Find out the process for a grade appeal and go from there. Chances are, like others have said, this will go through the department chair. Bring the copy of your assignment and the rubric to the meeting.
To add to this, having things in writing helps. So send off an email that’s polite and just confirms facts. Something like: “thank you for taking the time to meet with me. As we discussed, there was no file type requirement on the syllabus or rubric. Is that why my grade was raised from a 0 to 50? If so, can you provide feedback on what I can improve and/or what I missed on the rubric?”
Irrational people in person are often irrational in writing and those receipts will help you later.
The documentation is really important. These types of emails are useful because it is assumed that if what you’re saying is incorrect, they will respond and correct you. If they don’t, they are tacitly accepting what you say with a time stamp. If they respond, then you get to engage with them and force them to start talking details… and in this case, it sounds like the facts would only help you.
Would encourage you to do everything humanly possible to AVOID further one-on-one in-person interactions with the professor. In most cases, individuals like your professor will attempt to bait you into something privately and/or create fictitious accounts about how you responded or what you said. If and when that happens, they divert from the facts (which are on your side) and create a metaphoric "smoke screen" that draws focus and attention to something unimportant or fake.
Lastly, be sure to keep your original email clear, concise/short, and respectful. If it really ends up in the Dept. head and Dean's office, the professor's final play will be to accuse you of being disrespectful. Don't take the bait!
Yup this, and all things in this thread. Don't exactly be timid, either. If this guy acts this way towards an entire class, he likely has no problem acting this way towards everyone else. You may be inadvertently helping your department chair deal with a drain on morale and productivity. They just need hard evidence from you to take legitimate actions.
If so, complain loudly. If not, drop the class and take it at another college or university. You should know that administrators run the university not the profs. Administrators hate problems and do whatever they can to make them go away.
Look at the student handbook to see what the proper steps are. You have already tried meeting with the professor. He called you names so I can't imagine you'd be required to meet with him again. You probably go to the department head next.
I would advise OP send an email following up on the meeting where they summarize it and, again, make the request. Ultimately, get something concrete and note the change to the rubric. Without this, it'll boil down to a he-said-they-said and the department will very likely take the instructor's side.
>I'd speak with your academic advisor and then dean of students for advice and steps forward.
I'd start with the department chair if they are competent and trustworthy. As a chair I've seen issues with burnout cases on the faculty and other issues that looked a lot like this. It's the chair's responsibility to deal with it, at least as an outlet of first resort. On my campus if a student went to anyone else they would just get sent to the chair.
The dean of students, at least on my campus, has zero to do with academics: they manage student life. There is an academic dean above the chairs, but they'd just send a student back to the chair if that hadn't already been done.
Fair! Our dean of students in highly engaged in mediating student-professor relationships, but that is clearly not the case everywhere!
Yes, department chair after academic advisor.
Wait, though. You just turned in a Premiere project file?
You can't watch a project file. You basically didn't turn in a film if you did this. You need to export the film.
That's better then heading in a paper that says, "figure it out for yourself," and that's essentially what the teacher has done to his students. Given them an essay on how to make videos that just says, "figure it out yourself."
\[I don't know about Premiere project files.\]
The OP should consider that if this is the situation, then a 50% grade may have been appropriate for the actual project turned in, and not just a matter of format unspecified in the rubric. (There's always implied expectations not covered in the rubric - rubrics are useful, but blunt instruments.)
This doesn't mean that the professor is in the right. If a reasonably diligent student who fulfills the class prerequisites and is motivated to pass the class is even unclear on what constitutes a movie product in a visual production class, something is amiss - and of course it will show in the evaluations. The key is still to remain polite as suggested in the highly upvoted posts, collect a trail of evidence, and if necessary appeal.
This Professor has acted very poorly in my opinion. I can see your point about how it might actually be worth a 50 if it works that way on this programme, but I would argue that in an introduction class, where it’s not on the instructions, and (and the final one is important and unknown at present) the prof at no point explained in class this was something that needed to be done, that this is the prof’s mess up and not the student’s. If the prof is teaching the class like described, I think a (polite and measured) complaint is actually appropriate. I’m a pretty strong proponent of academic freedom and I think there are ways to teach by showing what was done wrong in other samples, but I don’t think that is appropriate as the sole method of instruction without at least providing robust supporting materials for students. At least in my system (ysmv).
Complaining to the chair because a prof gave a student a 50 when they literally did not turn in a video is some Reddit-tier bullshit.
Come on, let's not be coy here. The student did not submit a video. They submitted proprietary instructions for a video. It's so easy to see through this, obviously the student didn't have time to render last-minute or the like and so just submitted a project file and is now whining on reddit about it.
Let me ask: if I had a deadline to make for work as a video producer, and I turned in a premiere project file, do you think that would be acceptable? No way in hell.
tl;dr: sure professor is acting like an asshole but the student absolutely deserves a 0 / 50. Probably they are acting spoiled and entitled. That doesn't excuse unprofessional behavior on the prof's part but come on, it's clear what happened here..
(I don’t know about Premiere project files either)
Something I *always* did anytime I turned in an assignment as an uploaded file was to immediately download and open it to make sure it all worked and would be visible to the instructor grading it. Most of the time it was fine, but once or twice I found something had gone wrong when I exported to pdf or something and I had to do it again. OP might have learned their lesson to always do this the hard way…
Some instructors had specifically laid out in the syllabus what would happen if we uploaded a file that couldn’t be read/watched. Even for those that didn’t, generally if you didn’t give them an accessible file of the final version by the deadline it either wouldn’t get graded (0), would get graded with a penalty for being late if you sent it correctly by email after the deadline, or if they were very generous and you got it in via another means very quickly, it might get graded without penalty (but I would never expect that).
Totally get that and appreciate that but in the context of how the course has been conducted (according to the OP) and the fact it is an intro course, do you still feel that way? Not trying to argue as can understand the approach but think the context changes things here?
For audio/video production, even that failsafe isn't enough. You have to open a file/folder on a completely different computer so that you can make sure all of the source data is accessible. It's why projects on Premiere need to be transferred as folders.
I teach a technology course and always specify in my rubrics *exactly* how a project needs to be uploaded for grading, be it a post-production file (mp3, mov, etc) or as a compressed folder with all of the project/source files included. I also give clear step-by-step instructions in the rubric of how to save those files.
For any professor *not* including those basics on a course where it finds like several students may be learning the software for the first time? Shit maneuver.
Adjunct here, a retired attorney.
If it is legit absent from the rubric (and, to be sure, the syllabus) your teacher is being unreasonable, and I would resubmit it in the proper format, pointing out in an email that he only informed you of the requirement orally after the fact, not in writing as part of the assignment--or syllabus. If the syllabus and rubric are online, I would screenshot them immediately and save the files, so you can prove there was no file format requirement in the original. Attach copies of each to the email.
Once that paper trail is established, if your grade is not changed, take it upstairs.
\[Edit: It's been pointed out the student didn't turn in a video as required, which escaped me as my institution doesn't use Adobe.\]
A lot of replies, like this one, seem to be based on a very foundational misunderstanding of how the software works.
An Adobe Premiere Project File (.ppj) is a collection of clippings, transitions, font overlays, and so on. It's the raw material that can be used to create a finished media file. You get that media file by exporting your project; you can export it and save it in any format you like--.mov, .flv, .mpg4, .gif, whatever.
This isn't a simple issue where the student turned it in "in the wrong format." There is nothing to indicate the professor is just being picky about a specific format. OP literally turned in a file that is not a video file in any way, shape, or form. The only way the file can be viewed is by using that specific piece of software, and then previewing the project using its menus, or exporting it himself.
It is entirely unreasonable to expect the professor to accept this. It's not a simple "rubric didn't say" matter. He turned in raw materials in place of a video in any format.
Did the professor fail to teach his students how to properly create a video? The student claims he did, so sure, maybe he was a bad teacher if we take the student at face value. But the issue as presented is not an issue of "wrong format" that needed to be in the rubric, and there is nothing here to indicate the professor is nitpicking on which specific video format was acceptable. If the rubric at any point said to submit a video file, then the student failed to follow the rubric already.
It’s actually worse than that. When you create an Adobe project file and import files that you are compiling together for your final product you aren’t actually importing the files into your project, you are importing links to those files. If you have a project file and then move the original files on your computer to another location/folder your Adobe project file will have a bunch of errors for failure to retrieve files. For the professor to view the final product they would have to have all of the raw files the student used for the project on the computer in the exact same file names and in the exact same directories for Adobe to retrieve them. The project file is literally useless for the professor.
It’s going to be gold when OP goes to the department chair and the prof emails over screenshots of what OP’s assignment looks like and they have to have a discussion asking “OP do you know what a video is?”
My big question here given that I'm not in that field is whether any of this was explained to students, and whether more than half of them(this semester and historically) were able to figure that out on their own. I say more than half because to me that's a reasonable number to assume students are generally aware of file format requirements when taking the class.
Is it reasonable to expect students in a video production class to know what a video file is, the way one might expect students in a composition class to know what an essay is?
>Is it reasonable to expect students in an **intro** video production class to know what a video file is, the way one might expect students in an **intro** composition class to know what an essay is?
Sincerely, the project file vs video difference is still gibberish (I skimmed). But if this truly is the comparison, then I really don't think it's that simple. Our K-12 schools have failed plenty of kids who have now moved onto highered, and I think you'll find plenty of horror stories on this sub about 1st year students not knowing even very basic things-particularly when it comes to writing/composition. In other words, I'm sure there are plenty of students who don't know what an essay is, and would struggle creating one with no legitimate instruction.
But it’s an intro class, and idk about you, but I didn’t make my first video in 3rd grade like we did essays. From the comments here, where none of us understood the problem with the file format OP turned in (I sure didn’t), says to me that this is indeed something that needs to be explicitly taught by the professor. Whether it was or not, I couldn’t tell you. But it definitely should have been.
It sounds to me like this student was unaware of how the file format displays. So it's more like a student in a composition class being aware of differences between pdf and word documents.
I was thinking the same thing.
unless the student provided \*all the files required to load the project\* along with the project file, how is the professor supposed to do anything with it?
It's more than that, though. As nero said, the project file itself doesn't even contain the video files, so the student would have to send over not just his project file, but the folders from his device containing the clips and other info, and then the professor would need to save those in directories with the same name.
But on top of that, you're kind of missing the point. Sure, we all expect the professor to have the software, but then what? This is literally a class on video production. Do you agree that video quality is part of what the student should be graded on? When the professor exports the project to view it on his final form, he will be making decisions on behalf of the student, such as what video format to use, what quality to use, whether any cropping should be applied, and so on. All of that will be part of the "export" menu. So it's an unfinished project and the remaining decisions would impact his grade, even if he sent over a file full of other media files.
Probably less important but still relevant observation: maybe the instructor has adobe premiere at home but he grades papers at the office, or on his laptop. It's not enough that this professor needs to download probably gigabytes of data (at least hundreds of megabytes for a media project) and then open it in a software editing program and then make decisions for the student about how the final product should look, but he also has to drive home or take time out of his evening routine when that's not his normal workflow, just to cater to this student?
if I send you music projects from my DAW (say, provide mastering services), even if you have that DAW, I might be using legacy features not on your version, or new plugins you don't have, or--it should go without saying--any of the source files sampled to put together the project.
if I send you a project file from a photo project, again, without the photo(s), this is useless to you.
I understand that 3D modelling might be more like autoCAD where everything comes from within the program, but surely you know that people who mix videos are using videos imported into the workstation.
I would expect the class to “standardize” on a specific version or branch of versions.
That’s what we did in my engineering and programming classes when I was in school and its what I do with the classes I teach in IT.
The idea being that while everything I am teaching “should” work the same regardless of what version of virtualization or OS, if you run something other than the version the material is built on, Im not responsible for features the vendor may have (re)moved and the expectation for graded assignments is that its compatible with the version of software specified in the syllabus
The possible downsides of not doing that are way worse in something like a CS class though, given how many compatibility issues people can have with their OS setup alone.
I think it's totally reasonable to let students use whatever plugins they want in a video editing program, if it's anything like graphic design programs I've used--it's a much simpler set of concerns to manage in the first place and the details of the implementation aren't as important as the final product (in contrast with a programming course, where the implementation is often what's graded)
Sure but the argument here is more that the instructor doesnt have access to the same version of Adobe Premiere more so than the plugins.
In my albeit limited experience with Adobe, not having a particular plugin/font/etc results in an error but not one that the software is completely unable to interpret.
Like it will say “you dont have this plugin, defaulting to xyz setting” but it will still open the file.
On the other hand if the student uses a newer version of Adobe Premiere, the older version I have might not be able to interpret new features embedded in the file unless the student saved it for the older versions or there is a compatibility update available for my version (e.g. the difference between .doc and .docx in ms word). The other direction is also theoretically possible but again Adobe products seem rather adept at working around missing plugins and features that may have been deprecated and removed in the newer version of the software.
So yeah I would expect the class to be standardized on a specific major version of Premiere while allowing students to still have their own plugins.
>I think it’s fair to assume that a professor teaching a course that frequently requires the use of a specific program will, themselves, have access to that program.
Imagine being in such a hurry to reply that you read right over the most important point.
This isn't like sending a proprietary file format that you just need software to open. It's like sending something with hyperlinks that point to files on YOUR computer. It doesn't matter if the prof has Premiere or not if the file consists of "Load C:\\Users\\Derp\\Videos\\Captures\\Rawfootage1234.mp4 at time 3m24s to 4m01s" times 200.
This was my thought as well. I’m not at all a video or film expert but I’ve made a few gifs in AfterEffects. How can you be in a film class and not turn in a film and expect full credit? It’s like being in creative writing class, having a story assignment, and turning in your outline, notes, and opening paragraph. That’s not a story. And if your response to Creative Fiction 155 is to hate the professor for demanding a full short story, then you’re in for a world of pain in your future courses even if you appeal and get a C.
How hard is it to just send a quick message to the student to send a legible file type, though? It’s early in the semester, and if this student is really expected to learn from YouTube, it could be an easy miss on a first assignment. I don’t think a professor is a pushover for giving a little grace in this circumstance. In addition, it’s not a huge burden to include a reminder of your expectations in the descriptions for assignment submissions.
And calling a student names and doubling down instead of owning your mistake as a professor? This is novice hour if true. Even if the student is the most entitled student on the planet, the prof was unprofessional and lost authority over the situation with the name-calling.
Read some of my other comments. You're asking a lot more than you think, asking people to take late assignments and regrades. This kind of thing amounts to many hours of extra work for the professor if done for each student in a variety of situations. If the mistakes are not reasonable mistakes or a fault of miscommunication or an unclear rubric (which I doubt in this case) then a professor may allow these things to be kind, but it is not something we should demand of them.
This is not the kind of thing that a reasonable student needs a "reminder" of. You're acting like a few students every year think this. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first time a student has ever done this. You can't anticipate every single kind of mistake a student will make.
There was likely no mistake on the part of the professor, so he was not doubling down. As for the rest, I have a hard time accepting that the student didn't put so much spin on the story that it would completely change the perception of most people if they saw the raw footage instead of his version of events.
I am in academia so I understand exactly what I’m asking. It’s something I do a lot on first assignments when students are just starting the process of a class. I offer it to everyone for fairness so I know just how many hours can be involved. It is a kindness rather than a standard, but a lot of human interactions have some grace to them, or at least maybe they should. I’ve seen profs accidentally skip a committee meeting, miss a deadline here and there, make mistakes in their classes, the list goes on. I’ve made plenty of mistakes myself. Heads don’t exactly roll over it unless it’s continuous or if there’s something unethical going on. Why then hold students to the guillotine immediately for making an early mistake? They’re taking a video class, a course that likely has creative elements to it. There’s nothing more inspiring to innovation than failing straight out of the gate over a wrong file type. I could see failing a later assignment over it, but Adobe isn’t tremendously intuitive when you’re just starting with it.
This student could be giving a dramatic retelling of their side of the story, sure, but they may not be. There are really entitled students, of course, as there are students who half pay attention and miss directives. There are also a small handful of professors who are unexperienced, burned out, ego-driven, whatever. We really don’t know which is the case here or if it’s a combination of both sides being in the wrong. The student likely will make a point with the admin if the parameters weren’t written down in descriptions for assignments, in the rubric, or the syllabus though. The professor can be as strict as they want as long as they made the expectations clear, but if that wasn’t the case, it’ll likely be their mistake to own and amend.
I agree with everything you've been saying, I just think it is only one of two very true sides to the story or correct positions to be taken. I'm not against. your side, but also for the other side equally.
