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[blackwaterdraw]

I have been teaching the same course online for ten years. I have honed directions carefully to try to explain procedures. I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last. Last year perhaps four students of 30 got lost on the first assignment and couldn't figure out how to submit the work.
This summer HALF the class of 30 did not figure out how to submit the work properly on the first assignment. Nothing has changed except the students and the year! Is it global warming?

[conjugate]

I have been teaching the same course online for ten years. I have honed directions carefully to try to explain procedures. I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last. Last year perhaps four students of 30 got lost on the first assignment and couldn't figure out how to submit the work.
This summer HALF the class of 30 did not figure out how to submit the work properly on the first assignment. Nothing has changed except the students and the year! Is it global warming?

Possibly the luck of the draw.  I know the students in your area (more precisely, in the area where I deduce you live from your moniker) and you can get some really unengaged, entitled, and inert students.  Scold them gently if at all, and encourage them to read the instructions more carefully.  Good luck.

[spyzowin]

I have been teaching the same course online for ten years. I have honed directions carefully to try to explain procedures. I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last. Last year perhaps four students of 30 got lost on the first assignment and couldn't figure out how to submit the work.
This summer HALF the class of 30 did not figure out how to submit the work properly on the first assignment. Nothing has changed except the students and the year! Is it global warming?

Well, there's your problem. If your course is ten years old and has had some tinkering with directions and so on... then it's time for a major refresh. Why not rich media instructions? Quick video guide to using the course? An embedded video run through for each assignment?  Perhaps rather than that, you need to create new assignments.

Frankly, and in my professional opinion (eg not just me being a jerk), the lifespan of an online course should not extend past 3 years without a careful review of every single element. After five years, I'd be embarrassed using the same site, no matter how much I'd refined my approach.

In a decade, students change. They don't necessarily get better or worse, just different. They've grown up with different popular culture, different mores, different politics, different history.

If in 1990, someone had handed me a stack of IBM punch cards, I would have walked out of the room laughing hysterically.

[conjugate]

I have been teaching the same course online for ten years. I have honed directions carefully to try to explain procedures. I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last. Last year perhaps four students of 30 got lost on the first assignment and couldn't figure out how to submit the work.
This summer HALF the class of 30 did not figure out how to submit the work properly on the first assignment. Nothing has changed except the students and the year! Is it global warming?

Well, there's your problem. If your course is ten years old and has had some tinkering with directions and so on... then it's time for a major refresh. Why not rich media instructions? Quick video guide to using the course? An embedded video run through for each assignment?  Perhaps rather than that, you need to create new assignments.

Frankly, and in my professional opinion (eg not just me being a jerk), the lifespan of an online course should not extend past 3 years without a careful review of every single element. After five years, I'd be embarrassed using the same site, no matter how much I'd refined my approach.

In a decade, students change. They don't necessarily get better or worse, just different. They've grown up with different popular culture, different mores, different politics, different history.

If in 1990, someone had handed me a stack of IBM punch cards, I would have walked out of the room laughing hysterically.

This is a good point, but consider that the OP is concerned with the difference between last year's students and this year's students.  While a major overhaul may be in order (indeed, if OP hasn't been modifying and fine-tuning regularly, it's overdue) that isn't a good explanation for the difference in a year.

The OP (I notice on review) did say that "I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last."  This suggests that he or she may have been modifying the course regularly up until now, or not.  The puzzle is, could things have changed in one year?  My own suspicion is that this is statistical noise.

Other factors to consider: Is there a recent change in admission requirements, placement tests, or student demographics?  That might explain some or all of the difference.

[spyzowin]

I have been teaching the same course online for ten years. I have honed directions carefully to try to explain procedures. I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last. Last year perhaps four students of 30 got lost on the first assignment and couldn't figure out how to submit the work.
This summer HALF the class of 30 did not figure out how to submit the work properly on the first assignment. Nothing has changed except the students and the year! Is it global warming?

Well, there's your problem. If your course is ten years old and has had some tinkering with directions and so on... then it's time for a major refresh. Why not rich media instructions? Quick video guide to using the course? An embedded video run through for each assignment?  Perhaps rather than that, you need to create new assignments.

Frankly, and in my professional opinion (eg not just me being a jerk), the lifespan of an online course should not extend past 3 years without a careful review of every single element. After five years, I'd be embarrassed using the same site, no matter how much I'd refined my approach.

In a decade, students change. They don't necessarily get better or worse, just different. They've grown up with different popular culture, different mores, different politics, different history.

If in 1990, someone had handed me a stack of IBM punch cards, I would have walked out of the room laughing hysterically.

This is a good point, but consider that the OP is concerned with the difference between last year's students and this year's students.  While a major overhaul may be in order (indeed, if OP hasn't been modifying and fine-tuning regularly, it's overdue) that isn't a good explanation for the difference in a year.

The OP (I notice on review) did say that "I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last."  This suggests that he or she may have been modifying the course regularly up until now, or not.  The puzzle is, could things have changed in one year?  My own suspicion is that this is statistical noise.

Other factors to consider: Is there a recent change in admission requirements, placement tests, or student demographics?  That might explain some or all of the difference.

I know of a situation where an institution had a 3.0 cumulative GPA gate on fully online course enrollment. The gate was lowered to 2.5 cumulative GPA and the impact was immediate and far more profound than anyone could have possibly predicted.

