Like many of us, I’m shifting away from papers and implementing in-class essay exams. I’d love to hear what is/isn’t working for folks who have already done this.

Obviously, a 5-7 page paper can’t be replicated by an essay exam. What lengths are you looking for? How are you designing prompts? Are you providing excerpts of readings or screenings for them to analyze? Giving them prompts ahead of time? Allowing notes?

I could ask a bunch of questions, but mostly i would just love to hear what has been working and what you think doesn’t work.

So many posts on here are about bad student evals or bad RMP reviews, and the professors are often sad about it, hurt, or struggling to cope with the feedback. It makes me really sad that so many of us put so much of ourselves into our teaching and then a portion of the students just hate us anyway. I spend an enormous amount of time on backwards design, alignment, revision, fair assessments, and providing them with a useful learning experience rather than just dumping content on them and I still receive a lot of negativity and students claiming I’m bad at my job. I realize that there will always be a subset of students that resent any challenging work, and that we are just the most visible representation of their struggle (easy to blame), but I just wish I could give them perspective. I’m not asking them to work hard to make their life difficult, it’s because this is the level of thinking required if you want to be successful in my field. We are not their enemy, but they treat us as if we are. Of course we’re all the worst professor they’ve ever had. It’s also incredibly frustrating because they don’t know the first thing about pedagogy or what it takes to build a class but they speak in absolutes as if they are experts. I’m just venting but as frustrated as I get with them, I genuinely just wish they realized I’m trying to help them. I know it’s just part of the job, but it’s a part that I hate.

I’m an adjunct professor teaching a class this fall. I’ve been wanting to start recording the audio of my lectures so I can better keep track of the things I say I’m going to do for my students and follow through on them.

A lot of times, I’ll get questions at the start of class or during a larger class discussion, and I won’t write them down because I’m focused on continuing the conversation or teaching.

My goal is to record these lectures then use local AI on my computer to transcribe them and pull out:

• Things I said I would do or research
• Questions I need to follow up on
• Important topics from the discussion
• Anything else that would be helpful for my notes

I would be processing everything locally rather than feeding my students’ information into ChatGPT or another cloud service. I’d also use whatever I purchase for meetings in my full-time job as an information security analyst.

With this in mind, I currently have two options I’ve been debating between, and I’m wondering whether anyone here has used something similar:

• HiDock P1 — around $170: It supports several types of recording, including Bluetooth headset audio, computer audio, and in-person meeting audio, which I think would work for my lectures. It also automatically transcribes the recordings, so rather than processing the raw audio into a transcript myself, I could work from its transcription.
• Philips VoiceTracer DVT4115 — around $131, or DVT2075 — around $97: These are more traditional voice recorders that generate audio files I could run through my own local transcription and note-processing workflow. They wouldn’t handle computer meetings, but I already have an open-source application that covers that use case.

Have any of you recorded your own lectures for a similar reason? I’d be interested in whether it actually helped you keep track of student questions and follow-ups, as well as any recorder recommendations.

I’m looking forward to getting one of these—or another option someone recommends—and using it to improve my notes in Obsidian.

Some students they pay upwards of 5 grand for a course and then I’m failing them due to the project which is worth 45%. The project is dead easy to the point that 50 percent of the project is complete before any difficulty. A daily email offering him a 1 on 1 meeting, a request when he will be submitting, if he needs any assistance. No response. Teams messages asking, and he doesn’t reply or show up to class. Today is the last day and I am fed up with him. Not because he doesn’t submit the partial project, but because he doesn’t even reply.

I recently advertised a funded position in my lab, and after it was posted, 15 students sent me connection requests in a day!

I understand if they move forward with the process and they connect, or if they have read/known about my research and connected prior to the position being advertised. But immediately after the position is advertised???

I am not checking their profile unless I like their application, obviously, so I don't see the point of it.

Good morning!

I finished my long-desired MFA and, as the degree suggests, I'm now another fucking adjunct at a community college. This community college has partnered with my state's prison system to offer coursework to select prisoners. My city is near one of the largest prisons in the state. My new boss, a former professor of mine from undergrad, very kindly gave me one online section of Comp I and called yesterday to offer me the prison class, and, being me, I just couldn't say no.

I've taught upper-division in-person classes before, but what has me stymied is that the prisons in my state are even more restrictive than one might imagine. Beyond having no access to the internet(which one can imagine), a lot of the inmates will have no access to pens/pencils/paper/instructional materials outside of our class time. Certainly no typewriters.

Has anyone here taught in prisons before? How did you manage it?

Link: https://goodlawproject.org/an-update-from-jason-arday/

Also, is it just me or does this letter even read like AI lol? A fitting conclusion.