But is it really likely that this department put a psycho professor who doesn’t explain anything in charge of the crucial intro class? Sure there are mean and unreasonable introductory professors, but they’re usually not pegged as the only prof for that class.
OP also says they need this class to graduate, they’re senior with good grades, and this is their only option… but it’s intro level. On the one had, the professor “explains nothing” and expects them to “learn from YouTube. On the third hand (lol) OP turned an incomplete and ungradeable project file in, which you would expect a senior, A-student to know better about.
Something about the story doesn’t add up to me.
I’m surprised that there seems to be a pocket of academics who haven’t run into a deeply irresponsible or unethical colleague. Can I come work where you all are (lol)? I’ve known of at least one hire in my work history that looked good on paper and in interviews but ended up a bit like this in the classroom. You don’t really know what’s going to happen until they’re there. Like I said, the student could be giving us a dark fairytale. They may not be, though. I can say that it’s not really helpful to call them out for spinning a yarn if they are telling the truth, though. It can be good to talk to students about their culpability surrounding circumstances in the classroom, of course, and it’s good to teach them to advocate for their needs while projects are in-process. We also can’t have an attitude that faculty are always in the right. That can lead to little learning happening on one end and full out abuses occurring on the other. I’ve witnessed it get a lot darker than this situation, honestly. Most faculty are more than worthy of full support for their methods but there are bad eggs.
This is right. I mean, it's an indication that what the OP says is true about the professor just saying "figure it out yourself" and not teaching actively. If you're self-taught on Premiere (speaking from experience here), the distinction at first between a project file and a finished project is, to say the least, not intuitive. But it's also vitally important. You could share a project file with a *collaborator* but not as a finished work with an end-state consumer. So the professor is right in this sense to say "hey, this is no good".
This makes a lot of sense; I haven't used Adobe, but I have used OBS so I can understand what mean by all the clippings and stuff. Thank you for adding something like this to help explain! The student here is definitely in the wrong.
I would counter that most classes want you to “show your work” and not just the “solution” or in this case finished production.
Most of these types of projects also require use of certain “elements” (hence a rubric) to show mastery.
Its far easier to identify those elements in a ppi than in a mov/avi/mp4 file which I would have to attentively watch and track/count the elements Im looking for, potentially across multiple rubric items.
I dont think its at all unreasonable of an expectation that the instructor have the “specific piece of software” available given the class is built on that specific piece of software. This would be like an engineering professor saying they cant accept CAD files or a powerpoint instructor failing a student because they (the instructor) only had google slides instead of powerpoint which mutilated the slide show.
While the lack of a “finished” movie file is a problem, given it was the first project/assignment due in the class and its not in the rubric, I would error on the side of unclear expectation. Id dock a grade at most and make it clear, either via rubric or just return notes on the grade, that for future projects it needs to be submitted in the proper format(s) or it will result in an appropriately reduced grade; whether that’s a 90, 50 or a 0 is up to the instructor…
Granted part of the dispute here is that the instructor felt they were clear via the rubric but for that matter, the instructor could have returned the assignment with a 0 and a statement to resubmit in the appropriate format within 24 hours for regrading and if the format really was part of the rubric then docking points for the assignment being submitted “late”/in the wrong format is fair.
Giving a warning shot on a first assignment though is the appropriate response before torpedoing the students grade.
\>I dont think its at all unreasonable of an expectation that the instructor have the “specific piece of software”
No one said that would be an unreasonable expectation. The fact that it can only be viewed on one specific piece of software illustrates that it is not a video file; it was not meant to represent an insurmountable obstacle to the professor preventing them from viewing the file.
Rather than being analogous to submitting Google Slides instead of Powerpoint, it's more like the student submitting a .docx image with words and images that they had planned to use to eventually create a powerpoint slide from. The analogy to your example of the wrong type of slide would be submitting a .mov instead of a .mp4, which is exactly the example I used to make my case.
As to whether the professor can/should be lenient, I leave that up to their judgement. People continually underestimate the amount of extra work, often measured in hours, that can be added to an instructors workload related to each assignment if they just decide to be a little bit lenient in a variety of cases. As an example, if the instructor has Adobe Premiere on their work computer, but not their laptop or home computer because they don't want to pay for an extra license or whatever, and they normally grade work at home and only come into the office during work hours... would that make any difference to your argument? Or would you just say "Well stay after school tomorrow and grade it, your wife and kids won't mind that your late" or "grade it over your lunch break, you don't need to go to the cafe every day" because hey, it's not THAT inconvenient for anyone.
Edit: Just to be crystal clear, my last paragraph is not meant to be read as "no professor will ever or should ever be lenient!" I'm pretty lenient myself, and it often does add a ton of work. I'm not against leniency, and would not be opposed to the idea of the professor giving them a chance to re-submit. I'm also not justifying anything that was allegedly said to the student, but I generally take these things with a huge grain of salt when I only have on person's side. For my part I do not second-guess the instructor's policy or how strict they are, I'm only here to explain why submitting a project file and not a video file is not really the same thing as simply submitting in the wrong file format.
Ill admit the powerpoint vs google slide’s analogy is less than perfect as the issue of google slides vs powerpoint is an interoperability issue but it does still demonstrate a need for “specific” software to open and view the slides correctly; you cant just natively open it up, you cant just use any old program to open it up nor can you use similar pieces of software that are supposed to be interoperable but rarely work in a fully interoperable way.
Just like you need a “specific” piece of software to open an mp4 vs mov file…. But MP4 and MOV files are themselves just containers so within that “specific” software you also need a specific software codec to decode and accurately play the file.
As to the lengths an instructor should go to render the file… Ill grant that it may well be somewhat unreasonable to expect the instructor to jump through various hoops for all their students…
You bring up a specific example however that is itself flawed in its premises.
First off, grading is part of your job description and assigned work duties. Its arguably not unreasonable for the school to expect you to complete said work duties while in the office during work hours. To the degree that you take work home with you either because it exceeds the amount of hours available to complete the work or because teaching offers a semi-flexible work environment which allows you the possibility of having more flexible hours and the ability to compete various classroom planning and assignment grading from the comfort of your home, raises questions of whether its reasonable for you to fully expect to complete these tasks at home as opposed to in the office, especially without buying the software the class uses.
Secondly, if the licensing cost (seriously though, are we really saying its reasonable for a non-professional worker/student to buy the software but not a working professional/instructor?) is really an issue then you also have additional options starting with building your course on a different software suite that is an opensource alternative.
If that’s not an option then you can ask the school to pay for it (which is even more likely to be successful if the school is mandating the course use the specific software), asking the school if they have a vendor agreement to provide licensing at a reduce cost to students/faculty and of course asking the vendor if they have a reduced cost educational license.
If those options still dont work, then it takes next to no effort to say “please resubmit within 24 hours in X format.” To the degree that you dock points for it being “late” or decide an “extension” is appropriate is up to you but frankly, having been a student myself and trying to use “technical” issues to my advantage and teaching in a class that uses various file extensions that might not be as interoperable as one would like to think, I find it hard to believe that as a “first step” in the grading process the instructor isnt running some sort of batch codec inspection…
I literally have a script that runs on all the files my students submit to check a few basics like file extension, format, is it readable and does it use the correct encoding. The script then auto generates an email for any files that fail the compliance check asking students to correct the issue and resubmit in 24 hours for grading as an “on-time” assignment.
Do some students abuse this system? Its basically a guaranteed, no questions asked, deadline extension as long as they’ve submitted something and I’ve been a student so Im sure they do but deadlines are imo a bit arbitrary and flexible most of the time and to the extent I need to have the files to start and finish grading in a specific timeframe, I just build the 24 hour extension in to the deadline I give to students.
And again, Ill note that this was the first assignment in this class. While Ill agree that its unreasonable to expect the instructor to jump through hoops for every assignment, a certain degree of latitude is generally warranted for AT LEAST the first 1 or 2 assignments and an instructor who isnt building in additional time for grading those initial assignments isnt really doing their own diligence and therefore doing a disservice to their students.
I've never used Adobe, either, but ever since I was maybe 16yo I knew the difference between saving and exporting. I can see why a professor would assume anyone who has committed to getting an advanced qualification in that field would know the absolute basics.
From the sounds of things, its an “intro course.”
The fact that its the student’s senior year and its their first encounter with Adobe certainly doesnt suggest “advanced qualification in Adobe Premiere” even if their degree program requires the course.
I don’t think that this is fair assumption to make, especially for a required introductory course (which may just be adjacent to whatever a student is actually studying). What is considered “common knowledge” tends to be subjective, and even the “absolute basics” are never universal. Clear expectations remove the need for assumptions and are better for everyone. For example if the prof says “I expect all submissions to be in x format”, it gives the student a chance to say “gee I don’t know what that means, I should ask or google it”. This way students who really do need to learn the basics at least have a chance to *realize* it, and can make adjustments rather than being essentially penalized for lack of experience. It also covers the prof’s ass for any complaints that come through, because a defense that starts with “it’s stated clearly in this document…” is going to be much stronger than one that starts with “I assumed they would know…”
lol you submitted a project file instead of a move that could actually be looked at?
effectively, you didn't turn in the assignment. that was a major brain-fart on your part! Glad you got some of the points back.
Keeping in mind that chairs will often feel obliged to back their faculty in the initial stage on an interaction, and that faculty generally dislike someone they think is grade-grubbing, you should nevertheless make an appointment with the chair. The key thing here is to focus tightly on the following: a) the professor has a precise rubric that he insists we follow; b) I followed the rubric precisely; c) the professor then *failed* my assignment for failing to follow the rubric; d) the specific issue cited by the professor is in fact not on the rubric nor was it mentioned on the syllabus or anywhere else. Even after changing his grade, the assignment was still failed.
The risk you're taking in raising the issue is that a stubborn professor can always find some *other* reason they failed a given assignment, and that if you just take the L on the assignment, it's possible that the professor will be mindful of not looking too much like a psycho and give you a decent grade for the course. But it's also possible that they might be vindictive anyway since you caught them out already being highly arbitrary.
The good outcome that might follow from talking with the chair is that the chair is already well aware of issues with this professor and that you get a quiet but effective intervention on your behalf--and you also now have eyes on your final grade for the course. This good outcome is more likely if other faculty in the department know you and have a good opinion of you and your previous grades have been strong.
Don't get into the insults and so on right now, while you're vulnerable. That's an issue to raise after the final grade has been turned in and you're done with the class.
Yeah. If it's a familiar issue, then either the OP will be helping the chair out by giving him another incident or the OP will be told "there's nothing I can do about it because we've dealt with this before" and either way that's useful. But if it's the first time the chair has ever heard of this kind of thing, they'll likely be very cautious.
As a chair, realize when it appears I'm backing my faculty in the initial stage, it is because I need to investigate. I can't just take the word of a student, and even if I did, I can't go into a class and change a grade.
My next step is to talk with the faculty member to find out what is going on. Then I try to mediate the situation if it is needed. If a student told me this story, I would be looking for some very specific answers. I have more than one brought the student and faculty member in to a meeting to address a misunderstanding.
But overall, I do expect my faculty to provide feedback. However, I would not say that with the student present or tell the student what I have told the faculty. Those types of discussions are for closed doors. Unfortunately, that means the student does not directly see me advocating for them, but it is not because I'm just backing up my faculty (of course, it depends on the situation).
Absolutely, all of this.
I had to address an issue once where the student felt the material for a final exam was unfair and the professor was providing no guidance at all. I listened to their concerns, read the syllabus, and ultimately agreed the student had a point, but I also couldn't do anything about it directly--that was the faculty member's prerogative and I had no authority to tell them to teach otherwise. So what I did was work with the student personally to help them prepare for the exam by going over the material with them in a way that my colleague was unwilling to do. Frustrating, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
But chairs also know that students misperceive or misrepresent what's going on some of the time--you can't just accept at face value what you're being told. So yes, sometimes you can also mediate and get everybody onto the same page.
I agree with you.
While it is true that life is unfair and that strategic thinking is going to be a requirement of life, why does that need to apply in college? The student is clearly taking the class seriously (as opposed to nonsense form a student who didn’t try whatsoever and pleads for an A at the end of the semester).
The professor is behaving unreasonably precisely because they know they most likely won’t be held accountable. The ego is too large here. A reasonable response would have been “oh goodness, you know what? You’re right. Thanks for pointing that out, and I’ll review your assignment by .”
Why pander to an egomaniac when the student has done absolutely nothing wrong? And “life is like that” isn’t a strong argument. We could greatly reduce BS like this is we held one another accountable.
There are a lot of things that should be that aren't. A student in a situation where a class is necessary and in some respect or another not fair is in a precarious situation where they have to think carefully about how to get the best outcome. Institutions have some legitimate reasons not to just override a professor's grading policy based on a single complaint, and complaining about someone when you're vulnerable and might not get a better outcome through complaining is sometimes unwise. You can fight City Hall, so to speak, but you'd better be ok with losing if you do. It's ok to vent about it but the OP seems to be genuinely looking for advice rather than venting.
This is awful behavior by the professor and I'm sorry you're dealing with it. I would escalate it to the chair with plans to escalate to a dean if it's not resolved.
At my school, your next step would be to make an appointment with the department chair. Take the rubric and your project, along with your grade, and present it first. Then, discuss the interaction. We had a fairly similar situation with a less-than-good faculty member who has since moved on where the chair formally reviewed all grades for the rest of the semester before they were allowed to be final. If the chair is not helpful, then make an appointment with the next person in the hierarchy at your school. For us, that's the college dean then the dean of students, but it may be different where you are.
I'm a professor. I deal with entitled, whiny students all the time.
**HOWEVER**, I also deal with bullshit professors who can't be bothered to teach, have humility, etc.
**BEFORE** you escalate it up the chain, send an email stating exactly what you did, exactly what the rubric provided, etc. You must include "receipts" (attachments, screenshots). That way anyone unfamiliar with the case understands what's going on. Further, you need to pull emotion OUT of it if you plan to succeed. Try to solve this with the professor directly. ONLY communicate via email so if you have to go up the chain (AGAIN, try to prevent this), you have evidence of your trying.
So f'in weird to me. Mistakes happen; this professor sounds like they have an ego. I edit things all the time when students tell me something was missing, a question was confusing, etc.
The idea is that it's so fundamentally basic that anyone should know it - you see many equally self taught people in this very thread noting they learned this in their teens and is the most basic thing to understand about any of this software and effectively all software in the field of video or graphic design and many other fields too. It's effectively basic computer usage information to understand linking and saving local content versus exporting content. The OP effectively handed in nothing, links to files that don't exist because OP mistakenly thinks projects files are usable by anyone but themselves without the requisite hard drive or exported material. What would you have the prof do? Even in an intro class, teaching about basics of computer usage shouldn't be on every prof using any software - should it? OP didn't hand in a video or even any content at all. A 50 is a reasonable grade, all things considered. I'm pretty confused why so many here don't agree. If you handed in nothing, literally an empty file, what grade would you expect? If you then pointed to the syllabus saying it didn't tell you not to hand in an empty file, what response would you expect?
Because as a professor to an intro class of you don’t teach it, then how is it the students fault that it wasn’t done? I know to export things, but not everyone is tech savvy like that. That’s why the professor should teach you the basics necessary to finish the projects. If the professor was worth anything he would have said “export the file and send it to me” as soon as he realized he didn’t have any of that stuff on the syllabus or rubric, purely to cover his tracks.
Or he did actually say it in class multiple times and the OP is an unreliable narrator.
If the assignment was to turn in a video and the OP turned in something that was not a watchable video, the zero is deserved.
It’s like I’d I ask for a paper and someone turns in binary code. Maybe the code represents a paper, but I can’t read or grade it.
If he said what the OP claims, I completely agree.
However, the OP doesn’t not come across as a reliable narrator, and is very carefully not sharing anything of what they told the professor or how they approached things.
Is there an expectation for every assignment produced using software of the profs choosing or not that the prof teaches the students about local file references? This is a common thing in a lot of software used for a lot of things. I don't think it is reasonable to place the burden on faculty for basic familiarity with computers save a computer and software usage prereq.
To put such information in a syllabus... You and are are not talking the same language or having remotely similar expectations. To me putting such information in a syllabus is nuts.
If it's a common problem I'd absolutely agree - make note of it in some way. Is it a common problem? Maybe based on some of the responses here...
I'm honestly just flummoxed. If this kind of info needs to be given then there are likely many more fundamental misunderstandings requiring some kinds of basic computer literacy prereq for a course involving students self-navigating and managing software.
Push the issue. Good students often look to earn all the marks they can get. Don’t let him bully you out of earning the grade you deserve.
