Professors
Attribution statement: I have stolen this text from the Professors subreddit with the hopes of providing an alternate community on Lemmy for us.
This community is BY professors FOR professors. Whether you are tenured, tenure-stream, a lecturer, adjunct faculty, or grad TA, if you are instructional faculty or work with college students in a similar capacity, this forum is for you to talk with colleagues. This community is not for students. While students may lurk and occasionally comment, they should identify themselves as students, and comments are subject to removal at mods’ discretion.
SYLLABUS
This community is a place for professors to BS with each other, share professional concerns, get advice and encouragement, vent (oh yes, especially that), and share memes. It has erstwhile been described as “kind of a 'teacher's lounge' for college professors.” This community is not for non-professors to ask questions of professors or about The Life™; it is for professors to ask each other questions.
As such, we ask all posters to abide by the following rules:
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No student posts/comments: This is a place for those teaching at the college level to discuss and share. While some student posts or comments may sneak by, and Mods may allow a richly upvoted post or comment that has spawned useful discussion to remain, that is the exception, NOT the rule.
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Don't Be Inappropriate: No weird sexual fantasy stuff, no confessions of crushes, no questions about dating or anything of that nature. Any posts of this type will most likely to be removed without question, explanation, or hesitation.
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No Incivility: No personal attacks, racism, or any other diatribes against students, or each other, that cross the line of civility. For that matter, attacks IN GENERAL are not tolerated. Disagree, challenge, vent, express frustration, but don’t cross that line. Attacks, hostility, or inappropriate conduct/content of any kind may result in a ban (temporary or permanent) at the Mods’ discretion.
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No "How do I become a professor?": Go to the website of the school you want to teach at. Look at the job listings. If the position you want is available, look at the qualifications. If you don't have those qualifications, get them. Apply for the job. That's it.
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No Spam/Surveys: No spam, no external surveys. We are not here to be marketed to; we're a bunch of academics who are here to goof off, vent, get advice, and share stories from the podium. Using the poll function in a post is, however, acceptable to let users weigh in on how they feel about an issue. For IRB approved surveys, you can message the Mods with a pitch and we will consider allowing it.
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No Bigotry: Racism, bigotry, sexism, or homophobia, or any other similar despicable type behavior will get your comment(s)/post(s) removed and you muted or banned. We will try not to penalize politically challenging speech (we mods are only human, after all), but it is essential that it be delivered thoughtfully and with circumspection. Low-effort sloganeering and hashtag-mentality posting will be removed; offensive content will result in a mute or ban. You will not always agree with the mods’ decisions in this regard, but it is the price we pay to have this little corner of cyberspace to ourselves.
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I never really went too far down the rabbit hole of these things. I use them to post PDFs and little else. Can you get so locked into these CMSs that it's hard to teach a course without them?
I'd say it depends on the course - I use a few short recordings to teach basic techniques, and then provide worksheets for the seminars based on those. I could teach the course without this, but I'd end up with less content and more time doing basic troubleshooting rather than exploring more complex examples.
Overall, I've found a good VLE takes some work to set up once, but pays dividends in work saved later - I don't need to remember to upload a list of tasks, or answer emails of "I missed the lecture because I saw a flying pig, what are we doing..." because it's all up there without me needing to do much except tweak release dates at the start of the year (one afternoon's work).
The trouble is when you move to a new platform and... Well, hence my post!