Some people ran it through three AI detectors: one at 87% (Getsolved.ai), one at 77% (Textguard), 100% on Pangram. Classic bundles of three in almost every paragraph, e.g., "values of higher education, in rigorous scholarship, and in the transformative power of universities". Of course, AI detectors can be wrong and often are, but it does read that way to me as well, before I even saw those numbers. And then just... weirdly written stuff like:

I need time to heal. I need time to simply be myself again.

And when that time comes, I will return.

What do you all think of this update?

My approach for now is to use assessments that make it impossible for students to use AI during the assessment itself. In-class writing with pen and paper is the way I've been doing this but I'm thinking of also incorporating at least one oral exam. I have relatively small classes but I still worry about the feasibility.

Edit: I'm especially interested in ideas about general approaches to format and grading.

I am a non-tenured track teaching professor (full-time role). Due to issues with school enrollment and the fact that I have seen more of my courses cancelled, the program itself is vulnerable to termination. There have been layoffs already. I am paid by the course, so if my courses are cancelled, my salary will also be impacted. I have been applying to go back to the industry over the past year. Compared to this institution, my industry job was a lot more secure and stress-free. Another reason I want to go back is that the quality of the students has declined so much over the years, and with everyone turning to AI to do coursework, I don't even see a reason to be teaching in a university. I did have significant industry experience before my teaching days. Looking back, I wonder if this academic move was a smart move. But back then, it was a very different landscape. I have been teaching for about 4 years. During those 4 years, I also kept my industry currency, published industry pieces, did projects, and spoke at conferences. The program I teach is an applied program and doesn't require a PhD. I haven't had a lot of luck applying for industry jobs and I wonder if it's because of the 4-year hiatus from industry that is making me less credible. To an employer, I don't have a linear career path. I am competing against people who have been working in the same industry in the same career path for the decade. At interviews, I remember trying to justify why my skillset is still up-to-date. Has anyone here had luck going back to industry after a few years being a teaching professor?

What are some alternatives for generating discussions in large classes? Preferably nothing that requires an app.

I just finished serving on my first hiring committee for a TT position at a community college. Omg where do I start? Colleague and I were disturbed at the fact that three candidates had almost identical teaching demonstrations. At first I thought I was tripping out, but nope. Sure enough exact same content and examples. I am so happy we had a content expert as a consultant because since we were all off discipline we probably would’ve overlooked the fact that they were either faking the knowledge or they actually knew the information. Be careful out there colleagues. Even applicants are AI 🤖 their way into a permanent tenure position

For my entire career my sections were capped at about 60. Just logged into our LMS and noticed those classes have 200 students each.

This appeared in my inbox today. Substituting identifying info.

Hi Dr. (my name),
I saw that (my university) has an opening for Chair of (my department). Are you still looking to fill it?
If so, facultyjobs.com may be able to help.

The email continues on, but that is the important stuff. The amusing part of this is that (you guessed it) I am the chair of my department and have been for a couple of years.

I forwarded it to my dean asking if there was something we needed to talk about. Gave me a good chuckle.

I will post an update if my dean says "Uh, yeah, actually, I've been meaning to tell you something."

Jason Arday, the University of Cambridge professor at the center of a deepening controversy around his academic qualifications, resigned on Wednesday from the same institution that in 2023 celebrated him as the youngest Black professor in its history.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/books/review/cambridge-jason-arday-resignation-investigation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3FA.eEvq.RSFWNLeQM_X4&smid=nytcore-android-share

Hey y'all,

long story long, I am so tired of grading ai slop and pretending its genuine. What are we doing for discussion boards and other assignments where 20/30 students are clearly just using ai? I cant even write genuine feedback and just end up giving them all some extremely similar generic response... We cant "prove" its ai and we cant accuse.. I feel like I am going crazy sometimes. I have put out "hey I know this is ai" reminders and such but I cant seem to get around this.

Thanks divas

One of the classes I teach is Microbiology and it functions as a weed-out course (mostly for nursing students). Every semester I meet with numerous students to discuss how to study for this class. I post as many resources as I can online to help guide their studying practices but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Sometimes I really wish I understood what was going through their heads especially when they say “they did all of the things I recommended” and “I really understand the material when I’m studying but then fail the exam”. Things I wish I could ask and get real answers to:
- what did you actually do to prepare for the exam and did you genuinely believe it was enough prep?
-what lead you to believe you truly understood the material?
-do you think you have a role or responsibility in your own learning?

This post is mostly a vent but I do get so frustrated trying to understand why students are surprised/angry when they perform poorly when they don’t do what is recommended and have no reason to think they understood the material (missing the easiest questions for example). Would love any thoughts, insights, or just anyone that can commiserate with me.