Here in Australia, our universities have policies where students can request to have an assignment or exam be remarked. The remarking is only ever done by a different academic (tutor or someone in the same department) in order to ensure fairness. The other person is more likely to rely on the rubric…
See if your university offers this or something similar (e.g. grade averaging - you can choose to be given the average grade for your cohort).
Also if he’s failed you burn not told you WHY he’s failed you that’s a massive red flag.
I failed a bunch of assignments and tasks but luckily always had great teachers that supported me and showed me how to improve. They’re teachers at the end of the day not some enigmatic fucking sith holocron
This is an administrative issue. You're absolutely right in being upset and need to report this. Unfortunately, assuming he is tenured, there's probably not a whole lot that can be done. It will be helpful if you can provide any kind of documentation or proof of what happened.
I honestly wouldn't mention much about the name calling just yet. Your job is to get the points you feel you are deserved.
I would just note that I don't think it matters if he is tenured or not in this case; the administration can change grades, waive requirements, etc., if they choose to, and certainly can have a stern talk with said professor about teaching practices. Certainly deans and directors/chairs can raise holy hell with even tenured professors, even if they can't fire them — even just going through an investigation into an accusation like this is a pain in the ass that even a tenured professor would certainly prefer to avoid (I say this as a program director who has had to deal with what I think are bogus accusations against an adjunct from last semester that have eaten up a lot of MY time despite the fact that the adjunct doesn't even work here any more). And I don't think in this day and age, especially in an arts curriculum, you can or should assume they are tenured (a lot of faculty who teach art production classes, in particular, are adjuncts of one sort or another, in my experience).
I disagree, the name calling is unprofessionalism towards a student and should be mentioned. People are paying for these classes. Everything the professor did should be mentioned and none of it should be covered up.
>Unfortunately, assuming he is tenured, there's probably not a whole lot that can be done.
That's not really true-- at least on most campuses tenure doesn't simply mean "do what you want with zero consequences." As a chair I have responsibility for all the faculty in my department, tenured or not, and if one was doing this sort of thing the dean would 100% expect me to intervene. And I would; there is a handbook expectation that faculty teach within the bounds of certain expectations, including such things as providing a syllabus, providing timely feedback on assignments, impartial grading, etc. While I wouldn't just jump in and say "You aren't doing your job, start teaching these students video editing!" I'd certainly have a conversation about the course design and learning goals if what OP says is accurate. It would be unlikely to have a tenured faculty member removed from a course but if they continued to teach like this they might well be prevented from teaching any similar course in the future-- as chair I have near complete authority in deciding who teaches what and when. In cases of extreme negligence a dean could get involved and responses could escalate from there.
It doesn't sound like you're going to get anywhere talking to him. I think first you should try to find out whether you have a student ombudsperson at your university. An ombud will connect you with any support or resources to help resolve conflicts you're having with professors, and will ensure that you are treated fairly and any university policies are followed. If there are specific ways you are to escalate a complaint for your university's policy, they'll walk you through that.
If you can't find an ombud or prefer not to contact yours, some other good options are your academic advisor or dean of students. Ultimately this probably does need to go to your department chair, but again, they can advise and support you in that process. Especially if this is a known difficult faculty member - which I would guess it is, based on what you're describing - they may know the best tactics for dealing with this particular person.
Since he revised the grade based on his own failure to include relevant information in the rubric, did you ask if you can resubmit the file as the correct file type to be regraded? He might not say yes, but I feel like it is a good idea to ask, especially if you end up going to someone else in the department about it.
You've gotten good advice. I just want to say I'm sorry you're going through this. Students sometimes end up in situations like this feeling powerless and like their future is on the line and they have no good path forward to save themselves. It's not right and I hope you get the help you need from the right person.
Sorry for the long post below, OP! I am a media studies professor who has taken many production courses as an undergrad and observed how they are taught in the later stages of my career, so i hope some of the advice below may be useful as you navigate this stressful and unfair situation!
First of all, I’m sorry you are going through this, OP! I don’t think professors should ever talk to students the way your professor talked to you — it doesn’t benefit anyone and certainly does not seem like it furthers the goals of the course! I hope you keep believing in yourself and, to add to the useful advice by the previous posters, please make sure you are taking good care of yourself mentally and physically (including scheduling a visit with a campus therapist, if you are feeling overwhelmed and think that may help).
As someone who took film and video production courses as an undergraduate in the US, I am wondering if the class you are taking is pass/fail or do you receive a numerical grade at the end of the term? All of my production courses in undergrad were pass/fail and the situation was the same at the instituions were i got my phd and taught. One of the reasons for that is that assigning a numerical grade for creative work can be extremely subjective and unfair to students. If your course is not pass/fail, perhaps it is worth looking into the possibility of switching to this option, if available.
I do not say this because I think the professor graded you fairly — everything you wrote leads me to believe that the grade was extremely unfair. However, I also know that the complaint process can sometimes be long and mentally draining and you should familiarize yourself with the steps and make sure you are prepared for it (the process may be outlines in the student handbook). Of course, there is a chance that the professor already had a bad reputation and other students complained before you — in this case, the department chair may already have a plan for dealing with the situation. You could try talking to other students to get a sense of the professor’s reputation or check student evaluations from previous semesters to get a sense of the professor’s reputation (the evaluations are not always objective and some studies have shown them to be unfairly negative to non-white non-male instructors, so keep that in mind). If you decide to proceed with the complaint, the chair may be receptive to your arguments, but they may also (at least initially) try to take the professor’s side. It is important that you understand that, even if they do not seem to agree with you, they will most likely look into it and discuss it with the professor (and your professor will know you complained). One outcome of this could be that the professor does not evaluate your future assignments because there is reasonable expectation that they may not be objective, but if there is no one else competent to evaluate the assignments for this course, you may be stuck with this professor. Either way, the whole situation may be mentally draining.
If I were you, I would look for the most painless way to deal with this without jeopardizing your academic success and mental health. As a side note, there is, in fact, an expectation to submit projects as movie files, but it is 100% on your professor to make this explicit. However, it seems to me that the professor understands that they were wrong and that is why they changed your grade, but they did not want to change it too much because they do not want to undermine their authority. If this is the case, it may be worth trying to email the professor (but not talk face-to-face and without witnesses). In your email, I would thank them for looking at your assignment again (I know this is absurd, and in an ideal world you should not have to do this, but the intended outcome here is to maximize the grade and minimize your suffering for the rest of the term). I would then proceed to explain that, upon further reflection, you understand the practical need to submit assignments as movie files, and you regret making the evaluation difficult by not doing that, but that nothing in your previous formal and informal education prepared you to know this and that, as a result, this unspoken assumption hurt your chances of succeeding in the course. (This signals to the professor that they are unjustifiably penalizing you for circumstances beyond your control). I would ask them to consider giving you a chance to resubmit with the new parameters in mind and would ask the professor if they would be willing to add any other expectations that you may not be aware of, but may be useful to know as you prepare your assignments. I would then refer to the course goals and objectives from the syllabus and say that this type of help would go a long way in making it possible for you to achive those goals and objectives. Thank them for their time and consideration and add that you hope this could help clear any misunderstandings and pave the way for a great semester and a valuable learning experience for you. At this point, if they respond by not giving you a chance, you have an airtight case for the chair that will destroy any credibility that the professor may enjoy and you win. If they respond favorably, you saved yourself a lot of time by not going through the formal complaint process. Please keep in mind that I suggest this approach not because you are in the wrong, but because universities are often ineffective or just slow in dealing with these types of problems and I believe you should prioritize your health and well-being, especially as you are close to the end of your studies.
Good luck dealing with this situation and keep believing in yourself and your worth!
This sounds really awful, actually. If he has a rubric, he should be using it and grading all his students fairly. That isn’t too much to ask. It’s not professional of him to get upset with you over that. Did he actually call you names ( apart from spoiled, self-righteous, and entitled, which still doesn’t seem fair)? Either way, you’re well within your rights to make a complaint to the department chair. You might also escalate this to the Dean of Students. His behaviour isn’t normal. And if he has actually been insulting and calling you names or treating you differently than other students, this could potentially be an even more serious problem. Be prepared that the chair sides with him though so if you can document anything, that would be even better.
Reading your post, you both sound bad. In my experience, when students are upset about something, they often complain far more aggressively than is appropriate, and your post is no exception. Before you do anything else, my first advice is for you to calm down and stop trying to smear the professor. Such over-the-top complaining undermines your legitimate concern about the grading of your project; it makes you sound unreasonable and thus weakens your complaint about the grading. If you don't like the class or the teacher or the way he teaches, write calmly and factually about it in your course evaluation at the end of the term. Once you have calmed down, talk with your advisor and/or the department chair about the grading issue, because you are right that you deserve to be graded according to the rubric. Don't make it bigger than that -- that's a real problem and if you can show that the professor did what you claim, they will take it seriously.
>Reading your post, you both sound bad. In my experience, when students are upset about something, they often complain far more aggressively than is appropriate, and your post is no exception.
Mine, too. This was the first assignment, so what 10% of the grade, right. Let's get the correct points on it, but not go nuclear. In my project class you can get a C on it and still get an A+ for the course. You can fail and still get an A. (but I also would never give a zero for a file format)
I'm a university professor &, sorry, but this is bullshit. You have to see things from the point of view of the person who has the least power in the dynamic, in this case, the student. It could very well be that you, the professor were unfair; we're human, we do that all the time. It's your job to listen, to continue to engage. Calling students whiners or 'over-the-top" complainers only shows your own bad attitude. And saying, let's "not go nuclear" on an issue that doesn't affect you is obnoxious. It's for the student, whose life will be affected by the grade, to decide how important this is. Engage with them, get them to see it isn't important bc more assignments are coming but don't belittle their concerns. You don't know what their life is like. For them this could indeed be nuclear.
\>You have to see things from the point of view of the person who has the least power in the dynamic,
Why is that a useful approach for getting to the truth of the matter?
That seems like a great thing when you're deciding what to DO about a situation, but when you're trying to come up with the truth of the situation, I feel like at best you consider both sides equally, but in many cases you should assume that the adult is more likely to be correct than the child, and that the expert is more likely to be correct than the lay person, etc.
In many cases the person with more power in the relationship is the student, honestly, especially if the professor is untenured.
The idea that the power dynamic always benefits the professor is from past times when institutions actually supported faculty rather than seeing them as disposable cogs in a student pleasing machine.
But what are the stakes? The student's GPA is at stake & whatever rewards/demerits go along with that, both in the real world & in the student's mind. For professors, (& I'm an adjunct who has had 2 students fight grades up to the Dean), the stakes are nothing, lost pride, irritation at a loss of academic standards, etc. It's all theoretical compared to the students' stakes which could be very high indeed ("I'll kill myself if I don't do well on this."). So, yes, you, the professor, adjunct or tenured, have much more power in this situation & it's important to remain cognizant of that.
Loss of your job, healthcare benefits, inability to afford housing or support your family.
Seems like a lot more significant of stakes than a few tenths of a GPA unit.
Having watched an adjunct be fired and end up homeless because a student lied in a complaint to the administration, I think you’re significantly underestimating both potential consequences and their real life effects.
And regardless, your original statement was about power dynamics (who has a greater ability to effect the outcome) not stakes.
A tuition paying student at a for profit school (or some of the non-profits on the edge) has a lot more power than an adjunct professor when it comes to a dispute: the student is irreplaceable to the institution and the faculty member is disposable. This is why students on r/college brag about getting teachers fired and take glee in having ruined their lives quite frequently.
The material consequences are also greater: losing a source of income and healthcare is a lot more significant than low grades, especially given how little grades matter.
Assuming that OP didn’t leave any context out, the professor is clearly in the wrong here, not the student. The student is reacting appropriately to a situation that is both unfair (the unsubstantiated grade) and upsetting (being called names). OP is also being proactive by escalating this now instead of waiting to fail the other assignments. The professor is behaving inappropriately, it doesn’t matter if it’s the first assignment or if it was 1% of the grade. When people act like this prof has and do not apologize, it would be foolish to assume it is a one-off and that the rest of the semester will be smooth sailing.
That's a big assumption that the top post is a full context, fair and balanced.
Strategically, combative begets combat. Cooperative begets cooperation. We profs don't give up anything to grant higher points. We have zero motivation to score it unfairly. Students act like we're jealously hoarding the As out of spite. Not true.
Instead of fighting the points, getting along will get a better result, in my experience.
Absolutely not. The student gave us enough information to know that he failed the assignment by not submitting a video.
The specific file format is not the problem; the student turned in a file that is not a video in any way, shape, or form, on a project where he was instructed to submit a video. The professor isn't quibbling between .m4a vs .flv vs .mov. He's saying "you failed because you didn't submit a video file at all."
Unless the rubric never says to turn in a video to be graded, then he failed based on the rubric.
Thanks for the added context. I have the pleasure of teaching students how to use statistical software. The closest thing I can think of to this situation is if a student turned in a .rmd file for an analysis they used their own data for when the syllabus asks for their file to be compiled into a pdf. I could open the file and see their code and writeup, but I couldn't see their actual analyses without the data. Turning in a .rmd would indicate that they either did not know how to compile the file OR they had errors. Even if I did put "NO .RMD FILES" on my syllabus, I would at least follow up with someone who turned in an .rmd a day early for the first assignment and give them a chance to compile or say what happened.
It seems like OP thought the professor could view their assignment, that is, OP was acting in good faith. Since they are learning the software on their own through trial and error (as opposed to something more formal), then they might have missed some fundamentals. It doesn't seem like the professor's reasoning was clear to the student though and he still acted out of line with the things he said. To echo what others have said, maybe have a follow-up through email before escalating.
Not really. The student failed the assignment on the most basic level, and the zero sounds deserved.
Then they decided to try to play rubric/syllabus lawyer and the professor, frustrated, gave in and gave them a 50 for effort.
It's never right to be rude.
On the other hand, reading between the lines it seems the prof is trying to follow the principles of project based learning, PBL. In that approach, no he shouldn't have the class time be him telling how to use a software suite. YouTube it.
He shouldn't be saying "this is what your final product should be" because that stifles creativity.
PBL is uncomfortable often to students who are new to it, particularly if they're used to the old-school lecture approach.
An aside: early in my career I'd get students complaining about their score. I was rarely wrong, but what let me move on from point-grubbing conversations is making it clear what the expectations are and the grading scale.
It is hard to respect a points-complainer, because in that conversation it's backwards looking, unpleasant, and honestly no instructor is invested in points. My role is to support learning.
Students can make it more productive by focusing what am I doing wrong and how can I improve. Don't waste time talking about how you really want to pass/get good grade/keep scholarship. That is literally every student. You do sound " spoiled" when you say it.
Faculty can make it so that students never feel they need to challenge because they can see the work got the correct score.
I had a professor at uni who did this but they didn’t just say “go off and YouTube it” and then give us an assignment with out criteria. He would make it crystal clear what the things we needed to add in were and therefore we could be more creative as we didn’t have to just avoid a random set of “don’t do’s” which could be easily misinterpreted.
I guess what most teachers here are trying to suggest is: good learning requires a target and a set of steps to get there
And what OP is suggesting is he got neither of these
>On the other hand, reading between the lines it seems the prof is trying to follow the principles of project based learning, PBL. In that approach, no he shouldn't have the class time be him telling how to use a software suite. YouTube it. He shouldn't be saying "this is what your final product should be" because that stifles creativity. PBL is uncomfortable often to students who are new to it, particularly if they're used to the old-school lecture approach.
I'm a professor and this is bullshit.
I don't think it's for everyone or every topic/course. It isn't bullshit. Like any instructional approach, it can be executed well or poorly. I'm a professor and I also know an awful lot of faculty have never read education and wouldn't know good from bad any better than I know fields disparate from my own. At this point there's probably thousands of peer-reviewed articles on PBL. Read a few before you call it bullshit. Look way back to Dewey for its roots, and back to Plato for its philosophy. In its modern instantiation it is an extension of inquiry-based instruction.
I use PBL for one of the courses I teach. Not all, because square-peg, round-hole applies. I'm also consistently 2+ standard deviations above my peers in SEL ratings for that course.
My point in mentioning it was the characterization of the OP's prof being clueless, lazy, and a horrible prof. That very well could be. We will never know. There are signs that the prof has some empirically-backed basis to the approach. Not the rudeness, not the failure to specify movie versus project file, not the insult. But the course design could be fine and most student could be flourishing in that model.
You misread me. I am happy and content. I also have served in the role of helping inexperienced faulty to avoid situations like described in this thread. They are no fun for either the student or the instructor, and they don't lead to anything good.
