u/retrometro81

This past academic year was my 15th year of college teaching (21st if I count being a GTA). Despite years of excellent evaluations and even a teaching award, I’ve never felt so defeated with teaching after this past semester. A significant portion of students seem annoyed to be there. They frequently skip class, the ones who attended often didn’t take notes during lecture or participate in class discussions, they were “whatever” about exams and projects, and somehow it was all my fault when they earned low grades. (OK, not really my fault, but that’s what the vibe felt like).

I honestly don’t know what to do going forward. Continuing teaching the way I am now isn’t going to serve the students or me well. Going draconian on attendance and late work policies seems likely to produce more whining and resentment. And I can’t dumb my class content down anymore than I have already. It’s a a catch-22.

Does anyone have any words of wisdom on how I get through this? I’m in my mid 40s and at least 15 years from retirement I’m also in a blue state with a growing population, so changing universities (which is hard to begin with in my field) could easily be out of the pot and into the frying pan.

I’ve shifted most of my undergrad classes to having multimedia projects. The final product doesn’t feel as in-depth as essays, but they’re harder to fake with AI and I appreciate being able to hear students’ authentic voices.

But much to surprise, I still have a number of colleagues who still assign essays in their classes who say that AI isn’t “that bad” if you build in scaffolded components and reflection. I don’t totally get it. Curious to hear what others do — are you still assigning out of class essays, and if so, under what parameters? How do you deal with AI use?