u/centralgyri

Teaching my first online async class this upcoming fall and I’m not too happy about it. It’s a lifecycle nutrition course. I would have loved to implement some counseling skills (how to talk to each age group), and plenty of group discussion.

I don’t want to rely too much on essays and discussion boards because of all the ai bs. Do you think doing video submissions is crazy??? What are your online async must have tips? Also how the heck do you grade participation?

I'm an adjunct professor in public health and LOVE teaching and research. I'm applying to PhD programs for Fall 2027 and genuinely am so excited - I'm one of those people that can just talk and smile so much about my topic interests. ANYWAY, I just looked at my feedback from this past semester and got absolutely destroyed so bad I'm on the verge of tears and have a pit in my stomach. I taught this course last year and get relitively good reviews and people said they really enjoyed the course, found it to broaden their understanding, and loved my teaching style

For background, I did have a 2 month old baby when I started and I think I planned too much in my lectures/assignments for me to efficiently grade them, but I thought my lecutres were very up to date and relevant to the fields they were going into. I think being a new mom did for sure make me kinda scatter brained, but I know for a fact that I know my material and am extremely passionate about the topic.

This year omg, "too many tangents that weren't connected to the course" "if you want to improve the course, don't let her teach it", "she is lazy and incompetent", "whatever she "taught us" went in one ear and out the other", "she doesn't care and has an inability to teach the course", "she graded out papers too hard and required us to go to the writing center even though I've always passed my papers"

I guess I'm just looking for some motivation to stay at it and other stories you've gotten from your students. This is my first time getting majority negative feedback like this so it's a big disappointment. :(

Starting to get myself together for this upcoming application cycle. I'm looking at schools in public health, health behavior and society, and schools with medical anthropology concentrations (Johns Hopkins, UC Irvine, Brown, UNC Chapel Hill, Harvard, Yale, and UC Berkeley).

For those in this field or similar, do you think I should reach out to express interest with working with the prospective advisors?

Also how much is too much in explaining the research interests that I have? I feel like I can talk about my topic for 25 years and want to say it all, but obviously know I have to limit my rambling to get my point across.