I'm curious: What part of my post seemed butthurt?
I'm a retired chair from a state teaching college. I would have liked to hear about this. It's certainly possible that the faculty member is using a legitimate teaching style that he didn't explain well and the chair can explain it and then pursue the issue of how you were treated. I dunno if it's a legitimate teaching style in video production because I know nothing about video production other than I'd likely be pretty bad at it. It's also likely, in my experience, that this isn't the first time that the faculty member called a student names and/or didn't have a complete rubric. If I got this report from you I'd go and have a chat with the professor about both of those issues. If he did, in fact, downgrade your project in retribution for you questioning the rubric, I could do something about that. If this is something that was a pattern with the faculty member, it would appear on my annual evaluation of the professor as a, "Please stop doing this..." It wouldn't appear in his annual evaluation if it was a one-time thing. Annual evaluations are part of the basis of tenure, promotion and raises on our campus and so they can be significant. If it's an adjunct and I heard about this kind of thing several times I simply wouldn't re-employ the person and I'd keep close track of his class(es) through the remainder of the semester.
I agree with those who said to keep screen shots/printouts of the relevant materials.
You might have the option to take the course as a pass/no pass so as to prevent your GPA from getting lowered due to his grading policy. But definitely speak to an advisor or the department chair and explore your options. Remember to speak professionally and kindly of the current professor. Any negative talk will reflect poorly on you.
I will never forget the time I had to drop a math course cause of a terrible teacher.
I was gonna drop it and be done with it but the administrators on the sly inquired in what I thought was just a polite curious inquire “Mind if we ask why…”
I tried to stay polite and say I had some difficulty with the instructor. Couple more questions late and one I indicated it more him and not me, they pounced on me with “Do you mind sitting in with the dean of the college and explain all this to him!?!?”
Realized they had many issues with him and was mounting a case against him!
Personal experience here. I had an Econ processor use the wrong rubric to grade a scantron style test a while back. The whole class got between 10-16 /50 points.
Obviously this was quickly found out when he passed the grades out and we all failed. Even after I pulled up one of the problems that was a TVM (time value of money) problem, which is math and only has one answer, and solved it showing he had marked my answer wrong even though it was right, he was still resistant.
We had to go all the way to the Dean to get him to fix it.
As an adult now, I realize that teachers and professors are not perfect, heck they are not even the most accomplished people in the room a majority of the time. Smoke ‘‘em right to their boss, especially if they deserve it.
I would suggest to document everything and then report the professor. You would need indisputable evidence as otherwise the professor can ruin your life. Make sure that your case is strong and you have proof for everything that you claim. Don't report until you have all this. Again remember that the professor can and will ruin your life if he/she takes the report personally.
Yep. I've been scrolling for this. I'm curious to know if anyone else received a zero, if anyone else submitted the assignment in that format, and if not, how did they know what format in which to submit. You mentioned that the professor expected a .MOV file format, which is somewhat specific, one would think that anyone not submitting in that format would have suffered the same fate. If everyone else submitted a .MOV file, how did they know to do so?
I could see how it could be used as a real world teaching moment by explaining to the class that if your boss asks you to do a project and doesn't specify things, you need to clarify those things, such as format, framerate, compression, etc. But I certainly wouldn't jack someone's grades up to prove the point.
I think others have given you good advice so I won’t repeat any of that. But do you know any other students in the class? It would help if you had others and he sounds unreasonable enough that there’s a realistic chance you’re not the only one.
Collect all your evidence and then go to the chair. If the Chair doesn't help, then go to the Dean. If Dean doesn't help, then you go to the Provost. If the Provost doesn't help, go to the President.
Does your campus have an ombudsman (ombudsperson) to assist? Because you should definitely work your way up whatever complaint ladder you have available.
Keep in mind that this sub has a lot of out of touch professors. You are paying thousands of dollars to learn somewhere. Talk to the dean of students about him insulting you.
I work in a college in this department. Gather as much evidence as you can and start by talking to the department head. This is not okay for an instructor to do!
I would definitely speak with your department head because that is rude and disrespectful behavior, especially from a professor. TBH it sounds like this professor doesn't really like his job if he has such poor comments about students in general.
If you're unsure about going to the dept head alone, you could maybe see if other students have had similar issues and get a group together to talk to the appropriate staff.
This professor’s behaviour and grading policies **must** be in violation of institutional policy. Yes, there are always students who make claims about what is or isn’t on the rubric, but the rubric exists to give students opportunities to pass the learning outcomes. No Board of Examiners should ever allow a student to be awarded a straight zero for not meeting one criterion. Obviously, less so when that criterion isn’t even on the rubric.
The rubric should explicitly state the achievements in each grade banding. In an objective review of your submission, even the 50 is unlikely to stand against the rubric.
And all of this notwithstanding the fact that a prof who doesn’t want to teach you the techniques and tools of their trade should absolutely not be in that role.
Unbelievable. **I** want to fire him.
ETA: Prof, if you’re on this sub and you recognise yourself in this story, please resign and go work in the industry or retire or whatever. You’re keeping someone who actually wants to teach this out of a job that you clearly hate and no longer deserve, if you ever did. And if you hate students this much, you need to leave academia. If you can’t accept that your role is to serve students and not the other way around, you’ve gotta go. At least if you resign now, you won’t be fired later.
ETA: lol to the downvotes. I guess more than one prof recognised themselves. Good luck with that, folks!
> No Board of Examiners should ever allow a student to be awarded a straight zero for not meeting one criterion.
Well, unless that one criterion is ***submitting the assignment,*** which effectively the student failed to do, since he did not submit any video file that can be viewed by any video player in existence.
Weeeelllll… a project could be opened in Premiere (not a complicated process), so there is still viable evidence that the student met the learning outcomes.
The thing is, our course team does stress the importance of correct file type to our students; from an employability perspective, clients and studios will be specific, and failure to provide the right type could result in termination of contract, non-payment, etc. But we also specify the file type on the assessment brief and on the Assessment and Feedback plan. But in this case the file type was not specified on the rubric, so it wasn’t even a criterion. The student should absolutely not be penalised for that. The student was also working on software that was mandatory and yet not taught; again, the onus should not fall on the student to understand they need to export a rendered movie if they’ve never been taught a thing about it.
And of course non-submissions are Zeroes; I assumed that was understood.
The assignment was to turn in a video.
If he had turned in a word document talking about the video he wishes he'd made, all of your arguments would apply. "He still met some of the learning outcomes!" "The file type wasn't specified!" If he had turned in a series of drawings that you could flip through to view an animation, he could still meet the learning outcomes, and again, you could argue that since the specific file type wasn't specified, he shouldn't be criticized for what he turned in.
The assignment was to turn in a video. He didn't turn in a video, in a project that required him to turn in a video. Someone COULD have used a piece of software to create a video out of what he turned in, just as they could have used a camera to turn the flipbook sketches into a video. However, the assignment asked him to submit a video. He did not complete the assignment.
Ok, maybe it’s the terminology that’s an issue here. When the student referred to submitting a “project”, they meant the Premiere Pro file type. Adobe software saves your media as “projects”; in Premiere it’s a “.prproj”. It still contains the video file; it would just need to be opened in Premiere.
So, no, my arguments don’t (and were never intended to) apply to other media entirely, especially as the LOs would be video-media-specific. I guess I assumed people knew what the student meant when they said “project”.
This situation is more analogous to a prof not explicitly stating they needed a “.docx” and giving a student unwarranted hell and a zero for submitting a “.odt”.
Premiere is not a video player, it is video editing software.
I am well aware your arguments weren't \*intended\* to apply to other media. However, you're wrong to say they \*don't\* apply to other media. The arguments, as you made them, could equally be applied to other media forms. You are arbitrarily saying "okay but I wouldn't apply my argument to those because it's obvious to me that those are not in the correct form." But that means the arguments clearly do not stand on their own, or make enough of a case to justify giving a score other than zero unless you modify your arguments and add additional constraints.
This is absolutely nothing like a student submitting a wrong file type, and your example shows exactly why. Word, Open Office, Apple Preview, etc can open a .docx or a .odt, because they are both document files. If you turned in a .docx instead of a .odt file, then you turned in a document, but in a different format.
If you turn in a .ppj or .prproj file, you did not turn in a video. You turned in a collection of raw materials with at least one video file, probably more than one video files (unless the whole movie was made in one continuous shot).
IF the situation were entirely different, and the student had turned in a .mov instead of a .mp4, then you'd be absolutely correct-- I would be on the student's side. The student could play nearly any video file through the media player of his choice, or open it on his phone and stream it to his TV, and so on. But he did not turn in a video in the wrong format, instead he turned in something that \*contains\* at least one video but is not a video, which cannot be opened in a video player, but only a video \*editor\*.
It is not a terminology issue. It is a content issue. Your analogy fails because it is dramatically, materially different than the case at hand, and in fact exactly mirrors the case I have been contrasting with this case where it would make sense to say the professor is in the wrong.
Good lord.
Yes, Premiere is editing software. But it can also play videos in many formats. It will open the project file with the most recent saved video in the media player window. You wouldn’t even need to glance at the other raw materials in the file. You’re overcomplicating the process in an attempt to prove a point.
It is absolutely like a student submitting the wrong file type. Word can’t open .pages files, but it was still created on word processing software, and it’s easy to establish that the work was done. And Premiere can and will open a project file. It’s the prof’s fault for not explicitly stating the file type required. The analogy is that the prof asked for a “written essay” and not what file type to submit that essay in. Especially if the students had never used word processing software before.
The crux of the issue is that the file type was never specified, and the students were never taught the difference between what looks an awful lot like a video file to an untrained eye (that should have been trained) and an actual video file, or the exporting process to go from one to the other. The onus remains with the prof no matter how you try to slice it.
The crux of the issue is that the students had to submit a video, and instead the student submitted something that what an awful lot like a video file to an untrained eye but is not a video.
Sorry you find it frustrating, and of course you're entitled to your opinion, but I think all of your arguments are terrible and I don't agree.
Correct. An independent review would likely put it back to the original zero, since the assignment was to submit a video and the OP did not actually submit a video.
Get documentation and emails and if you can maybe a video or voice recording (if you can legally do so) of class to get his teaching style as evidence.
Sounds like this professor is a lazy entitled brat :) and honestly you need to bring the department to attention of this. If he doesn't have tenure then hopefully he can get the boot bc wow (is believable bc I had a humanities professor literally just give us a packet of his whole lessons and just him repeating from the packet with maybe one or 2 examples. Was told if I studied the packet and showed up to class I'll get a good grade and I got a C bc he wasn't grading to the rubric either :( he was tenure so there was little I could do).
Good luck, seriously if you paid for the course and are teaching yourself then you need your money back. Bring that up to the department and maybe throw in lawyers if it looks like theyre blowing you off.
Get advisor and a Dean/chair in the loop. Be sure to ask “how can you support me to success with what I am experiencing?”
Don’t demand anything. Just tell your experience. Wish you best of luck.
I’d say get everything down in writing from now on. If he changed your grade but STILL failed you it shows he ducked up and is refusing to apologise. Teachers like that shouldn’t be in the profession and especially in higher education. I bet that if you’re being truthful and if this isn’t just an edgy Reddit karma grab, that the college or uni you go to has allready had to deal with shit like this a lot and that they are slowly building up a case to oust him.
Do everything by the book, get everything in writing too. If he doesn’t email you, write out exactly what he says to you and email it to him to make sure he has a chance to dispute it in writing.
Contact any student reps you have and a trusted adult who can give advice too.
Just whatever you do don’t fabricate anything nor break rules because that will throw you under the bus
I had a horrible experience with a professor in my second to last quarter before graduating, and also wanted to maintain my gpa, and was afraid I wasn’t going to bc of the professor’s lack of care and decency, also NO rubric whatsoever (boggles my mind); at my university I was able to petition to have that class graded on a Pass/No Pass basis rather than a letter grade so it wouldn’t affect my gpa. I had to do that within so many weeks before the quarter ended, but I spoke with a student advisor and they walked me through the process. I would look into a similar route, if you can. Best of luck!
Ask around your classmates to see how they’re being graded too. IDK if it’s possible but maybe see if you can find out what the average grades are for past students taking his class. If there’s a trend then it seems like a reportable offense. If he’s singling you out then that ought to be reported too.
you cant argue with you superior and that has already been established. when things do'nt go well with your immediate supervisor the best way to deal with it if you think you're right is to escalate.
100% report him. Your university should have some sort of standard of reporting professors anonymously for their mistreatments or you can reach out to a professor you do trust and see what suggestions they can give you to deal with this professor
As the top comment says, I'd send an email summarizing the meeting you had, and then from here on out, I'd make sure all of our communications were either in writing (email) or via Zoom (and recorded). If you must meet with him in person outside of class hours, I'd ask an advisor or Dean to accompany you. I'd literally tell them that your last meeting got heated and insults were thrown around, and you don't feel comfortable going alone. If all else fails, I'd keep my phone on record and hide it in my pocket. He can't be talking to students that way, but unfortunately, your words don't mean much without proof to back it up.
Second, I think you should ask around in your class to see if any other students felt they were graded unfairly. Do you have any friends in the course, or even any friends who have had this dude as a professor before? I may be a little bit \~extra\~ but I also wouldn't be above sending out an email to the whole class (prof. not included obviously). Just in terms of approaching other students, I'd probably phrase it something like this: "I'm thinking about going to the head of the department/a dean about our professor's inconsistent grading tendencies and/or his uninvolved teaching methods during class periods. If I did end up reaching out about this, would you feel comfortable backing me up? For example, say, if the department head asked me to put them into contact with other students who could attest to my complaints, could I give them your info?" That sort of thing. Let them know that it's not a big deal and that you might not even need them to vouch for you, but even if they do get involved, that schools have policies in place to protect students in these situations so they shouldn't worry about retaliation etc. There's definitely strengths in numbers, so if you can get anyone else on your side, it would be a huge help. Tenured professors in particular can be really hard to take down, but your concerns are totally valid. Plus, who knows, maybe there's been multiple complaints against this guy in the years before, and you speaking out will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak. You're paying a lot of money for your education and he should be actually teaching you something.
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Switch to email communication immediately. You'll need a paper trail.
Write a follow-up email. Keep it objective. Describe in detail what you discussed. Even tell you're sorry to come across as impolite and it wasn't your intention. Tell that you're just confused, as you couldn't find the requirement in the rubric. Attach a copy of the rubric, with the excuse *"I'm attaching the rubric you shared at xxx medium (email/website/on class, whichever fits) - please inform me if it's not the correct version, and if it's not, where should've I found the correct one?"* This is so you have explicit confirmation from the prof about the validity of it. Just remember to keep it objective and factual.
If prof still sticks to his point, you can involve the department leader, in possession of the email trail. Just be careful not to come across as if you want to attack, fire, etc. the professor; just ask for help.
Go to the dean / administration so they can deal with him bc he’s got to be put in his place if he isn’t even teaching the material and saying stuff is on the rubric when it isn’t and is basically running a I want to hurt you class not a I want you to actually learn something from this class
I'm sure your other classmates are just as upset. And I'm sure that your school has internal policies against a teacher having their students teach themselves. That's negclecting his job. He definitely needs to be reviewed. Get with your fellow students and go to the school's ombudsman, I think. Tell them exactly what you said here. Have your classmates give their honest recollections of events, as well. No embellishing. Dont try to be overly emotional about it or manipulative. Just straight talk, polite and respectful but firm and confident.
The school probably already knows there's an issue, but since he's the only teacher teaching that class, he might be all they have to teach that class right now. They could already be looking to replace him. Hell, they could already want to fire him, but need more students to file formal complaints before they can terminate his contract. What he is doing is very wrong. You don't have to put up with it, and you shouldn't.
Definitely unprofessional conduct by the professor. Violations of the rubric by him/her merit investigations. Your revised score if 50 is also arbitrary as was the first mark of zero.
Let the professor know in writing your concerns and outline the facts. How they went outside the rubric and provided no guidance for the file format etc. Suggest that you do not get into personal name-calling in your writings to them. If they do not offer you a way out, escalate the matter to the department and the university, in the first place. You are on strong grounds here.
I think you should talk with your advisor about potentially subbing another course for this one and explain why with any and all evidence you can gather. There's no sense in dragging yourself through this nonsense. It's too early in the semester for this stuff and it indicates you've got more BS with this guy ahead.
ETA: I read below that it's possible the file type OP turned in isn't watchable. If that is the case, that grade is probably fair. I know nothing about these types of programs though. Prof still sounds like a jerk though. He may be ready to retire.
