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[purpletater]

Dear all,

I am an occasional lurker and just happened to discover this thread. Now I must confess that the student who posted the query is a student in my class. So I would like to offer a bit of clarification and illumination. This was a lower-division undergraduate class for non-majors. We were exploring philosophies of the good life from multiple cultural and disciplinary perspectives. Students have been taking life histories as part of this exploration and have apparently really gotten into discussing some rather deep issues with lots of other people.

For a recent assignment, students were asked to consider the place of education in a good life from the perspective of different types of people – one of the groups being graduate students. Students were encouraged to talk to real-life people from those backgrounds, and I expected that they would make use of the many grad students on our campus. I am actually quite impressed that one (or more) of my students found the CHE forums and posed the questions here to get perspectives outside the immediate pool on our campus. I am especially impressed given that the students in my class are primarily frosh and sophomores. I can assure you that the questions were genuine and the students were serious. 

As a proud and grateful instructor, I want to thank everyone who replied and helped my students. All of the students in my class did a terrific job, but the students who tackled the “grad students” perspective truly did a bang-up job in their presentation this week. So thank you, thank you for being kind and helpful to my students! And if my students are still lurking to see if anyone else responded: you did a great job and make teaching fun!

~Purpletater

[mouseman]

Dear all,

I am an occasional lurker and just happened to discover this thread. Now I must confess that the student who posted the query is a student in my class. So I would like to offer a bit of clarification and illumination. This was a lower-division undergraduate class for non-majors. We were exploring philosophies of the good life from multiple cultural and disciplinary perspectives. Students have been taking life histories as part of this exploration and have apparently really gotten into discussing some rather deep issues with lots of other people.

For a recent assignment, students were asked to consider the place of education in a good life from the perspective of different types of people – one of the groups being graduate students. Students were encouraged to talk to real-life people from those backgrounds, and I expected that they would make use of the many grad students on our campus. I am actually quite impressed that one (or more) of my students found the CHE forums and posed the questions here to get perspectives outside the immediate pool on our campus. I am especially impressed given that the students in my class are primarily frosh and sophomores. I can assure you that the questions were genuine and the students were serious. 

As a proud and grateful instructor, I want to thank everyone who replied and helped my students. All of the students in my class did a terrific job, but the students who tackled the “grad students” perspective truly did a bang-up job in their presentation this week. So thank you, thank you for being kind and helpful to my students! And if my students are still lurking to see if anyone else responded: you did a great job and make teaching fun!

~Purpletater

A couple of comments: 
1.  A student who wishes to do something like that should introduce him/herself, and explain the purpose of the post.  It is polite.  Furthermore, since the student is using sharing data with others, she/he should identify her/himselve.  While these are anonymous (or pseudonymous) fora, the student is using our words and info for another purpose, and we deserve to know where these end up.
2.  Registering, logging in, posting, and logging out again without returning is generally the modus operandi of a spam bot, so discourage students from posting their queries this way.  They should log in when they check the responses, and, perhaps, acknowledge the responses.
3. Another polite thing for your student to do is to return to the thread, and personally thank the people who answered.

Overall, doing these would have garnered many more serious responses, as well as increase the possibility that the student could return with more questions without getting flamed. 

[kedves]

It's also very strange and discourages participation to have the survey answers visible to everyone rather than using an easy, free survey site (e.g. SurveyMonkey) and linking to that.

[voxprincipalis]

The fora are not an appropriate place for this. We are not a 50,000-member focus group. I was going to say that I think this kind of activity also may be prohibited by the fora's user agreement, but apparently since the fora redesign last summer the page has been lost. (This is the first time I've looked for it since then.) We don't help students with homework here -- any student, any homework. It's not done.

Purpletater, if you are really the student's professor, then you probably feel you have the obligation to make every moment a positive teaching experience for him. We, on the other hand, have no such obligation. Student wanders into water with sharks, student gets bitten. (Actually, this student didn't even really get nibbled. We just played the Jaws theme in his ear.) And, furthermore, it's not that sharks are mean creatures by nature, but it's a good lesson in the possible consequences of wandering into an environment where you don't know the norms and have not chosen to (or are not able to) communicate according to the standards expected.

And it *is* crappy survey design and process.

VP

[prytania3]

The fora are not an appropriate place for this. We are not a 50,000-member focus group. I was going to say that I think this kind of activity also may be prohibited by the fora's user agreement, but apparently since the fora redesign last summer the page has been lost. (This is the first time I've looked for it since then.) We don't help students with homework here -- any student, any homework. It's not done.

Purpletater, if you are really the student's professor, then you probably feel you have the obligation to make every moment a positive teaching experience for him. We, on the other hand, have no such obligation. Student wanders into water with sharks, student gets bitten. (Actually, this student didn't even really get nibbled. We just played the Jaws theme in his ear.) And, furthermore, it's not that sharks are mean creatures by nature, but it's a good lesson in the possible consequences of wandering into an environment where you don't know the norms and have not chosen to (or are not able to) communicate according to the standards expected.

And it *is* crappy survey design and process.

VP

Actually, Vox, the math, accounting, and finance people help me with mine, but I'm a special case. :)

[purpletater]

Just wanted to add that I am not condoning or condemning this survey, but rather simply wanted to explain and clarify to those of you who wandered into this thread. Had I known in advance that the students were considering this, there would have been a conversation about appropriateness and protocol. But I didn't. Hence I wanted to let you all know that these were simply earnest students taking initiative. Hopefully we can all now go enjoy our own good weekend lives and this thread can disappear on its own.

[spectacle]

I am actually quite impressed that one (or more) of my students found the CHE forums and posed the questions here to get perspectives outside the immediate pool on our campus. I am especially impressed given that the students in my class are primarily frosh and sophomores. I can assure you that the questions were genuine and the students were serious. 

Why are you impressed?  A google search of "graduate student forum" turns up the CHE grad student forums as the second hit.  So you're impressed that the student did a google search and copied and pasted the questions here rather than going to the trouble of talking to someone face-to-face?  I'd be furious that they approached the assignment in such a lazy fashion. 

Hopefully we can all now go enjoy our own good weekend lives and this thread can disappear on its own.

Yeah, people love to say things like that here, but unfortunately you don't get to control whether people respond on a public forum.

In order for your students to have a learning experience, you need to have an apparently much belated talk with them about what a "good job" is in gathering this kind of information.

Definitely agreed.

[tinyzombie]

I am actually quite impressed that one (or more) of my students found the CHE forums and posed the questions here to get perspectives outside the immediate pool on our campus. I am especially impressed given that the students in my class are primarily frosh and sophomores. I can assure you that the questions were genuine and the students were serious. 

Why are you impressed?  A google search of "graduate student forum" turns up the CHE grad student forums as the second hit.  So you're impressed that the student did a google search and copied and pasted the questions here rather than going to the trouble of talking to someone face-to-face?  I'd be furious that they approached the assignment in such a lazy fashion. 

I'd be furious if I were one of your non-lazy students, assuming you have any.

This assignment's execution is horrendous.

[tee_bee]

Indeed. And if you're a professor whose students collect information using surveys of live people, there are human subjects and survey ethics and all sorts of other things to consider. They're not odious issues, except for some IRBs, but they're worth knowing about and definitely worthy of one's attention, if one is modeling proper research methods for students. And, sorry to say, surveys--even poorly conceived ones in philosophy--are research.

I don't think we should beat up the OP too much on this--but OP, if you're there, keep these things in mind before your university has to remind you--which is really not very fun.