Reporting a bad teacher

[GeoffM]

Lmk what you guys think of this. It's an exact email I sent to everyone in the class.

Hello everyone,

Today before class a group of us were discussing this class and the hilarity of a teacher we have.
The inconsistencies, the random assignments that are completely unrelated, the nightmare that was setting up Github, I could go on and on. (Midterm, grading scale, presentations, actually learning something!)

Whatever your complaint, please report it. Either send it to me so I can compile them, talk to the dean, everyone send an email... whatever suites your fancy. If you have any advice about how to go about this, I'll gladly listen.

The deans website is here:
http://www.oakland.edu/?id=20078&sid=304



I've tried to send this in a forum format, but I've never sent a mass message before. Rest assured it went to everyone but the TA and the teacher.

-Geoff

Out of hand? An appropriate way to do it?

[Scolirk]

Honestly I don't think it was inappropriate, but at the same time I don't know the circumstances that lead up to this email. Care to share a little bit about what you're complaining about just to put things in to perspective?

[wildBill83]

I think you are not going to score well in that class... and eventually the teacher will get the email too you know.

How is github a nightmare? I <3 GITHUB...

[93accordexcoupe]

probly not inappropriate at all. If you noticed the teacher has been off a little, I bet 90% of the class has too

[GeoffM]

Honestly I don't think it was inappropriate, but at the same time I don't know the circumstances that lead up to this email. Care to share a little bit about what you're complaining about just to put things in to perspective?

I'll do my best, but part of the reason I sent the email is because I'm having issues verbalizing all of her offenses.
1. Very very poor English
2. Very quiet
3. Doesn't actually know what she's teaching (Web design)
4. Her goal was to teach html, css, javascript, php, sql.... all in one class.
I've had these classes independently, but the other students are screwed.
5. Copy and pasted most of her code from other places
6. She doesn't understand her copied code
7. Or her own code. It took her 30 minutes to realize a space at the top of her javascript was causing it not to compile.
8. The midterm was copied and pasted from various places
9. The TA(Teachers assistant) graded the midterm poorly
10. After a very public discussion, we all got out midterm grades moved up.
11. After an 85% on the midterm, and moodle telling me I have 90% on the assignments, she emailed me telling me I'm at 65%
12. Github, which I'll go into below

I know there's more, I'm waiting for more emails to verbalize it correctly.

I think you are not going to score well in that class... and eventually the teacher will get the email too you know.

How is github a nightmare? I <3 GITHUB...

I'm not too worried about it, that's why I didn't put specifics in it.
Github in theory seems to be nice, but after spending 6 class periods trying to instruct the class (and herself) 6 people had it working.

probly not inappropriate at all. If you noticed the teacher has been off a little, I bet 90% of the class has too

I'm hoping to get many responses. It's been about an hour since I sent it, many of the people in the class have given me friendly nods, and I've gotten a few emails back.

[GeoffM]

I've drafted a teacher review:

This is by far the worst teacher I've ever had. She breaks just about every record in the book, with the exception of screaming. That's only because she's so quiet 90% of the time no one has any idea what she's saying. Very poor English followed, and was a common theme for everyone of my computer classes this semester.
The class started in a classroom, with no computers. How are you supposed to design a website without a computer? After the students complained, the room was grudgingly moved. Now that we were actually in a computer room, we could begin learning, right? Wrong.
The promises were great. We'd learn php, sql, html, css, javascript, the whole lot, and become expert programmers. We were very enthused. However, no book was specified for the course. What should we do we asked? Long story short, 3 weeks in a student showed her how to specify a book for the course. That's when the problems began.
Lack of material was a prevalent problem, she often pulled content from online sites. Without understanding how it worked, there was no chance anyone from the class was going to learn it. I, fortunately, was exempt, because I've taken all these classes at OCC. However, some of the English majors that had this course as a gen-ed were doomed.
When she finally did make her own material, it was flawed and broken. For example, when she was attempting to teach Javascript, it took her 30 minutes to figure out that a space in the beginning of her code was causing it not to compile.
The lack of material continued into the tests. The midterm was a copy and paste from other places, poorly compiled, and poorly formatted. Once the test was returned to us, the class spent 1.5 hours trying to figure out what she was asking. Once we had it sorted, we all had a higher grade.
Grading was another issue. After receiving a 85% on the test, and a 90% in moodle, she sent me an email telling me I had 60% in the class. As I'm writing this, she's attempting to have us memorize the questions and answers that are going to be on the test. The exact questions.
This is one teacher I will avoid at all costs, and highly recommend against to everyone I meet. Some fellow students and I are currently compiling a letter to the dean. The quick departure of this “teacher” and compensation of all of us is the only way this abomination of a class, teacher, and semester could possibly be justified.

