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Author Topic: Quitting due to red tape.  (Read 8245 times)
polly_mer
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Posts: 30,222

hiding out from my grading. Shhh!


« Reply #15 on: May 28, 2011, 04:25:55 PM »

I filled out lots and lots of forms as an adjunct at a CC.  I didn't fill out quite the forms that Gekko did (my attendance forms were a piece of cake, which was good because I did them four times during the semester), but I did have to show how my assessments were aligned with the course objectives and provide exquisite details on all of the things that are near and dear to the hearts of EdD's, but no one who teaches on the ground and certainly not to my students who had to scroll past all that detail to get to the part they cared about (i.e., the particular problem numbers from the textbook for that week's homework).
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If you haven't got either the anatomical or metaphorical balls to post your own question on a pseudonymous internet forum, then academia is the wrong job for you.
glowdart
that's a thing that I keep in the back of my head
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« Reply #16 on: May 28, 2011, 10:38:50 PM »

In response to larry's query...

I complete electronic notifications for progress at points x, y and z in the class. Once this is done, they must be submitted by paper, completely filled in by hand (check marks for specific days attended, etc.) and singed in a color other than black. The electronic and paper versions go to different people. Now a paper version (copied and then signed) needs to go to a third person.

I've done this type of attendance reporting at weeks two, midterms and with final grades, but not this to level of insanity. 

(and I love the unintentional typo of "singed" for what you have to do to that sheet.  I'd want to torch a whole stack of them at the end of that process.)

An assessment of an assignment needs to be completed as well using a proprietary software that's difficult to get students to sign up for. I spend more time getting my students to register for this than getting them to complete their work. Once logged in, I "assess" their work based on four questions, ranking productivity from 1-4. An "expert" then goes in an compares my assessment to his own.

Someone tried to start this kind of bulls*** assessment process at a school I was at.  There was an outright revolt by tenured faculty and sighs of relief from the untenured.  And then someone suggested we have the adjunct faculty do it, and the entire tenured & untenured faculty managed to finally agree on something - that this was a bad, bad, bad idea.  And then some of the faculty decided to try the first plan anyway, and the instrument was revealed to be the utterly flawed piece of s*** that we knew it was going to be.  But did that stop some people from keeping on?  Of course not.  But at least the adjuncts didn't have to deal with it.   

Then there's the shepherding of students through the evaluation process regarding my instruction at the end, plus three different surveys throughout the term I must take regarding the course, plus notifications to various individuals of changes to course outline or syllabus.

Uh... no.  End of semester evals, yes, but the rest of this?  Unless we're cancelling class or physically going to be meeting someplace other than the normal room, we don't tell anyone what's going on after submitting the syllabi on day one. 
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