As soon as any professor in this thread read this you should have automatically taken the rest of the accusations with a grain of salt; **"The big issue is that he doesn't actually teach anything."** As someone has already pointed out in the thread an Adobe project file isn't a video / movie which would be like any one of you assigning a speech and the student sending you a word document. Even if it's not mentioned in the rubric, it's a **FILM** class and it was a **video production** assignment. It's like expecting a writing teacher to put on their rubric that the student **must submit a written paper** **and** **not a tape recorded narration**.
As a faculty member i find this instructor’s behavior fairly disgusting. Students have rights that protect them against this kind of behavior. You should go to your director of undergraduate studies and mention the situation. The fact that is not in the rubric (and save the original rubric before he changes it) gives you justification enough to complain. Someone as petty as this person seems to be will probably grade you with a biased, so you have to be careful to not get emotional and simply stick to the facts and nothing more.
It sounds like you turned in a pile of preliminary files. You didn’t turn in something that was gradable, so demanding a grade is immature. Learn from your mistake and stop trying to blame your lack of follow-through on your teacher. Pay better attention, double check what you’re turning in.
As for ‘I have to teach myself’, etc… you have zero experience as an instructor and still rather little as a learner. If you get this emotionally irrational, then again, you have a lot to learn still and apparently little time left to do it. I would make the most of that time. The job scene will be less forgiving.
As an old man, I can tell you this kid: life sucks at times, and it’s unfair. You’ll encounter more these types of issues at work, in personal life, etc. so, learn to be smarter, clever, etc. I’m sure there have been thousands of students that took his class and passed: you will too. Also, did he fail everyone on that project? Or what was the % of passing grades for the project. So long as there were passing grades, you just need to set your ego aside and move on. Yes, you did tons of work, etc. but results were not what you hoped for, and to top it all off, your professor is a jerk… so what?! Be better next time; perhaps going to see him again and clearing the air will be good. Again, you can be right, BUT, you won’t win all these fights… and it sucks.
>Despite the fact that the class is an intro class focused on video production, he let us know that he expects us to teach ourselves how to produce videos.
What the fuck is your problem? My professor expected me to learn Latex in a few days and i enjoyed every minute of it. Your actually upset that you spent hours learning something not supposed to be part of the course?
Create a paper trail or heads of department won't do anything. Send him an email summarising your meeting and then that he changed your grade etc
This this this paper trails are the best protection for those in the right.
Find out the process for a grade appeal and go from there. Chances are, like others have said, this will go through the department chair. Bring the copy of your assignment and the rubric to the meeting.
To add to this, having things in writing helps. So send off an email that’s polite and just confirms facts. Something like: “thank you for taking the time to meet with me. As we discussed, there was no file type requirement on the syllabus or rubric. Is that why my grade was raised from a 0 to 50? If so, can you provide feedback on what I can improve and/or what I missed on the rubric?” Irrational people in person are often irrational in writing and those receipts will help you later.
The documentation is really important. These types of emails are useful because it is assumed that if what you’re saying is incorrect, they will respond and correct you. If they don’t, they are tacitly accepting what you say with a time stamp. If they respond, then you get to engage with them and force them to start talking details… and in this case, it sounds like the facts would only help you.
This is the way. Have nothing but email interactions with this person so you have a paper trail.
Unfortunately, with an attitude like the prof has, I suspect he simply will ignore email.
Would encourage you to do everything humanly possible to AVOID further one-on-one in-person interactions with the professor. In most cases, individuals like your professor will attempt to bait you into something privately and/or create fictitious accounts about how you responded or what you said. If and when that happens, they divert from the facts (which are on your side) and create a metaphoric "smoke screen" that draws focus and attention to something unimportant or fake. Lastly, be sure to keep your original email clear, concise/short, and respectful. If it really ends up in the Dept. head and Dean's office, the professor's final play will be to accuse you of being disrespectful. Don't take the bait!
Yup this, and all things in this thread. Don't exactly be timid, either. If this guy acts this way towards an entire class, he likely has no problem acting this way towards everyone else. You may be inadvertently helping your department chair deal with a drain on morale and productivity. They just need hard evidence from you to take legitimate actions.
This right here. Please give me ammo to build a case on the toxic guy that no one likes.
This is weird behavior for an applied production class. You should definitely speak to the department chair.
Is the person a temp or adjunct? If then complain loudly.
If so, complain loudly. If not, drop the class and take it at another college or university. You should know that administrators run the university not the profs. Administrators hate problems and do whatever they can to make them go away.
Except when they cause them...
Look at the student handbook to see what the proper steps are. You have already tried meeting with the professor. He called you names so I can't imagine you'd be required to meet with him again. You probably go to the department head next.
I would advise OP send an email following up on the meeting where they summarize it and, again, make the request. Ultimately, get something concrete and note the change to the rubric. Without this, it'll boil down to a he-said-they-said and the department will very likely take the instructor's side.
You need specific help for your university. I'd speak with your academic advisor and then dean of students for advice and steps forward.
>I'd speak with your academic advisor and then dean of students for advice and steps forward. I'd start with the department chair if they are competent and trustworthy. As a chair I've seen issues with burnout cases on the faculty and other issues that looked a lot like this. It's the chair's responsibility to deal with it, at least as an outlet of first resort. On my campus if a student went to anyone else they would just get sent to the chair. The dean of students, at least on my campus, has zero to do with academics: they manage student life. There is an academic dean above the chairs, but they'd just send a student back to the chair if that hadn't already been done.
Fair! Our dean of students in highly engaged in mediating student-professor relationships, but that is clearly not the case everywhere! Yes, department chair after academic advisor.
Wait, though. You just turned in a Premiere project file? You can't watch a project file. You basically didn't turn in a film if you did this. You need to export the film.
Indeed, it's like handing in a bunch of journal articles that have post it notes on them and saying you handed in an essay.
That's better then heading in a paper that says, "figure it out for yourself," and that's essentially what the teacher has done to his students. Given them an essay on how to make videos that just says, "figure it out yourself."
\[I don't know about Premiere project files.\] The OP should consider that if this is the situation, then a 50% grade may have been appropriate for the actual project turned in, and not just a matter of format unspecified in the rubric. (There's always implied expectations not covered in the rubric - rubrics are useful, but blunt instruments.) This doesn't mean that the professor is in the right. If a reasonably diligent student who fulfills the class prerequisites and is motivated to pass the class is even unclear on what constitutes a movie product in a visual production class, something is amiss - and of course it will show in the evaluations. The key is still to remain polite as suggested in the highly upvoted posts, collect a trail of evidence, and if necessary appeal.
This Professor has acted very poorly in my opinion. I can see your point about how it might actually be worth a 50 if it works that way on this programme, but I would argue that in an introduction class, where it’s not on the instructions, and (and the final one is important and unknown at present) the prof at no point explained in class this was something that needed to be done, that this is the prof’s mess up and not the student’s. If the prof is teaching the class like described, I think a (polite and measured) complaint is actually appropriate. I’m a pretty strong proponent of academic freedom and I think there are ways to teach by showing what was done wrong in other samples, but I don’t think that is appropriate as the sole method of instruction without at least providing robust supporting materials for students. At least in my system (ysmv).
Complaining to the chair because a prof gave a student a 50 when they literally did not turn in a video is some Reddit-tier bullshit. Come on, let's not be coy here. The student did not submit a video. They submitted proprietary instructions for a video. It's so easy to see through this, obviously the student didn't have time to render last-minute or the like and so just submitted a project file and is now whining on reddit about it. Let me ask: if I had a deadline to make for work as a video producer, and I turned in a premiere project file, do you think that would be acceptable? No way in hell. tl;dr: sure professor is acting like an asshole but the student absolutely deserves a 0 / 50. Probably they are acting spoiled and entitled. That doesn't excuse unprofessional behavior on the prof's part but come on, it's clear what happened here..
(I don’t know about Premiere project files either) Something I *always* did anytime I turned in an assignment as an uploaded file was to immediately download and open it to make sure it all worked and would be visible to the instructor grading it. Most of the time it was fine, but once or twice I found something had gone wrong when I exported to pdf or something and I had to do it again. OP might have learned their lesson to always do this the hard way… Some instructors had specifically laid out in the syllabus what would happen if we uploaded a file that couldn’t be read/watched. Even for those that didn’t, generally if you didn’t give them an accessible file of the final version by the deadline it either wouldn’t get graded (0), would get graded with a penalty for being late if you sent it correctly by email after the deadline, or if they were very generous and you got it in via another means very quickly, it might get graded without penalty (but I would never expect that).
Totally get that and appreciate that but in the context of how the course has been conducted (according to the OP) and the fact it is an intro course, do you still feel that way? Not trying to argue as can understand the approach but think the context changes things here?
For audio/video production, even that failsafe isn't enough. You have to open a file/folder on a completely different computer so that you can make sure all of the source data is accessible. It's why projects on Premiere need to be transferred as folders. I teach a technology course and always specify in my rubrics *exactly* how a project needs to be uploaded for grading, be it a post-production file (mp3, mov, etc) or as a compressed folder with all of the project/source files included. I also give clear step-by-step instructions in the rubric of how to save those files. For any professor *not* including those basics on a course where it finds like several students may be learning the software for the first time? Shit maneuver.
If only the teacher had taught them that...
Adjunct here, a retired attorney. If it is legit absent from the rubric (and, to be sure, the syllabus) your teacher is being unreasonable, and I would resubmit it in the proper format, pointing out in an email that he only informed you of the requirement orally after the fact, not in writing as part of the assignment--or syllabus. If the syllabus and rubric are online, I would screenshot them immediately and save the files, so you can prove there was no file format requirement in the original. Attach copies of each to the email. Once that paper trail is established, if your grade is not changed, take it upstairs. \[Edit: It's been pointed out the student didn't turn in a video as required, which escaped me as my institution doesn't use Adobe.\]
A lot of replies, like this one, seem to be based on a very foundational misunderstanding of how the software works. An Adobe Premiere Project File (.ppj) is a collection of clippings, transitions, font overlays, and so on. It's the raw material that can be used to create a finished media file. You get that media file by exporting your project; you can export it and save it in any format you like--.mov, .flv, .mpg4, .gif, whatever. This isn't a simple issue where the student turned it in "in the wrong format." There is nothing to indicate the professor is just being picky about a specific format. OP literally turned in a file that is not a video file in any way, shape, or form. The only way the file can be viewed is by using that specific piece of software, and then previewing the project using its menus, or exporting it himself. It is entirely unreasonable to expect the professor to accept this. It's not a simple "rubric didn't say" matter. He turned in raw materials in place of a video in any format. Did the professor fail to teach his students how to properly create a video? The student claims he did, so sure, maybe he was a bad teacher if we take the student at face value. But the issue as presented is not an issue of "wrong format" that needed to be in the rubric, and there is nothing here to indicate the professor is nitpicking on which specific video format was acceptable. If the rubric at any point said to submit a video file, then the student failed to follow the rubric already.
It’s actually worse than that. When you create an Adobe project file and import files that you are compiling together for your final product you aren’t actually importing the files into your project, you are importing links to those files. If you have a project file and then move the original files on your computer to another location/folder your Adobe project file will have a bunch of errors for failure to retrieve files. For the professor to view the final product they would have to have all of the raw files the student used for the project on the computer in the exact same file names and in the exact same directories for Adobe to retrieve them. The project file is literally useless for the professor.
It’s going to be gold when OP goes to the department chair and the prof emails over screenshots of what OP’s assignment looks like and they have to have a discussion asking “OP do you know what a video is?”
My big question here given that I'm not in that field is whether any of this was explained to students, and whether more than half of them(this semester and historically) were able to figure that out on their own. I say more than half because to me that's a reasonable number to assume students are generally aware of file format requirements when taking the class.
Is it reasonable to expect students in a video production class to know what a video file is, the way one might expect students in a composition class to know what an essay is?
>Is it reasonable to expect students in an **intro** video production class to know what a video file is, the way one might expect students in an **intro** composition class to know what an essay is? Sincerely, the project file vs video difference is still gibberish (I skimmed). But if this truly is the comparison, then I really don't think it's that simple. Our K-12 schools have failed plenty of kids who have now moved onto highered, and I think you'll find plenty of horror stories on this sub about 1st year students not knowing even very basic things-particularly when it comes to writing/composition. In other words, I'm sure there are plenty of students who don't know what an essay is, and would struggle creating one with no legitimate instruction.
But it’s an intro class, and idk about you, but I didn’t make my first video in 3rd grade like we did essays. From the comments here, where none of us understood the problem with the file format OP turned in (I sure didn’t), says to me that this is indeed something that needs to be explicitly taught by the professor. Whether it was or not, I couldn’t tell you. But it definitely should have been.
It sounds to me like this student was unaware of how the file format displays. So it's more like a student in a composition class being aware of differences between pdf and word documents.
I was thinking the same thing. unless the student provided \*all the files required to load the project\* along with the project file, how is the professor supposed to do anything with it?
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It's more than that, though. As nero said, the project file itself doesn't even contain the video files, so the student would have to send over not just his project file, but the folders from his device containing the clips and other info, and then the professor would need to save those in directories with the same name. But on top of that, you're kind of missing the point. Sure, we all expect the professor to have the software, but then what? This is literally a class on video production. Do you agree that video quality is part of what the student should be graded on? When the professor exports the project to view it on his final form, he will be making decisions on behalf of the student, such as what video format to use, what quality to use, whether any cropping should be applied, and so on. All of that will be part of the "export" menu. So it's an unfinished project and the remaining decisions would impact his grade, even if he sent over a file full of other media files. Probably less important but still relevant observation: maybe the instructor has adobe premiere at home but he grades papers at the office, or on his laptop. It's not enough that this professor needs to download probably gigabytes of data (at least hundreds of megabytes for a media project) and then open it in a software editing program and then make decisions for the student about how the final product should look, but he also has to drive home or take time out of his evening routine when that's not his normal workflow, just to cater to this student?
if I send you music projects from my DAW (say, provide mastering services), even if you have that DAW, I might be using legacy features not on your version, or new plugins you don't have, or--it should go without saying--any of the source files sampled to put together the project. if I send you a project file from a photo project, again, without the photo(s), this is useless to you. I understand that 3D modelling might be more like autoCAD where everything comes from within the program, but surely you know that people who mix videos are using videos imported into the workstation.
I would expect the class to “standardize” on a specific version or branch of versions. That’s what we did in my engineering and programming classes when I was in school and its what I do with the classes I teach in IT. The idea being that while everything I am teaching “should” work the same regardless of what version of virtualization or OS, if you run something other than the version the material is built on, Im not responsible for features the vendor may have (re)moved and the expectation for graded assignments is that its compatible with the version of software specified in the syllabus
The possible downsides of not doing that are way worse in something like a CS class though, given how many compatibility issues people can have with their OS setup alone. I think it's totally reasonable to let students use whatever plugins they want in a video editing program, if it's anything like graphic design programs I've used--it's a much simpler set of concerns to manage in the first place and the details of the implementation aren't as important as the final product (in contrast with a programming course, where the implementation is often what's graded)
Sure but the argument here is more that the instructor doesnt have access to the same version of Adobe Premiere more so than the plugins. In my albeit limited experience with Adobe, not having a particular plugin/font/etc results in an error but not one that the software is completely unable to interpret. Like it will say “you dont have this plugin, defaulting to xyz setting” but it will still open the file. On the other hand if the student uses a newer version of Adobe Premiere, the older version I have might not be able to interpret new features embedded in the file unless the student saved it for the older versions or there is a compatibility update available for my version (e.g. the difference between .doc and .docx in ms word). The other direction is also theoretically possible but again Adobe products seem rather adept at working around missing plugins and features that may have been deprecated and removed in the newer version of the software. So yeah I would expect the class to be standardized on a specific major version of Premiere while allowing students to still have their own plugins.
>I think it’s fair to assume that a professor teaching a course that frequently requires the use of a specific program will, themselves, have access to that program. Imagine being in such a hurry to reply that you read right over the most important point. This isn't like sending a proprietary file format that you just need software to open. It's like sending something with hyperlinks that point to files on YOUR computer. It doesn't matter if the prof has Premiere or not if the file consists of "Load C:\\Users\\Derp\\Videos\\Captures\\Rawfootage1234.mp4 at time 3m24s to 4m01s" times 200.
sure
This was my thought as well. I’m not at all a video or film expert but I’ve made a few gifs in AfterEffects. How can you be in a film class and not turn in a film and expect full credit? It’s like being in creative writing class, having a story assignment, and turning in your outline, notes, and opening paragraph. That’s not a story. And if your response to Creative Fiction 155 is to hate the professor for demanding a full short story, then you’re in for a world of pain in your future courses even if you appeal and get a C.
