I am no stranger to difficult classes. I have always striven to take hard circuit based EE courses both during my undergraduate and (part time) graduate classes. But this semester I have had an adjunct professor who has made it virtually impossible to learn/excel at the class topic. Some examples of what he has done this semester:
Course syllabus had both exams as TBA. Turns out his grand plan was at the end of the semester to have both tests 2 back to back days. I begged him not to do this, and was able to get 1 exam pushed out during the final exams time of the university.
The professor straight out skipped 5 lectures of class and did not make them up. A sixth class 1 student showed up (I am distance, but try to make the class in person when I can). Instead of teaching, he decided to cancel the class. I am not counting the final day of class, where he decided that we would have our first 3 hour class directly after (I was only one who showed up that day)
His first test was literally nothing like the 4 simple homework assignments he gave during the class (first 2 homeworks were assigned the 3rd week of class and the last 2 were assigned 3 weeks before the end of class). In fact, it seemed most of the class had no idea how to solve the problems except for the one exchange student who came in already having a background in the course topic. After having the embarrassing conversation on the side that I literally had no idea how to take this test, he allowed the class to take it as a “take home”. One student went to far as to say that even taking this test home wouldn’t matter. It took me 4 nights of studying 6+ hours only to figure out how to solve the problems. His notes barely assisted in solving the problems which seemed closer to design level problems you would understand after a few years of circuit design (most of his problem solutions have paragraphs of “intuitive” things we were supposed to come up with even though the academic resources/he never even brought them up).
He promised to give us a practice test last week to prepare for 2nd test tomorrow (Tuesday). He did not deliver the practice test until this morning. Looking over the practice test I have an incredible amount of questions. Asking questions on the practice test the day of the finals is not a great way to prepare for the exam. I am frantically trying to solve them, but I have no doubt I will go into this exam with several holes in my knowledge. Even if he makes this a take home exam again, I will have to balance this with my project due next Monday.
Am I just being a big baby? He claims he doesn’t fail anyone in the class, but instead makes the class so hard it will “prepare you for any interview”. That is a fine philosophy to have, but if the questions are so hard that no one in the class can solve them then I think either your problems are too hard for a fixed time test, or your teaching was insufficient. I have a good GPA (3.75+) and again I work very hard in my classes even working full time. This is the first time I have experienced such a hopeless situation. Thank you for reading this wall of text.
That is pretty bad. They’re not supposed to do this any it’s pretty clearly not meant for learning the material. That’s complain-worthy.
That is pretty bad. I once saw a professor be straight-up fired for this kind of absenteeism.
(3) could be pretty bad based on context, and (4) is just a bad teacher but nothing complain-worthy.
Overall, that’s something you definitely should take notice of. It would be fair to raise your concerns with the department chair and just kindly lay out your concerns, without being particularly accusatory or demanding. On the one hand, you definitely do want to make sure the dept chair is aware that that is happening, and chances are it wouldn’t be the first he/she has heard of it. On the other hand, you have to go about it properly, and you definitely don’t want to have the reputation of “that student who complains to the department chair.”
I generally agree with you. It helps that I actually know the department head because I took a course with him once. I went ahead sent him an email about my disagreement with how the course was going. He actually responded within 3 hours of my message at a late hour which is refreshing. I did re-iterate to him that my point was not to move the exam but to provide feedback for future semesters taught for this course. I am not trying to get out of the exam so much as point out that this is a little unfair to the class.
I should have contacted the department head weeks ago when this first started spiraling out of control. However, I initially assumed I just wasn’t working hard enough and increased my hours per week studying for the course to 15+ including trying to schedule a weekly office hours visit. I could argue to myself that I should have started office hours sooner, but when it seemed that 40-50% of the slide content was being hand waved for “personal study” and then applicable homework problems aren’t given what are you supposed to do outside studying the entire textbook and then doing every problem in the back?
In all honesty I would wait until the very end, unless it really is something much more unfair than simply, “the course is too hard and my grade is too low.” That happens, and it’s often unfair, but it comes off as whining and undermines your genuine concern if it can be spun into grade whining by the professor (who, as a colleague of the dept head, will always get the benefit of the doubt).
Just have a little pity on the guy. Adjunct professors are basically indentured servants and are probably getting paid in peanuts. I’m not saying that excuses awful teaching habits, since that is his primary job function, of course, but have at least a little sympathy.
I don’t know about your institution, but at my institution, we are always asked to fill out course evaluations for every course at the end of the semester. These evaluations are reviewed by not only the instructor, but also the department administration. Unfortunately, for tenured faculty, poor evaluation results alone will not result in the instructor being fired from their job. At most, they may not be given the same course assignment again.
This is a fairly ignorant point of view to take for several reasons.
[ol]
[li]Why on earth would you be sitting there wishing for someone to get fired based on your experience with one instance of one of their classes? Why should they be fired because of your opinion? That comes off as being bitter and entitled based on the way you just worded this.[/li]
[li]Course evaluations, for better or for worse, are often taken seriously by only the students who really loved the class, or really hated it. In the later case, more often than not the students hated it simply because they struggled, not because of anything that was actually wrong with the instruction (regardless of whether there was or wasn’t something wrong). By far the most useful portions of those evaluations are the long answer comment boxes, because you can tell (a) which students are serious, and (b) where to improve. The ones who just laud or trash you without comment are essentially useless.[/li]
[li]Course evaluations do factor into performance reviews for faculty, and particularly positive or negative responses absolutely may be discussed with the department head.[/li]
[li]Tenured (and tenure-track) faculty have worked their tails off to get where they are. If a university fired them because of the opinions of a few students who feel it was their way or the highway, word would get around fast and then that school would have a very difficult time recruiting new faculty. This is especially true given the fact that the primary job duty of tenure-track faculty is research (and in fact, that is the reason why tenure exists).[/li][/ol]
For non-tenured faculty, things are different, but before you go wishing for them to get fired, keep in mind that even in engineering, typical adjunct professors are making less than they would have if they had gone off into industry with just a BS. They are adjuncting trying to hold on to the slim hope that they can some day parlay that experience into a tenure-track job. Wishing for them to get fired because you didn’t like one of their classes is tantamount to wishing for an already downtrodden individual to lose one of their last threads to their dream job.