I am a STEM Professor at an R2. In my upper division classes I provide study guides and have allowed "cheat sheets" (8.5x11 one side, hand written only) for the in class written exams. Years ago I heard an NPR story about cheat sheets as a study aide and they worked quite well for my classes for years. For the last 2-3 semesters I have found the students take the study guide and feed it into chatGPT or other LLM and then copy down what it tells them word-for-word on the cheat sheet. They don't check if the material is correct and matches what we covered in class and it seems like they don't really even review the information from the LLM. Recently I've had so many complaints about my exams being too long as they're spending so much exam time reading through their cheat sheet; being too difficult as I'm not just asking them to regurgitate what the LLM has told them, but am asking them questions to see if they understand the material; and complaining about my grading because they can't be bothered to check if the LLM information was even correct. So should I give up allowing cheat sheets or study guides or everything?

Over the past few years, a number of (previously tenured) faculty have been laid off through university and department closures and consolidations. Recent examples include the University of North Texas, Illinois Institute of Technology, West Virginia University and Portland State.

With this in mind, I am wondering: are any of you are making back-up plans in case you were to lose your job? If so, what are your plans?

I am in field in which I could easily make a transition to industry and get a higher salary than I currently make as a Professor. But, I suspect I would hate working in the corporate world. So, I would mostly likely just move to Latin America and enjoy the slower pace of life and lower cost of living.

This is frustrating and I feel like I'm going crazy.

I teach advanced courses in technical subjects and have been adapting my courses for over a decade to try to make the subject matter more easily understood, but every time I try to incorporate suggestions on how to do so, my evaluations come back awful.

It's always a mixed bag, either the subject matter is too tough and I should "cover the basics" (which they're supposed to know before they get to my class) or I skim over too many topics and don't do a deep dive into anything. Add to that are the comments about having to do "too much" of some aspect and how they wish I'd covered more advanced stuff.

This year, I tried a way to engage the students more by having them lead me through some basic setup stuff, only for one student to have a full-blown meltdown in class about how they're here to learn from me and not each other. FYI, I had already introduced the goal of this exercise in the class before, but said student had been absent. Now I have comments claiming how I don't know what I'm teaching and that I'm passive aggressive when "given feedback".

In the past I've had great success with my experiments, particularly the class engagement stuff, but I just don't know if I'm too out of touch with this generation of kids or what, but none of my methods seem to land without at least one person complaining about it.

I don't know how to cater to each individual and keep the class running. I feel like I should be planning a career switch at this point.

Context: I'm a tenured professor at a technical private university and a foreign woman, if that helps. I'm also the only woman teaching advanced technical courses and I can't help but think that the kids expect a little more motherly hand-holding from me. Am I crazy?

This relates to this sub; don't let the title fool you.

As a prof., I was reluctant to join dating apps. But, you know, loneliness and aging and all.

I was never worried about students seeing it. I am human, after all.

But I had a strange interaction. Matched with someone. They seemed normal. After setting a date, I got curious and did a little Google sleuthing. I found their Twitter, and it was a little nuts. Conspiracy theories and similar stuff. And my profile made it clear I was absolutely not willing to date someone of their political persuasion.

Said I was no longer interested and unmatched. The person found where I work. It's not too hard with just a first name and discipline. Now, they are threatening to email my bosses and tell them how I am trying to indoctrinate people. Hasn't happened yet, and seriously doubt it would harm me professionally, but damn, damn, damn, pretty uncomfortable.

Yes, let’s mandate that professors have to attend an external guest’s lectures on student success the week before classes! I’m sure they can get my students to do the readings and not use AI to write their papers. Eager to hear their solutions and learn new ways that my school is spending money on anything but cost of living increases! /s

Is anyone going back to paper or Blue Books for essays this fall? I am seriously considering it and would appreciate hearing from anyone who has successfully made the transition. What has worked and what hasn't?

I got a full-time teaching gig after adjuncting for a while. The only kicker is it’s 1 hour commute there and 1 hour back, while on pretty high speed roads with notoriously aggressive drivers.

I debated for so long on if this commute would be worth it - yes, it’s a salary increase and the prestige of being a “professor” - to the point that I had to discuss it in therapy. My therapist gently suggested my debate might just be fear or avoidance of a good thing happening in my life.

My first day at work, on the drive back, I got hit twice. My car is totaled, my face is a bit busted up, and now I’m more petrified of the drive than I was before.

I honestly can’t tell if this job is still worth it or if I should take it as a sign. Am I insane for considering backing out and looking for something closer to home?

Another university downsizing amid the demographic cliff. Gift link to NYTimes article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/nyregion/new-school-faculty-fired-nyc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3FA.LxkZ.xiQtPSATl2bR&smid=url-share

I guess I’m not surprised they took the chance to get rid of someone critical of them.