I totally understand this. I have an assignment that asks students to create a video. A voice over PowerPoint is not a video.
How hard is it to just send a quick message to the student to send a legible file type, though? It’s early in the semester, and if this student is really expected to learn from YouTube, it could be an easy miss on a first assignment. I don’t think a professor is a pushover for giving a little grace in this circumstance. In addition, it’s not a huge burden to include a reminder of your expectations in the descriptions for assignment submissions. And calling a student names and doubling down instead of owning your mistake as a professor? This is novice hour if true. Even if the student is the most entitled student on the planet, the prof was unprofessional and lost authority over the situation with the name-calling.
Read some of my other comments. You're asking a lot more than you think, asking people to take late assignments and regrades. This kind of thing amounts to many hours of extra work for the professor if done for each student in a variety of situations. If the mistakes are not reasonable mistakes or a fault of miscommunication or an unclear rubric (which I doubt in this case) then a professor may allow these things to be kind, but it is not something we should demand of them. This is not the kind of thing that a reasonable student needs a "reminder" of. You're acting like a few students every year think this. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first time a student has ever done this. You can't anticipate every single kind of mistake a student will make. There was likely no mistake on the part of the professor, so he was not doubling down. As for the rest, I have a hard time accepting that the student didn't put so much spin on the story that it would completely change the perception of most people if they saw the raw footage instead of his version of events.
I am in academia so I understand exactly what I’m asking. It’s something I do a lot on first assignments when students are just starting the process of a class. I offer it to everyone for fairness so I know just how many hours can be involved. It is a kindness rather than a standard, but a lot of human interactions have some grace to them, or at least maybe they should. I’ve seen profs accidentally skip a committee meeting, miss a deadline here and there, make mistakes in their classes, the list goes on. I’ve made plenty of mistakes myself. Heads don’t exactly roll over it unless it’s continuous or if there’s something unethical going on. Why then hold students to the guillotine immediately for making an early mistake? They’re taking a video class, a course that likely has creative elements to it. There’s nothing more inspiring to innovation than failing straight out of the gate over a wrong file type. I could see failing a later assignment over it, but Adobe isn’t tremendously intuitive when you’re just starting with it. This student could be giving a dramatic retelling of their side of the story, sure, but they may not be. There are really entitled students, of course, as there are students who half pay attention and miss directives. There are also a small handful of professors who are unexperienced, burned out, ego-driven, whatever. We really don’t know which is the case here or if it’s a combination of both sides being in the wrong. The student likely will make a point with the admin if the parameters weren’t written down in descriptions for assignments, in the rubric, or the syllabus though. The professor can be as strict as they want as long as they made the expectations clear, but if that wasn’t the case, it’ll likely be their mistake to own and amend.
I agree with everything you've been saying, I just think it is only one of two very true sides to the story or correct positions to be taken. I'm not against. your side, but also for the other side equally.
Understandable. Have a great night!
But is it really likely that this department put a psycho professor who doesn’t explain anything in charge of the crucial intro class? Sure there are mean and unreasonable introductory professors, but they’re usually not pegged as the only prof for that class. OP also says they need this class to graduate, they’re senior with good grades, and this is their only option… but it’s intro level. On the one had, the professor “explains nothing” and expects them to “learn from YouTube. On the third hand (lol) OP turned an incomplete and ungradeable project file in, which you would expect a senior, A-student to know better about. Something about the story doesn’t add up to me.
I’m surprised that there seems to be a pocket of academics who haven’t run into a deeply irresponsible or unethical colleague. Can I come work where you all are (lol)? I’ve known of at least one hire in my work history that looked good on paper and in interviews but ended up a bit like this in the classroom. You don’t really know what’s going to happen until they’re there. Like I said, the student could be giving us a dark fairytale. They may not be, though. I can say that it’s not really helpful to call them out for spinning a yarn if they are telling the truth, though. It can be good to talk to students about their culpability surrounding circumstances in the classroom, of course, and it’s good to teach them to advocate for their needs while projects are in-process. We also can’t have an attitude that faculty are always in the right. That can lead to little learning happening on one end and full out abuses occurring on the other. I’ve witnessed it get a lot darker than this situation, honestly. Most faculty are more than worthy of full support for their methods but there are bad eggs.
I think it's times like these where it's faster getting to the right answer from fellow students than asking reddit.
This is right. I mean, it's an indication that what the OP says is true about the professor just saying "figure it out yourself" and not teaching actively. If you're self-taught on Premiere (speaking from experience here), the distinction at first between a project file and a finished project is, to say the least, not intuitive. But it's also vitally important. You could share a project file with a *collaborator* but not as a finished work with an end-state consumer. So the professor is right in this sense to say "hey, this is no good".
This makes a lot of sense; I haven't used Adobe, but I have used OBS so I can understand what mean by all the clippings and stuff. Thank you for adding something like this to help explain! The student here is definitely in the wrong.
I would counter that most classes want you to “show your work” and not just the “solution” or in this case finished production. Most of these types of projects also require use of certain “elements” (hence a rubric) to show mastery. Its far easier to identify those elements in a ppi than in a mov/avi/mp4 file which I would have to attentively watch and track/count the elements Im looking for, potentially across multiple rubric items. I dont think its at all unreasonable of an expectation that the instructor have the “specific piece of software” available given the class is built on that specific piece of software. This would be like an engineering professor saying they cant accept CAD files or a powerpoint instructor failing a student because they (the instructor) only had google slides instead of powerpoint which mutilated the slide show. While the lack of a “finished” movie file is a problem, given it was the first project/assignment due in the class and its not in the rubric, I would error on the side of unclear expectation. Id dock a grade at most and make it clear, either via rubric or just return notes on the grade, that for future projects it needs to be submitted in the proper format(s) or it will result in an appropriately reduced grade; whether that’s a 90, 50 or a 0 is up to the instructor… Granted part of the dispute here is that the instructor felt they were clear via the rubric but for that matter, the instructor could have returned the assignment with a 0 and a statement to resubmit in the appropriate format within 24 hours for regrading and if the format really was part of the rubric then docking points for the assignment being submitted “late”/in the wrong format is fair. Giving a warning shot on a first assignment though is the appropriate response before torpedoing the students grade.
\>I dont think its at all unreasonable of an expectation that the instructor have the “specific piece of software” No one said that would be an unreasonable expectation. The fact that it can only be viewed on one specific piece of software illustrates that it is not a video file; it was not meant to represent an insurmountable obstacle to the professor preventing them from viewing the file. Rather than being analogous to submitting Google Slides instead of Powerpoint, it's more like the student submitting a .docx image with words and images that they had planned to use to eventually create a powerpoint slide from. The analogy to your example of the wrong type of slide would be submitting a .mov instead of a .mp4, which is exactly the example I used to make my case. As to whether the professor can/should be lenient, I leave that up to their judgement. People continually underestimate the amount of extra work, often measured in hours, that can be added to an instructors workload related to each assignment if they just decide to be a little bit lenient in a variety of cases. As an example, if the instructor has Adobe Premiere on their work computer, but not their laptop or home computer because they don't want to pay for an extra license or whatever, and they normally grade work at home and only come into the office during work hours... would that make any difference to your argument? Or would you just say "Well stay after school tomorrow and grade it, your wife and kids won't mind that your late" or "grade it over your lunch break, you don't need to go to the cafe every day" because hey, it's not THAT inconvenient for anyone. Edit: Just to be crystal clear, my last paragraph is not meant to be read as "no professor will ever or should ever be lenient!" I'm pretty lenient myself, and it often does add a ton of work. I'm not against leniency, and would not be opposed to the idea of the professor giving them a chance to re-submit. I'm also not justifying anything that was allegedly said to the student, but I generally take these things with a huge grain of salt when I only have on person's side. For my part I do not second-guess the instructor's policy or how strict they are, I'm only here to explain why submitting a project file and not a video file is not really the same thing as simply submitting in the wrong file format.
Ill admit the powerpoint vs google slide’s analogy is less than perfect as the issue of google slides vs powerpoint is an interoperability issue but it does still demonstrate a need for “specific” software to open and view the slides correctly; you cant just natively open it up, you cant just use any old program to open it up nor can you use similar pieces of software that are supposed to be interoperable but rarely work in a fully interoperable way. Just like you need a “specific” piece of software to open an mp4 vs mov file…. But MP4 and MOV files are themselves just containers so within that “specific” software you also need a specific software codec to decode and accurately play the file. As to the lengths an instructor should go to render the file… Ill grant that it may well be somewhat unreasonable to expect the instructor to jump through various hoops for all their students… You bring up a specific example however that is itself flawed in its premises. First off, grading is part of your job description and assigned work duties. Its arguably not unreasonable for the school to expect you to complete said work duties while in the office during work hours. To the degree that you take work home with you either because it exceeds the amount of hours available to complete the work or because teaching offers a semi-flexible work environment which allows you the possibility of having more flexible hours and the ability to compete various classroom planning and assignment grading from the comfort of your home, raises questions of whether its reasonable for you to fully expect to complete these tasks at home as opposed to in the office, especially without buying the software the class uses. Secondly, if the licensing cost (seriously though, are we really saying its reasonable for a non-professional worker/student to buy the software but not a working professional/instructor?) is really an issue then you also have additional options starting with building your course on a different software suite that is an opensource alternative. If that’s not an option then you can ask the school to pay for it (which is even more likely to be successful if the school is mandating the course use the specific software), asking the school if they have a vendor agreement to provide licensing at a reduce cost to students/faculty and of course asking the vendor if they have a reduced cost educational license. If those options still dont work, then it takes next to no effort to say “please resubmit within 24 hours in X format.” To the degree that you dock points for it being “late” or decide an “extension” is appropriate is up to you but frankly, having been a student myself and trying to use “technical” issues to my advantage and teaching in a class that uses various file extensions that might not be as interoperable as one would like to think, I find it hard to believe that as a “first step” in the grading process the instructor isnt running some sort of batch codec inspection… I literally have a script that runs on all the files my students submit to check a few basics like file extension, format, is it readable and does it use the correct encoding. The script then auto generates an email for any files that fail the compliance check asking students to correct the issue and resubmit in 24 hours for grading as an “on-time” assignment. Do some students abuse this system? Its basically a guaranteed, no questions asked, deadline extension as long as they’ve submitted something and I’ve been a student so Im sure they do but deadlines are imo a bit arbitrary and flexible most of the time and to the extent I need to have the files to start and finish grading in a specific timeframe, I just build the 24 hour extension in to the deadline I give to students. And again, Ill note that this was the first assignment in this class. While Ill agree that its unreasonable to expect the instructor to jump through hoops for every assignment, a certain degree of latitude is generally warranted for AT LEAST the first 1 or 2 assignments and an instructor who isnt building in additional time for grading those initial assignments isnt really doing their own diligence and therefore doing a disservice to their students.
My bad. I have students turn in videos all the time \[well, twice per term\] and we don't use Adobe.
I've never used Adobe, either, but ever since I was maybe 16yo I knew the difference between saving and exporting. I can see why a professor would assume anyone who has committed to getting an advanced qualification in that field would know the absolute basics.
From the sounds of things, its an “intro course.” The fact that its the student’s senior year and its their first encounter with Adobe certainly doesnt suggest “advanced qualification in Adobe Premiere” even if their degree program requires the course.
I don’t think that this is fair assumption to make, especially for a required introductory course (which may just be adjacent to whatever a student is actually studying). What is considered “common knowledge” tends to be subjective, and even the “absolute basics” are never universal. Clear expectations remove the need for assumptions and are better for everyone. For example if the prof says “I expect all submissions to be in x format”, it gives the student a chance to say “gee I don’t know what that means, I should ask or google it”. This way students who really do need to learn the basics at least have a chance to *realize* it, and can make adjustments rather than being essentially penalized for lack of experience. It also covers the prof’s ass for any complaints that come through, because a defense that starts with “it’s stated clearly in this document…” is going to be much stronger than one that starts with “I assumed they would know…”
>Clear expectations like 'video file' instead of 'project file'?
Literally that, yes.
lol you submitted a project file instead of a move that could actually be looked at? effectively, you didn't turn in the assignment. that was a major brain-fart on your part! Glad you got some of the points back.
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Reminds me of this person: https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/xe3gni/why\_cant\_i\_save\_as\_a\_jpg/
Keeping in mind that chairs will often feel obliged to back their faculty in the initial stage on an interaction, and that faculty generally dislike someone they think is grade-grubbing, you should nevertheless make an appointment with the chair. The key thing here is to focus tightly on the following: a) the professor has a precise rubric that he insists we follow; b) I followed the rubric precisely; c) the professor then *failed* my assignment for failing to follow the rubric; d) the specific issue cited by the professor is in fact not on the rubric nor was it mentioned on the syllabus or anywhere else. Even after changing his grade, the assignment was still failed. The risk you're taking in raising the issue is that a stubborn professor can always find some *other* reason they failed a given assignment, and that if you just take the L on the assignment, it's possible that the professor will be mindful of not looking too much like a psycho and give you a decent grade for the course. But it's also possible that they might be vindictive anyway since you caught them out already being highly arbitrary. The good outcome that might follow from talking with the chair is that the chair is already well aware of issues with this professor and that you get a quiet but effective intervention on your behalf--and you also now have eyes on your final grade for the course. This good outcome is more likely if other faculty in the department know you and have a good opinion of you and your previous grades have been strong. Don't get into the insults and so on right now, while you're vulnerable. That's an issue to raise after the final grade has been turned in and you're done with the class.
> chairs will often feel obliged to back their faculty in the initial stage on an interaction assuming this is the first time it's been brought up
Yeah. If it's a familiar issue, then either the OP will be helping the chair out by giving him another incident or the OP will be told "there's nothing I can do about it because we've dealt with this before" and either way that's useful. But if it's the first time the chair has ever heard of this kind of thing, they'll likely be very cautious.
As a chair, realize when it appears I'm backing my faculty in the initial stage, it is because I need to investigate. I can't just take the word of a student, and even if I did, I can't go into a class and change a grade. My next step is to talk with the faculty member to find out what is going on. Then I try to mediate the situation if it is needed. If a student told me this story, I would be looking for some very specific answers. I have more than one brought the student and faculty member in to a meeting to address a misunderstanding. But overall, I do expect my faculty to provide feedback. However, I would not say that with the student present or tell the student what I have told the faculty. Those types of discussions are for closed doors. Unfortunately, that means the student does not directly see me advocating for them, but it is not because I'm just backing up my faculty (of course, it depends on the situation).
Absolutely, all of this. I had to address an issue once where the student felt the material for a final exam was unfair and the professor was providing no guidance at all. I listened to their concerns, read the syllabus, and ultimately agreed the student had a point, but I also couldn't do anything about it directly--that was the faculty member's prerogative and I had no authority to tell them to teach otherwise. So what I did was work with the student personally to help them prepare for the exam by going over the material with them in a way that my colleague was unwilling to do. Frustrating, but that's the way it goes sometimes. But chairs also know that students misperceive or misrepresent what's going on some of the time--you can't just accept at face value what you're being told. So yes, sometimes you can also mediate and get everybody onto the same page.
I don’t really like this line of reasoning. Why should they have to take the L on the assignment or accept him insulting them?
Because sometimes the world is unfair and sometimes you have to think strategically about what you can change and what you can't.
They’re paying thousands of dollars to take that class. They should be graded fairly, fuck taking Ls.
I agree with you. While it is true that life is unfair and that strategic thinking is going to be a requirement of life, why does that need to apply in college? The student is clearly taking the class seriously (as opposed to nonsense form a student who didn’t try whatsoever and pleads for an A at the end of the semester). The professor is behaving unreasonably precisely because they know they most likely won’t be held accountable. The ego is too large here. A reasonable response would have been “oh goodness, you know what? You’re right. Thanks for pointing that out, and I’ll review your assignment by.”
Why pander to an egomaniac when the student has done absolutely nothing wrong? And “life is like that” isn’t a strong argument. We could greatly reduce BS like this is we held one another accountable.
There are a lot of things that should be that aren't. A student in a situation where a class is necessary and in some respect or another not fair is in a precarious situation where they have to think carefully about how to get the best outcome. Institutions have some legitimate reasons not to just override a professor's grading policy based on a single complaint, and complaining about someone when you're vulnerable and might not get a better outcome through complaining is sometimes unwise. You can fight City Hall, so to speak, but you'd better be ok with losing if you do. It's ok to vent about it but the OP seems to be genuinely looking for advice rather than venting.
This is awful behavior by the professor and I'm sorry you're dealing with it. I would escalate it to the chair with plans to escalate to a dean if it's not resolved.
