My professor seems to be trying to fail everyone!

[minkajane]

I'm taking Geology 102 online. Unfortunately, the assignments seem more like graduate-level work. He seems to be laboring under the assumption that all of his students have taken trig, despite the fact that the only prerequisite for this course is Geo 101 (no math involved). There are calculations after calculations and we aren't taught how to do any of it. It's assumed we know. I haven't seen a homework assignment yet that has anything to do with what is discussed either in the book or the lectures. The quizzes are almost as bad. I don't know where he is expecting us to get all this information that he's not giving us.

All of the students in the class have been emailing each other back and forth. One student even started a private chat room where we could compare notes and we're all struggling hard with this class. The homework assignments take 3-4 hours to complete, my calculations are always off, and when the grades are put up, they include snarky comments that again assume we should know how to do this and we have this information available to us.

It seems like he's trying to fail everyone! Several students have emailed him, letting him know that they don't know how to do the homework and he'll give them a couple of pointers on whatever assignment they're working on, but he doesn't get the hint that he's not giving us the information necessary to do what's expected of us. This is a 100-level course, for NON-MAJORS. This is ridiculous! We're all planning on talking about all this in our evaluations, but will it make any difference? There's obviously a problem if every single student in the class is completely lost on every single assignment.

ETA: Here's the last homework assignment he gave us. I got almost every answer wrong because none of this is discussed in the book or lectures and I didn't know how to do the calculations.

[Murihiku]

You should email the Chair of the Geology Department telling him or her what you've just told us.

If this prof is the Chair, email the Dean.

Something certainly sounds wrong.

(I suggest email only because it's an online course--face-to-face would be better if possible.)

[audmommy]

I would email the professor first with your concerns. I have complained before about professors to the chair of a dept and the first question is - did you talk to your professor first? I would also go to him as a group - not just one of you. See if other students are willing to support you, that makes a larger impact.

Sadly, I had a class like that - I talked to the professor, and the dean, and I ended up dropping the class - before it impacted my grade - and taking it from a different professor, almost half the class dropped. That made a huge impact to the dean, he actually apologized for not taking what happened more seriously. I told him I was not letting one undergrad class mess up my GPA over materials that was not appropriate - this was my 100 level algebra class and we were doing advanced calculus!

I really feel for you, that was a very stressful semester for me.

Angie
AuD candidate WSU

[BunnySlippers]

I would set up a meeting with him.

[Geofizz]

I teach intro geology. Honestly, it looks like a reasonable assignment, where the problems are plug and chug. The assignment then asks you to apply the results to images and videos and draw a conclusion. That's the essence of science.

Since trig is standard high school curriculum, this isn't considered as something to state as a prereq.

I'm not saying that something about the course can't be improved. I notice that morale is low when I'm not doing as good a job teaching. "Doing a good job" does not mean walking students through examples though.

I'm sorry you are struggling. I would suggest that you work at this before escalating to the chair or dean. Meet with him and ask how you can do better on your assignments. Go with specific questions after having spent some time attempting the assignment and closely reading the assigned reading.

[lolar2]

Originally Posted by Geofizz

Since trig is standard high school curriculum, this isn't considered as something to state as a prereq.

Except that, apparently, neither the OP nor many of her classmates took it in high school. So it may not be standard in her region. That's obviously a policy failure on the part of the school board and school advisors, but if the college draws a number of students from that region, they should be aware that it is an issue in that region and make sure to state it as a prereq.

[lolar2]

OP, I think you should specifically e-mail the professor and say in so many words: "I never took trig in high school. Neither did four others of us at least. How can we get academic support for doing the trig portions of these assignments?"

[Geofizz]

Just leave out the "neither did 4 other students" statement. It changes the email from being one of being proactive and asking for help to whining.

[Dar]

Originally Posted by Geofizz

I teach intro geology. Honestly, it looks like a reasonable assignment, where the problems are plug and chug. The assignment then asks you to apply the results to images and videos and draw a conclusion. That's the essence of science.

Since trig is standard high school curriculum, this isn't considered as something to state as a prereq..

I never took trig (or geology), but I looked at the first two problems and I could definitely do them. They give you an equation, already written in terms of the variable they want you to solve for, and then give you values for the other variables. One needs to be converted, and then it's just plugging in the numbers. It seems like fairly basic algebra...

Dar

Edited to clarify... maybe you're looking at it in a way that makes it seem more difficult than it is. If you think of it as applying algebra to a real life situation, does it seem more doable?

[lolar2]

I put in the "four other students" line because I thought that the help might be structured differently depending on how many people need it. Sometimes in the classes I TA for, if a few students all need the same remedial help it's better for me to do a catch-up session with all of them together than to tutor each one individually.

[Katzchen]

Unfortunately most of the physical sciences involve quite a bit of math... (My astronomy had more math than most of my actual math and statistics classes did!)

I know you are taking this class distance, so this is probably not an option for you, but most campuses have a math tutoring center that has walk in hours where they can show you how to do this type of calculation.

ETA: It looks like UC has online tutoring, I don't see your subject listed but it couldn't hurt to e-mail and ask if one of the tutors could just walk you through how to do the type of calculations required for this class.

[kaybee]

I also teach intro geology, and I guess I would second what some others said. The problems in this assignment just require basic algebra, not trig, and they look fairly straightforward.

However, I have students who would completely blank out on a problem set like that, esp. if they were working on their own or they hadn't taken or used algebra in a long time.

I realize this is an on-line class, which makes it more challenging to meet up with fellow students, but perhaps you would do better to work on the homework in groups. You might also check and see if there is a tutoring center or math skills center on campus that had someone who could walk you through the steps involved in working through a problem like this so that you gain more confidence in this kind of problem solving.

[Sk8ermaiden]

I agree. This looks like algebraic plug and chug to me too, and I haven't had a math since 2001. I did this in Intro to Geology (101 class for non-majors). I would have killed to have the professor give us the formulas!

Is there tutoring available for this class that you could utilize? Or is that out of the question in this instance since you are doing it online?

[minkajane]

Originally Posted by kaybee

I also teach intro geology, and I guess I would second what some others said. The problems in this assignment just require basic algebra, not trig, and they look fairly straightforward.

I know there's no trig in this one. The trig stuff was earlier in the quarter. Finals are actually next week. I wish I could have made it to campus for tutoring or something, but I work all the time. I guess my biggest problem is that I haven't taken a class with algebra since 2001 and that was a basic 100-level math class. If this type of thing comes up again, I am definitely going to be more proactive earlier in the quarter and try to get some tutoring rather than just struggle through. To be honest, it never crossed my mind, because I've never used tutoring before.

I heard from some people that have taken him before that he curves pretty well for final grades. Right now, I'm hovering around a 70 (not including the extra credit I'm working on or the final). I'll be happy with a good solid C!