I agree with you, however, it's probably just noise.

[changinggears]

This is a good point, but consider that the OP is concerned with the difference between last year's students and this year's students.  While a major overhaul may be in order (indeed, if OP hasn't been modifying and fine-tuning regularly, it's overdue) that isn't a good explanation for the difference in a year.

The OP (I notice on review) did say that "I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last."  This suggests that he or she may have been modifying the course regularly up until now, or not.  The puzzle is, could things have changed in one year?  My own suspicion is that this is statistical noise.

Other factors to consider: Is there a recent change in admission requirements, placement tests, or student demographics?  That might explain some or all of the difference.

I know of a situation where an institution had a 3.0 cumulative GPA gate on fully online course enrollment. The gate was lowered to 2.5 cumulative GPA and the impact was immediate and far more profound than anyone could have possibly predicted.

I agree with you, however, it's probably just noise.

Chime.  Last summer, my fresh comp 2 students were hard-working, average writers who were able, through diligence, to become good writers.   It was obvious they wanted to do the work and pass the class.  I thought, "Oh, students who take fresh comp during the summer must really be motivated.  I like that.  I'll teach again next summer."
Flash forward to this summer.  Same course.  Same number of students.  Complete duds.  Won't lift a finger to write a single note.  Half of  them have, at this point, failed the course with no hope of passing, but they're still just sitting there like lumps on a rotten, stinky log.
Students aren't fruit.  You never get two baskets of apples.  Sometimes you get apples, sometimes you get rotten tomatoes.
<Bitter?  No!  What in the world would make you suggest such thing?>

[blackwaterdraw]

Amnirov may have the clue: The demographics have changed. They changed last year, but I think the course has been listed even further and wider at various vocational schools. It is popular because it is inexpensive.

[spork]

[. . .]

If your course is ten years old and has had some tinkering with directions and so on... then it's time for a major refresh.

[. . .]

If the folks at Blackboard don't have this philosophy, why should the instructor?

[spyzowin]

[. . .]

If your course is ten years old and has had some tinkering with directions and so on... then it's time for a major refresh.

[. . .]

If the folks at Blackboard don't have this philosophy, why should the instructor?

Because diligent faculty have a thing called ethics. Blackboard is a corporation designed only to make profit for its shareholders. It needs to be kicked by the Invisible Boot (tm).

[destination]

I have been teaching the same course online for ten years. I have honed directions carefully to try to explain procedures. I have the same course set-up for summer this year as last. Last year perhaps four students of 30 got lost on the first assignment and couldn't figure out how to submit the work.
This summer HALF the class of 30 did not figure out how to submit the work properly on the first assignment. Nothing has changed except the students and the year! Is it global warming?

Yes, it IS "global warming"

[polly_mer]

Based on the huge variance in abilities by sections in my face-to-face classes of the same class in the same semester (the afternoon section is always far weaker academically than the morning section, but the afternoon section is more creative than the morning section), I was thinking statistical noise.

However, this information

Amnirov may have the clue: The demographics have changed. They changed last year, but I think the course has been listed even further and wider at various vocational schools. It is popular because it is inexpensive.

screams "Let in far more people looking for the fast, cheap, easy route with predictable results".

[blackwaterdraw]

The huddled masses who cannot read

[proftowanda]

Would that I could determine more demographic data about my current online students to explain the apparent illiteracy, illogic, etc.

One demographic datum that I can see is a sizeable increase in "guest" students, those who are taking a summer course from my campus but come from other campuses -- and in their self-introductions (again, online) to the class, they all come from quite different ones than my massive, public, urban campus of lesser repute locally than it deserves.  That is, the "guests" are back home from small campuses, private campuses, etc.

So I am seeing more of a symptom that I saw before in only a few such students then:  They did not come into the course with expectations that the work would be challenging, as demanding as work at their campuses -- plus some expectation again of me that there would be much hand-holding, even daily, with many individual emails repeating again and again the expectations of them and their work that are in the syllabus, after all. 

And those expectations were hammered home again and again in new course tools that I inaugurated this time, such as a pre-courses quiz to test understanding of the syllabus as well as a course contract.  But as the syllabus was not personally delivered to each and every one, perhaps that is the reason why such students seem more prone to pleas for me to exempt them from the syllabus expectations of all students.  (I am sure that the reason is not that small private campuses allow special treatment for certain students and not all.)

[histchick]

And those expectations were hammered home again and again in new course tools that I inaugurated this time, such as a pre-courses quiz to test understanding of the syllabus as well as a course contract.  But as the syllabus was not personally delivered to each and every one, perhaps that is the reason why such students seem more prone to pleas for me to exempt them from the syllabus expectations of all students.  (I am sure that the reason is not that small private campuses allow special treatment for certain students and not all.)

You mean you don't hand-deliver (or at least FedEx) the syllabus?  <grins>  The only reason I am keeping my insanity during this first online course is that (most) of the students are on the ball.  I was very, very, fortunate indeed with this group of CC students. 

[fishprof]

I get the same "but I am an A-student at VastlySuperiortoThisU" in my face to face classes as well.  They are genuinely surprised that my college course here at NEStateU is actually a real college course.

I dread having to deal with this in online format in two weeks...