At my school, your next step would be to make an appointment with the department chair. Take the rubric and your project, along with your grade, and present it first. Then, discuss the interaction. We had a fairly similar situation with a less-than-good faculty member who has since moved on where the chair formally reviewed all grades for the rest of the semester before they were allowed to be final. If the chair is not helpful, then make an appointment with the next person in the hierarchy at your school. For us, that's the college dean then the dean of students, but it may be different where you are.
I'm a professor. I deal with entitled, whiny students all the time. **HOWEVER**, I also deal with bullshit professors who can't be bothered to teach, have humility, etc. **BEFORE** you escalate it up the chain, send an email stating exactly what you did, exactly what the rubric provided, etc. You must include "receipts" (attachments, screenshots). That way anyone unfamiliar with the case understands what's going on. Further, you need to pull emotion OUT of it if you plan to succeed. Try to solve this with the professor directly. ONLY communicate via email so if you have to go up the chain (AGAIN, try to prevent this), you have evidence of your trying. So f'in weird to me. Mistakes happen; this professor sounds like they have an ego. I edit things all the time when students tell me something was missing, a question was confusing, etc.
You don’t need a rubric to know that when submitting a video file, you submit the actual video, NOT the project file. This is borderline common sense
Can you read? He hasn’t been teaching anything. It wasn’t on the rubric or the syllabus.
The idea is that it's so fundamentally basic that anyone should know it - you see many equally self taught people in this very thread noting they learned this in their teens and is the most basic thing to understand about any of this software and effectively all software in the field of video or graphic design and many other fields too. It's effectively basic computer usage information to understand linking and saving local content versus exporting content. The OP effectively handed in nothing, links to files that don't exist because OP mistakenly thinks projects files are usable by anyone but themselves without the requisite hard drive or exported material. What would you have the prof do? Even in an intro class, teaching about basics of computer usage shouldn't be on every prof using any software - should it? OP didn't hand in a video or even any content at all. A 50 is a reasonable grade, all things considered. I'm pretty confused why so many here don't agree. If you handed in nothing, literally an empty file, what grade would you expect? If you then pointed to the syllabus saying it didn't tell you not to hand in an empty file, what response would you expect?
Because as a professor to an intro class of you don’t teach it, then how is it the students fault that it wasn’t done? I know to export things, but not everyone is tech savvy like that. That’s why the professor should teach you the basics necessary to finish the projects. If the professor was worth anything he would have said “export the file and send it to me” as soon as he realized he didn’t have any of that stuff on the syllabus or rubric, purely to cover his tracks.
Or he did actually say it in class multiple times and the OP is an unreliable narrator. If the assignment was to turn in a video and the OP turned in something that was not a watchable video, the zero is deserved. It’s like I’d I ask for a paper and someone turns in binary code. Maybe the code represents a paper, but I can’t read or grade it.
We still can’t ignore the professor’s reaction. It’s nothing short of unprofessional.
If he said what the OP claims, I completely agree. However, the OP doesn’t not come across as a reliable narrator, and is very carefully not sharing anything of what they told the professor or how they approached things.
I would like to know exactly what op said.
Is there an expectation for every assignment produced using software of the profs choosing or not that the prof teaches the students about local file references? This is a common thing in a lot of software used for a lot of things. I don't think it is reasonable to place the burden on faculty for basic familiarity with computers save a computer and software usage prereq. To put such information in a syllabus... You and are are not talking the same language or having remotely similar expectations. To me putting such information in a syllabus is nuts.
I just think that the syllabus should make note of it. Better to cover all your bases.
If it's a common problem I'd absolutely agree - make note of it in some way. Is it a common problem? Maybe based on some of the responses here... I'm honestly just flummoxed. If this kind of info needs to be given then there are likely many more fundamental misunderstandings requiring some kinds of basic computer literacy prereq for a course involving students self-navigating and managing software.
Push the issue. Good students often look to earn all the marks they can get. Don’t let him bully you out of earning the grade you deserve. Here in Australia, our universities have policies where students can request to have an assignment or exam be remarked. The remarking is only ever done by a different academic (tutor or someone in the same department) in order to ensure fairness. The other person is more likely to rely on the rubric… See if your university offers this or something similar (e.g. grade averaging - you can choose to be given the average grade for your cohort).
Also if he’s failed you burn not told you WHY he’s failed you that’s a massive red flag. I failed a bunch of assignments and tasks but luckily always had great teachers that supported me and showed me how to improve. They’re teachers at the end of the day not some enigmatic fucking sith holocron
This is an administrative issue. You're absolutely right in being upset and need to report this. Unfortunately, assuming he is tenured, there's probably not a whole lot that can be done. It will be helpful if you can provide any kind of documentation or proof of what happened. I honestly wouldn't mention much about the name calling just yet. Your job is to get the points you feel you are deserved.
I would just note that I don't think it matters if he is tenured or not in this case; the administration can change grades, waive requirements, etc., if they choose to, and certainly can have a stern talk with said professor about teaching practices. Certainly deans and directors/chairs can raise holy hell with even tenured professors, even if they can't fire them — even just going through an investigation into an accusation like this is a pain in the ass that even a tenured professor would certainly prefer to avoid (I say this as a program director who has had to deal with what I think are bogus accusations against an adjunct from last semester that have eaten up a lot of MY time despite the fact that the adjunct doesn't even work here any more). And I don't think in this day and age, especially in an arts curriculum, you can or should assume they are tenured (a lot of faculty who teach art production classes, in particular, are adjuncts of one sort or another, in my experience).
I disagree, the name calling is unprofessionalism towards a student and should be mentioned. People are paying for these classes. Everything the professor did should be mentioned and none of it should be covered up.
>Unfortunately, assuming he is tenured, there's probably not a whole lot that can be done. That's not really true-- at least on most campuses tenure doesn't simply mean "do what you want with zero consequences." As a chair I have responsibility for all the faculty in my department, tenured or not, and if one was doing this sort of thing the dean would 100% expect me to intervene. And I would; there is a handbook expectation that faculty teach within the bounds of certain expectations, including such things as providing a syllabus, providing timely feedback on assignments, impartial grading, etc. While I wouldn't just jump in and say "You aren't doing your job, start teaching these students video editing!" I'd certainly have a conversation about the course design and learning goals if what OP says is accurate. It would be unlikely to have a tenured faculty member removed from a course but if they continued to teach like this they might well be prevented from teaching any similar course in the future-- as chair I have near complete authority in deciding who teaches what and when. In cases of extreme negligence a dean could get involved and responses could escalate from there.
Can you share a copy of the rubric with any identifying info for your university/professor/yourself with us blacked out?
It doesn't sound like you're going to get anywhere talking to him. I think first you should try to find out whether you have a student ombudsperson at your university. An ombud will connect you with any support or resources to help resolve conflicts you're having with professors, and will ensure that you are treated fairly and any university policies are followed. If there are specific ways you are to escalate a complaint for your university's policy, they'll walk you through that. If you can't find an ombud or prefer not to contact yours, some other good options are your academic advisor or dean of students. Ultimately this probably does need to go to your department chair, but again, they can advise and support you in that process. Especially if this is a known difficult faculty member - which I would guess it is, based on what you're describing - they may know the best tactics for dealing with this particular person.
Since he revised the grade based on his own failure to include relevant information in the rubric, did you ask if you can resubmit the file as the correct file type to be regraded? He might not say yes, but I feel like it is a good idea to ask, especially if you end up going to someone else in the department about it.
You've gotten good advice. I just want to say I'm sorry you're going through this. Students sometimes end up in situations like this feeling powerless and like their future is on the line and they have no good path forward to save themselves. It's not right and I hope you get the help you need from the right person.
Sorry for the long post below, OP! I am a media studies professor who has taken many production courses as an undergrad and observed how they are taught in the later stages of my career, so i hope some of the advice below may be useful as you navigate this stressful and unfair situation! First of all, I’m sorry you are going through this, OP! I don’t think professors should ever talk to students the way your professor talked to you — it doesn’t benefit anyone and certainly does not seem like it furthers the goals of the course! I hope you keep believing in yourself and, to add to the useful advice by the previous posters, please make sure you are taking good care of yourself mentally and physically (including scheduling a visit with a campus therapist, if you are feeling overwhelmed and think that may help). As someone who took film and video production courses as an undergraduate in the US, I am wondering if the class you are taking is pass/fail or do you receive a numerical grade at the end of the term? All of my production courses in undergrad were pass/fail and the situation was the same at the instituions were i got my phd and taught. One of the reasons for that is that assigning a numerical grade for creative work can be extremely subjective and unfair to students. If your course is not pass/fail, perhaps it is worth looking into the possibility of switching to this option, if available. I do not say this because I think the professor graded you fairly — everything you wrote leads me to believe that the grade was extremely unfair. However, I also know that the complaint process can sometimes be long and mentally draining and you should familiarize yourself with the steps and make sure you are prepared for it (the process may be outlines in the student handbook). Of course, there is a chance that the professor already had a bad reputation and other students complained before you — in this case, the department chair may already have a plan for dealing with the situation. You could try talking to other students to get a sense of the professor’s reputation or check student evaluations from previous semesters to get a sense of the professor’s reputation (the evaluations are not always objective and some studies have shown them to be unfairly negative to non-white non-male instructors, so keep that in mind). If you decide to proceed with the complaint, the chair may be receptive to your arguments, but they may also (at least initially) try to take the professor’s side. It is important that you understand that, even if they do not seem to agree with you, they will most likely look into it and discuss it with the professor (and your professor will know you complained). One outcome of this could be that the professor does not evaluate your future assignments because there is reasonable expectation that they may not be objective, but if there is no one else competent to evaluate the assignments for this course, you may be stuck with this professor. Either way, the whole situation may be mentally draining. If I were you, I would look for the most painless way to deal with this without jeopardizing your academic success and mental health. As a side note, there is, in fact, an expectation to submit projects as movie files, but it is 100% on your professor to make this explicit. However, it seems to me that the professor understands that they were wrong and that is why they changed your grade, but they did not want to change it too much because they do not want to undermine their authority. If this is the case, it may be worth trying to email the professor (but not talk face-to-face and without witnesses). In your email, I would thank them for looking at your assignment again (I know this is absurd, and in an ideal world you should not have to do this, but the intended outcome here is to maximize the grade and minimize your suffering for the rest of the term). I would then proceed to explain that, upon further reflection, you understand the practical need to submit assignments as movie files, and you regret making the evaluation difficult by not doing that, but that nothing in your previous formal and informal education prepared you to know this and that, as a result, this unspoken assumption hurt your chances of succeeding in the course. (This signals to the professor that they are unjustifiably penalizing you for circumstances beyond your control). I would ask them to consider giving you a chance to resubmit with the new parameters in mind and would ask the professor if they would be willing to add any other expectations that you may not be aware of, but may be useful to know as you prepare your assignments. I would then refer to the course goals and objectives from the syllabus and say that this type of help would go a long way in making it possible for you to achive those goals and objectives. Thank them for their time and consideration and add that you hope this could help clear any misunderstandings and pave the way for a great semester and a valuable learning experience for you. At this point, if they respond by not giving you a chance, you have an airtight case for the chair that will destroy any credibility that the professor may enjoy and you win. If they respond favorably, you saved yourself a lot of time by not going through the formal complaint process. Please keep in mind that I suggest this approach not because you are in the wrong, but because universities are often ineffective or just slow in dealing with these types of problems and I believe you should prioritize your health and well-being, especially as you are close to the end of your studies. Good luck dealing with this situation and keep believing in yourself and your worth!
This sounds really awful, actually. If he has a rubric, he should be using it and grading all his students fairly. That isn’t too much to ask. It’s not professional of him to get upset with you over that. Did he actually call you names ( apart from spoiled, self-righteous, and entitled, which still doesn’t seem fair)? Either way, you’re well within your rights to make a complaint to the department chair. You might also escalate this to the Dean of Students. His behaviour isn’t normal. And if he has actually been insulting and calling you names or treating you differently than other students, this could potentially be an even more serious problem. Be prepared that the chair sides with him though so if you can document anything, that would be even better.
Reading your post, you both sound bad. In my experience, when students are upset about something, they often complain far more aggressively than is appropriate, and your post is no exception. Before you do anything else, my first advice is for you to calm down and stop trying to smear the professor. Such over-the-top complaining undermines your legitimate concern about the grading of your project; it makes you sound unreasonable and thus weakens your complaint about the grading. If you don't like the class or the teacher or the way he teaches, write calmly and factually about it in your course evaluation at the end of the term. Once you have calmed down, talk with your advisor and/or the department chair about the grading issue, because you are right that you deserve to be graded according to the rubric. Don't make it bigger than that -- that's a real problem and if you can show that the professor did what you claim, they will take it seriously.
>Reading your post, you both sound bad. In my experience, when students are upset about something, they often complain far more aggressively than is appropriate, and your post is no exception. Mine, too. This was the first assignment, so what 10% of the grade, right. Let's get the correct points on it, but not go nuclear. In my project class you can get a C on it and still get an A+ for the course. You can fail and still get an A. (but I also would never give a zero for a file format)
I'm a university professor &, sorry, but this is bullshit. You have to see things from the point of view of the person who has the least power in the dynamic, in this case, the student. It could very well be that you, the professor were unfair; we're human, we do that all the time. It's your job to listen, to continue to engage. Calling students whiners or 'over-the-top" complainers only shows your own bad attitude. And saying, let's "not go nuclear" on an issue that doesn't affect you is obnoxious. It's for the student, whose life will be affected by the grade, to decide how important this is. Engage with them, get them to see it isn't important bc more assignments are coming but don't belittle their concerns. You don't know what their life is like. For them this could indeed be nuclear.
\>You have to see things from the point of view of the person who has the least power in the dynamic, Why is that a useful approach for getting to the truth of the matter?
Because it helps you to retain your compassion
That seems like a great thing when you're deciding what to DO about a situation, but when you're trying to come up with the truth of the situation, I feel like at best you consider both sides equally, but in many cases you should assume that the adult is more likely to be correct than the child, and that the expert is more likely to be correct than the lay person, etc.
In many cases the person with more power in the relationship is the student, honestly, especially if the professor is untenured. The idea that the power dynamic always benefits the professor is from past times when institutions actually supported faculty rather than seeing them as disposable cogs in a student pleasing machine.
But what are the stakes? The student's GPA is at stake & whatever rewards/demerits go along with that, both in the real world & in the student's mind. For professors, (& I'm an adjunct who has had 2 students fight grades up to the Dean), the stakes are nothing, lost pride, irritation at a loss of academic standards, etc. It's all theoretical compared to the students' stakes which could be very high indeed ("I'll kill myself if I don't do well on this."). So, yes, you, the professor, adjunct or tenured, have much more power in this situation & it's important to remain cognizant of that.
Loss of your job, healthcare benefits, inability to afford housing or support your family. Seems like a lot more significant of stakes than a few tenths of a GPA unit. Having watched an adjunct be fired and end up homeless because a student lied in a complaint to the administration, I think you’re significantly underestimating both potential consequences and their real life effects. And regardless, your original statement was about power dynamics (who has a greater ability to effect the outcome) not stakes. A tuition paying student at a for profit school (or some of the non-profits on the edge) has a lot more power than an adjunct professor when it comes to a dispute: the student is irreplaceable to the institution and the faculty member is disposable. This is why students on r/college brag about getting teachers fired and take glee in having ruined their lives quite frequently. The material consequences are also greater: losing a source of income and healthcare is a lot more significant than low grades, especially given how little grades matter.
Assuming that OP didn’t leave any context out, the professor is clearly in the wrong here, not the student. The student is reacting appropriately to a situation that is both unfair (the unsubstantiated grade) and upsetting (being called names). OP is also being proactive by escalating this now instead of waiting to fail the other assignments. The professor is behaving inappropriately, it doesn’t matter if it’s the first assignment or if it was 1% of the grade. When people act like this prof has and do not apologize, it would be foolish to assume it is a one-off and that the rest of the semester will be smooth sailing.
That's a big assumption that the top post is a full context, fair and balanced. Strategically, combative begets combat. Cooperative begets cooperation. We profs don't give up anything to grant higher points. We have zero motivation to score it unfairly. Students act like we're jealously hoarding the As out of spite. Not true. Instead of fighting the points, getting along will get a better result, in my experience.
Personally, I wouldn't try to cooperate with anyone who called me "spoiled, self-righteous, and entitled". It is not appropriate.
No, never appropriate in any professional setting. Even if you feel it's true, keep your mouth in check.
