gilbert0

I've worked the helpdesk and know the higher ups at a CC and this does happen. While half a third of the class is discussing it on the board and (lets say) half are having problems, how many have actually TOLD someone? The dean / department head needs to know in person. They are not reviewing class bulletin boards. Hopefully they can do some retraining. Maybe the default option of the scan options changed from png to jpg and she doesn't know. She knows her instructions are to scan "with default settings".

And like others have said, if 1-2 student comes to the office, then it could be a minor issue....if 10-15 or more come by IN PERSON (not email), they'll get to the bottom of it. Rally people to make their own appointments.

Tox

If the "box" is not available online to submit the assignment when you complete it, e-mail it to her from your school e-mail account. Be polite, say something like, "I have completed this assignment, but the submission link is not available, please find the relevant files attached."

If she gives you crap or it continues to be a problem, begin BCC'ing her department head, and continue to conduct yourself in the same manner. Instruct other students to do the same.

If you make an earnest attempt to submit an assignment before the due date and are marked down despite that, you have a case with the department head.

Also remember to note all of that when you fill out the course survey in a couple of months.

Enc

Find the academic dean or chair and make an appointment with him, preferably with several of your classmates. Only by going up the chain will this be resolved. Trust me on this one, I work with students in your situation daily.

mts

i would not try and rally classmates to meet with you. lodge your complaint with the dean as stated above, and then inform your classmates to do the same. it is more effective if there are multiple complaints of the same nature then if 5 people or whatever go in on one

JebusUD

Often college student governments will have an "Academic Affairs Chair" or some such. Or a committee. These people were elected and are usually paid a stipend to go to bat for you on these issues.

I don't know if this holds true for community college though.

Thanatos

mts wrote:

i would not try and rally classmates to meet with you. lodge your complaint with the dean as stated above, and then inform your classmates to do the same. it is more effective if there are multiple complaints of the same nature then if 5 people or whatever go in on one

Yeah, you're a lot more likely to see something get done if the dean has to have ten meetings with one person at a time instead of one meeting with ten people at once.

LadyM

Wow, normally my advice would be "Bad teacher? Suck it up and slog through", but that is just ridiculous.

I agree with everyone saying you should talk with the dean. When I was having "issues" with the registrar's office at my CC (they were not giving me credit for a class I'd taken, for really stupid reasons), the dean came through and fixed things. I hope you have a dean who is just as helpful.

When you talk to the dean, be calm. Or, failing that, upset but not angry. Like, the "I'm so upset about these unfair grades, I am on the verge of tears" kind of upset, not "I can't believe what an IDIOT my teacher is, WHAT A MORON" kind of upset, if you know what I mean. The dean will be able to see for him or herself that the teacher is an idiot, it is pretty self-evident.

If the message board threads are still available (the ones where students asked for help and she locked them--and ESPECIALLY the one where she gave students 0s for participation for "disrupting the board") then print them out to show the dean.

Good luck! I hope you come back and report how it went, I must admit I'm curious about this trainwreck of a teacher.

Hypatia

Esh wrote:

If you have a week to turn it in, and at the beginning of that time period, the "box" isn't open, e-mail her and tell her it needs to be open.

It may be a little late for this because you've already antagonized her and she's probably feeling really defensive, but I'd have said if it hits the night before the deadline, or better yet, 2 nights before the deadline then you could e-mail it to her, print it out, and the next day go to hand it to her, then just say, "Hey, I finished the homework and e-mailed you a copy because I was having trouble with the submission system, and I wanted to make sure you had it on time. Here's also a paper copy just in case, thanks!"

For the unreadable homework, does she have office hours? One option would be to print out a copy of the problem, go to her office hours, and say, "I was having some trouble with the homework this week, could we go over it a little bit together?"

I know this doesn't resolve the problem and things, but it's sort of a way of covering your own ass and trying to put her in a better frame of mind because to her, instead of everyone complaining and her getting defensive, it's more of a "I'm being a good student and trying to learn the material and I'm willing to work for it, won't you please help me?" deal.

Mandres

Hypatia wrote:

Esh wrote:

If you have a week to turn it in, and at the beginning of that time period, the "box" isn't open, e-mail her and tell her it needs to be open.

It may be a little late for this because you've already antagonized her and she's probably feeling really defensive, but I'd have said if it hits the night before the deadline, or better yet, 2 nights before the deadline then you could e-mail it to her, print it out, and the next day go to hand it to her, then just say, "Hey, I finished the homework and e-mailed you a copy because I was having trouble with the submission system, and I wanted to make sure you had it on time. Here's also a paper copy just in case, thanks!"

For the unreadable homework, does she have office hours? One option would be to print out a copy of the problem, go to her office hours, and say, "I was having some trouble with the homework this week, could we go over it a little bit together?"

I know this doesn't resolve the problem and things, but it's sort of a way of covering your own ass and trying to put her in a better frame of mind because to her, instead of everyone complaining and her getting defensive, it's more of a "I'm being a good student and trying to learn the material and I'm willing to work for it, won't you please help me?" deal.

If what the OP has said is true (and it sounds like it is) then this teacher forfeited her right to courtesy when she gave students '0's for disrupting the discussion board.

She needs to be reprimanded by a superior, and removed from the course.

Tastyfish

I'd also get IT to confirm the box opening issue, I'm pretty sure they should have logs of when the window was open to submit work and when it was closed, and that sort of hard evidence would be really useful in proving that work was not being accepted.

DO NOT EXAGGERATE ANYTHING when talking to the Dean or her supervisor, no emotional appeals - just the facts. If the submission window didn't open until an hour before, but did not shut until several days later is a very different thing than it only being open for an hour. Especially as it's then your word against hers as to whether you were warned, and she will likely have people who handed in hard copies.

Also, start handing in hard copies as well. Put them in the internal post or something.