[cb7rush]

Who is this going too? Is she an associate professor, part time, full time, or tenure? If tenure, good luck. Youre pretty much screwed. Full time is about the same. Part time and associate you can get fired if enough people complain and the professor evaluator goes to evaluate their class. But it will take some time.

[nine_deuce]

For the record, it's "suits" not "suites". Proofreading is your friend.

[RagingAsian]

Who is this going too? Is she an associate professor, part time, full time, or tenure? If tenure, good luck. Youre pretty much screwed. Full time is about the same. Part time and associate you can get fired if enough people complain and the professor evaluator goes to evaluate their class. But it will take some time.

This.

if she's Tenure, youre screwed.

But it also makes you look weak and immature, instead of trying to resolve the problem, youre complaining about it. are you passing the class? are you being rude in the class? the dean isnt just going to take your word for it. they will ask the professor, and I can tell you right now, if you should her disrrespect in the class, and she tells the dean that, your argument is pretty much DOA.

[mtnbikaah]

Is there a syllabus for the class? Is it being followed? A syllabus is a written contract between you and the school. If it is not followed you can get a lawyer and sue the college for tuition for that class.

But before doing that you really need to talk with the teacher and their supervisor.

[Tnwagn]

First, the complaints about poor English and lack of volume are tantamount to nothing, as it's become the norm in the computer and electrical academic environment.

Second, you claim the professor does not have a firm grasp of how to teach web design and has copied and pasted basically the entire class from other resources. If you plan on taking this to a higher level authority, you need concrete evidence to back this up. Simply saying, "She can't teach this stuff! We need someone better!" isn't going get anything accomplished. You would need to show administrators how and why you believe she has failed the class from a teaching perspective. Furthermore, I've had plenty of classes where professors have borrowed from other sources as materials for our classes, especially those that dealt with code. This, in and of itself, isn't a sign of poor teaching.

Third, you complain about the 30 minutes it took the professor to debug a problem with some code. Unless you are some god of programming, you certainly know how difficult it can be to debug code. Sometimes even the smallest mistakes, like an extra space, are the most difficult to diagnose as they are harder to see when reading through. I vividly remember one professor I had, who was unanimously one of the most impressive and intelligent of the CS staff at my college, having to end class early because he couldn't find the error in a batch of code he was trying to present to us. The next class period he showed how one errant semicolon had been his undoing. So, even the best sometimes run into issues that are easy to pick at from an outside perspective. Also, if the issue was as simple as you make it out to be, why did no one in the class present the solution to the teacher right then and there?

11. After an 85% on the midterm, and moodle telling me I have 90% on the assignments, she emailed me telling me I'm at 65%

Have you talked to her about this? It could have been a clerical mistake on her part or even a mistake with the grading system. On the other hand, perhaps there are aspects of the grading system that you haven't taken into account. Either way, you need to talk to your professor to get an idea of what is going on with this. If you haven't talked to her and bring this up with administrators the first thing they will ask is what was her reasoning for the grades. If you show up with "I don't know, but the numbers don't add up!" then they will tell you to speak with the professor before coming to them. Unless, after having spoken with the professor, your find that your grades are being manipulated outside the scope of the syllabus you undoubtedly received at the beginning of the year then I would drop this from the list of things you take to the higher ups. Keeping the analysis of the professor as general as possible allows other students and administrators to more easily get behind the issue.

[Ralphie]

Sometimes even the smallest mistakes, like an extra space, are the most difficult to diagnose as they are harder to see when reading through.

Fuck yea.

Remember when Deev crashed the forum because he added a comma ROFL.

[RyanD]

Fuck yea.

Remember when Deev crashed the forum because he added a comma ROFL.

this is true. back when i was a ui developer for alk technology i managed to crash the entire ui for an app called copilot live just by having a reverse /. it took me 3 days to figure it out. this was back when i knew how to program. i have since forgot a lot of it.

[mozzandherb]

My suggestion...pass the class and move on. I have had many poor profs, I just did what I had to do and moved on. And I have also had a great prof who a lot of other students didnt like. I thought he was the best teacher I had in University, but when I checked "rate my prof.com" I saw that he had a very bad ranking...I guess it's because he actually demanded something of his students and didnt give away easy grades.
What are you trying to accomplish with this teacher anyway? I mean what is the prupose of the complaint?