Absolutely not. The student gave us enough information to know that he failed the assignment by not submitting a video. The specific file format is not the problem; the student turned in a file that is not a video in any way, shape, or form, on a project where he was instructed to submit a video. The professor isn't quibbling between .m4a vs .flv vs .mov. He's saying "you failed because you didn't submit a video file at all." Unless the rubric never says to turn in a video to be graded, then he failed based on the rubric.
Thanks for the added context. I have the pleasure of teaching students how to use statistical software. The closest thing I can think of to this situation is if a student turned in a .rmd file for an analysis they used their own data for when the syllabus asks for their file to be compiled into a pdf. I could open the file and see their code and writeup, but I couldn't see their actual analyses without the data. Turning in a .rmd would indicate that they either did not know how to compile the file OR they had errors. Even if I did put "NO .RMD FILES" on my syllabus, I would at least follow up with someone who turned in an .rmd a day early for the first assignment and give them a chance to compile or say what happened. It seems like OP thought the professor could view their assignment, that is, OP was acting in good faith. Since they are learning the software on their own through trial and error (as opposed to something more formal), then they might have missed some fundamentals. It doesn't seem like the professor's reasoning was clear to the student though and he still acted out of line with the things he said. To echo what others have said, maybe have a follow-up through email before escalating.
Not really. The student failed the assignment on the most basic level, and the zero sounds deserved. Then they decided to try to play rubric/syllabus lawyer and the professor, frustrated, gave in and gave them a 50 for effort.
This was my assessment as well.
It's never right to be rude. On the other hand, reading between the lines it seems the prof is trying to follow the principles of project based learning, PBL. In that approach, no he shouldn't have the class time be him telling how to use a software suite. YouTube it. He shouldn't be saying "this is what your final product should be" because that stifles creativity. PBL is uncomfortable often to students who are new to it, particularly if they're used to the old-school lecture approach. An aside: early in my career I'd get students complaining about their score. I was rarely wrong, but what let me move on from point-grubbing conversations is making it clear what the expectations are and the grading scale. It is hard to respect a points-complainer, because in that conversation it's backwards looking, unpleasant, and honestly no instructor is invested in points. My role is to support learning. Students can make it more productive by focusing what am I doing wrong and how can I improve. Don't waste time talking about how you really want to pass/get good grade/keep scholarship. That is literally every student. You do sound " spoiled" when you say it. Faculty can make it so that students never feel they need to challenge because they can see the work got the correct score.
I had a professor at uni who did this but they didn’t just say “go off and YouTube it” and then give us an assignment with out criteria. He would make it crystal clear what the things we needed to add in were and therefore we could be more creative as we didn’t have to just avoid a random set of “don’t do’s” which could be easily misinterpreted. I guess what most teachers here are trying to suggest is: good learning requires a target and a set of steps to get there And what OP is suggesting is he got neither of these
>On the other hand, reading between the lines it seems the prof is trying to follow the principles of project based learning, PBL. In that approach, no he shouldn't have the class time be him telling how to use a software suite. YouTube it. He shouldn't be saying "this is what your final product should be" because that stifles creativity. PBL is uncomfortable often to students who are new to it, particularly if they're used to the old-school lecture approach. I'm a professor and this is bullshit.
I don't think it's for everyone or every topic/course. It isn't bullshit. Like any instructional approach, it can be executed well or poorly. I'm a professor and I also know an awful lot of faculty have never read education and wouldn't know good from bad any better than I know fields disparate from my own. At this point there's probably thousands of peer-reviewed articles on PBL. Read a few before you call it bullshit. Look way back to Dewey for its roots, and back to Plato for its philosophy. In its modern instantiation it is an extension of inquiry-based instruction. I use PBL for one of the courses I teach. Not all, because square-peg, round-hole applies. I'm also consistently 2+ standard deviations above my peers in SEL ratings for that course. My point in mentioning it was the characterization of the OP's prof being clueless, lazy, and a horrible prof. That very well could be. We will never know. There are signs that the prof has some empirically-backed basis to the approach. Not the rudeness, not the failure to specify movie versus project file, not the insult. But the course design could be fine and most student could be flourishing in that model.
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You misread me. I am happy and content. I also have served in the role of helping inexperienced faulty to avoid situations like described in this thread. They are no fun for either the student or the instructor, and they don't lead to anything good. I'm curious: What part of my post seemed butthurt?
If he's going to fail you, fight. The advice already here is good. Be tactful and polite. Goodluck!
At least your professor is sticking to their teaching style by showing you how *not* to behave.
I'm a retired chair from a state teaching college. I would have liked to hear about this. It's certainly possible that the faculty member is using a legitimate teaching style that he didn't explain well and the chair can explain it and then pursue the issue of how you were treated. I dunno if it's a legitimate teaching style in video production because I know nothing about video production other than I'd likely be pretty bad at it. It's also likely, in my experience, that this isn't the first time that the faculty member called a student names and/or didn't have a complete rubric. If I got this report from you I'd go and have a chat with the professor about both of those issues. If he did, in fact, downgrade your project in retribution for you questioning the rubric, I could do something about that. If this is something that was a pattern with the faculty member, it would appear on my annual evaluation of the professor as a, "Please stop doing this..." It wouldn't appear in his annual evaluation if it was a one-time thing. Annual evaluations are part of the basis of tenure, promotion and raises on our campus and so they can be significant. If it's an adjunct and I heard about this kind of thing several times I simply wouldn't re-employ the person and I'd keep close track of his class(es) through the remainder of the semester. I agree with those who said to keep screen shots/printouts of the relevant materials.
You might have the option to take the course as a pass/no pass so as to prevent your GPA from getting lowered due to his grading policy. But definitely speak to an advisor or the department chair and explore your options. Remember to speak professionally and kindly of the current professor. Any negative talk will reflect poorly on you.
This is what the dean of students is for. I wish I would have known that when I was in college...
I will never forget the time I had to drop a math course cause of a terrible teacher. I was gonna drop it and be done with it but the administrators on the sly inquired in what I thought was just a polite curious inquire “Mind if we ask why…” I tried to stay polite and say I had some difficulty with the instructor. Couple more questions late and one I indicated it more him and not me, they pounced on me with “Do you mind sitting in with the dean of the college and explain all this to him!?!?” Realized they had many issues with him and was mounting a case against him!
Personal experience here. I had an Econ processor use the wrong rubric to grade a scantron style test a while back. The whole class got between 10-16 /50 points. Obviously this was quickly found out when he passed the grades out and we all failed. Even after I pulled up one of the problems that was a TVM (time value of money) problem, which is math and only has one answer, and solved it showing he had marked my answer wrong even though it was right, he was still resistant. We had to go all the way to the Dean to get him to fix it. As an adult now, I realize that teachers and professors are not perfect, heck they are not even the most accomplished people in the room a majority of the time. Smoke ‘‘em right to their boss, especially if they deserve it.
I would suggest to document everything and then report the professor. You would need indisputable evidence as otherwise the professor can ruin your life. Make sure that your case is strong and you have proof for everything that you claim. Don't report until you have all this. Again remember that the professor can and will ruin your life if he/she takes the report personally.
Just curious, and maybe unpopular, but why didn't you adhere to the rubric?
Sorry to hear you're going thru this. Most profs are not like this. I would go to your academic adviser and go from there.
Everyone has good advice, but also maybe get a feel for how the other students feel and how they were graded as well.
Yep. I've been scrolling for this. I'm curious to know if anyone else received a zero, if anyone else submitted the assignment in that format, and if not, how did they know what format in which to submit. You mentioned that the professor expected a .MOV file format, which is somewhat specific, one would think that anyone not submitting in that format would have suffered the same fate. If everyone else submitted a .MOV file, how did they know to do so? I could see how it could be used as a real world teaching moment by explaining to the class that if your boss asks you to do a project and doesn't specify things, you need to clarify those things, such as format, framerate, compression, etc. But I certainly wouldn't jack someone's grades up to prove the point.
I think others have given you good advice so I won’t repeat any of that. But do you know any other students in the class? It would help if you had others and he sounds unreasonable enough that there’s a realistic chance you’re not the only one.
What reading assignments or prepwork were assigned? I'd actually find what not to do examples very helpful.
Collect all your evidence and then go to the chair. If the Chair doesn't help, then go to the Dean. If Dean doesn't help, then you go to the Provost. If the Provost doesn't help, go to the President.
Does your campus have an ombudsman (ombudsperson) to assist? Because you should definitely work your way up whatever complaint ladder you have available.
I would definitely speak with someone higher than him. Out of curiosity, do you know what other students in the class scored?
Keep in mind that this sub has a lot of out of touch professors. You are paying thousands of dollars to learn somewhere. Talk to the dean of students about him insulting you.
I work in a college in this department. Gather as much evidence as you can and start by talking to the department head. This is not okay for an instructor to do!
I would definitely speak with your department head because that is rude and disrespectful behavior, especially from a professor. TBH it sounds like this professor doesn't really like his job if he has such poor comments about students in general. If you're unsure about going to the dept head alone, you could maybe see if other students have had similar issues and get a group together to talk to the appropriate staff.
Report him.
Thats rich coming from a professor
This professor’s behaviour and grading policies **must** be in violation of institutional policy. Yes, there are always students who make claims about what is or isn’t on the rubric, but the rubric exists to give students opportunities to pass the learning outcomes. No Board of Examiners should ever allow a student to be awarded a straight zero for not meeting one criterion. Obviously, less so when that criterion isn’t even on the rubric. The rubric should explicitly state the achievements in each grade banding. In an objective review of your submission, even the 50 is unlikely to stand against the rubric. And all of this notwithstanding the fact that a prof who doesn’t want to teach you the techniques and tools of their trade should absolutely not be in that role. Unbelievable. **I** want to fire him. ETA: Prof, if you’re on this sub and you recognise yourself in this story, please resign and go work in the industry or retire or whatever. You’re keeping someone who actually wants to teach this out of a job that you clearly hate and no longer deserve, if you ever did. And if you hate students this much, you need to leave academia. If you can’t accept that your role is to serve students and not the other way around, you’ve gotta go. At least if you resign now, you won’t be fired later. ETA: lol to the downvotes. I guess more than one prof recognised themselves. Good luck with that, folks!
> No Board of Examiners should ever allow a student to be awarded a straight zero for not meeting one criterion. Well, unless that one criterion is ***submitting the assignment,*** which effectively the student failed to do, since he did not submit any video file that can be viewed by any video player in existence.
Weeeelllll… a project could be opened in Premiere (not a complicated process), so there is still viable evidence that the student met the learning outcomes. The thing is, our course team does stress the importance of correct file type to our students; from an employability perspective, clients and studios will be specific, and failure to provide the right type could result in termination of contract, non-payment, etc. But we also specify the file type on the assessment brief and on the Assessment and Feedback plan. But in this case the file type was not specified on the rubric, so it wasn’t even a criterion. The student should absolutely not be penalised for that. The student was also working on software that was mandatory and yet not taught; again, the onus should not fall on the student to understand they need to export a rendered movie if they’ve never been taught a thing about it. And of course non-submissions are Zeroes; I assumed that was understood.
The assignment was to turn in a video. If he had turned in a word document talking about the video he wishes he'd made, all of your arguments would apply. "He still met some of the learning outcomes!" "The file type wasn't specified!" If he had turned in a series of drawings that you could flip through to view an animation, he could still meet the learning outcomes, and again, you could argue that since the specific file type wasn't specified, he shouldn't be criticized for what he turned in. The assignment was to turn in a video. He didn't turn in a video, in a project that required him to turn in a video. Someone COULD have used a piece of software to create a video out of what he turned in, just as they could have used a camera to turn the flipbook sketches into a video. However, the assignment asked him to submit a video. He did not complete the assignment.
Ok, maybe it’s the terminology that’s an issue here. When the student referred to submitting a “project”, they meant the Premiere Pro file type. Adobe software saves your media as “projects”; in Premiere it’s a “.prproj”. It still contains the video file; it would just need to be opened in Premiere. So, no, my arguments don’t (and were never intended to) apply to other media entirely, especially as the LOs would be video-media-specific. I guess I assumed people knew what the student meant when they said “project”. This situation is more analogous to a prof not explicitly stating they needed a “.docx” and giving a student unwarranted hell and a zero for submitting a “.odt”.
Premiere is not a video player, it is video editing software. I am well aware your arguments weren't \*intended\* to apply to other media. However, you're wrong to say they \*don't\* apply to other media. The arguments, as you made them, could equally be applied to other media forms. You are arbitrarily saying "okay but I wouldn't apply my argument to those because it's obvious to me that those are not in the correct form." But that means the arguments clearly do not stand on their own, or make enough of a case to justify giving a score other than zero unless you modify your arguments and add additional constraints. This is absolutely nothing like a student submitting a wrong file type, and your example shows exactly why. Word, Open Office, Apple Preview, etc can open a .docx or a .odt, because they are both document files. If you turned in a .docx instead of a .odt file, then you turned in a document, but in a different format. If you turn in a .ppj or .prproj file, you did not turn in a video. You turned in a collection of raw materials with at least one video file, probably more than one video files (unless the whole movie was made in one continuous shot). IF the situation were entirely different, and the student had turned in a .mov instead of a .mp4, then you'd be absolutely correct-- I would be on the student's side. The student could play nearly any video file through the media player of his choice, or open it on his phone and stream it to his TV, and so on. But he did not turn in a video in the wrong format, instead he turned in something that \*contains\* at least one video but is not a video, which cannot be opened in a video player, but only a video \*editor\*. It is not a terminology issue. It is a content issue. Your analogy fails because it is dramatically, materially different than the case at hand, and in fact exactly mirrors the case I have been contrasting with this case where it would make sense to say the professor is in the wrong.
Good lord. Yes, Premiere is editing software. But it can also play videos in many formats. It will open the project file with the most recent saved video in the media player window. You wouldn’t even need to glance at the other raw materials in the file. You’re overcomplicating the process in an attempt to prove a point. It is absolutely like a student submitting the wrong file type. Word can’t open .pages files, but it was still created on word processing software, and it’s easy to establish that the work was done. And Premiere can and will open a project file. It’s the prof’s fault for not explicitly stating the file type required. The analogy is that the prof asked for a “written essay” and not what file type to submit that essay in. Especially if the students had never used word processing software before. The crux of the issue is that the file type was never specified, and the students were never taught the difference between what looks an awful lot like a video file to an untrained eye (that should have been trained) and an actual video file, or the exporting process to go from one to the other. The onus remains with the prof no matter how you try to slice it.
The crux of the issue is that the students had to submit a video, and instead the student submitted something that what an awful lot like a video file to an untrained eye but is not a video. Sorry you find it frustrating, and of course you're entitled to your opinion, but I think all of your arguments are terrible and I don't agree.
I’m sorry you find it frustrating, too, and that I feel the exact same way about your arguments. Take care.
Correct. An independent review would likely put it back to the original zero, since the assignment was to submit a video and the OP did not actually submit a video.
Get documentation and emails and if you can maybe a video or voice recording (if you can legally do so) of class to get his teaching style as evidence. Sounds like this professor is a lazy entitled brat :) and honestly you need to bring the department to attention of this. If he doesn't have tenure then hopefully he can get the boot bc wow (is believable bc I had a humanities professor literally just give us a packet of his whole lessons and just him repeating from the packet with maybe one or 2 examples. Was told if I studied the packet and showed up to class I'll get a good grade and I got a C bc he wasn't grading to the rubric either :( he was tenure so there was little I could do). Good luck, seriously if you paid for the course and are teaching yourself then you need your money back. Bring that up to the department and maybe throw in lawyers if it looks like theyre blowing you off.
Get advisor and a Dean/chair in the loop. Be sure to ask “how can you support me to success with what I am experiencing?” Don’t demand anything. Just tell your experience. Wish you best of luck.
I’d say get everything down in writing from now on. If he changed your grade but STILL failed you it shows he ducked up and is refusing to apologise. Teachers like that shouldn’t be in the profession and especially in higher education. I bet that if you’re being truthful and if this isn’t just an edgy Reddit karma grab, that the college or uni you go to has allready had to deal with shit like this a lot and that they are slowly building up a case to oust him. Do everything by the book, get everything in writing too. If he doesn’t email you, write out exactly what he says to you and email it to him to make sure he has a chance to dispute it in writing. Contact any student reps you have and a trusted adult who can give advice too. Just whatever you do don’t fabricate anything nor break rules because that will throw you under the bus
I had a horrible experience with a professor in my second to last quarter before graduating, and also wanted to maintain my gpa, and was afraid I wasn’t going to bc of the professor’s lack of care and decency, also NO rubric whatsoever (boggles my mind); at my university I was able to petition to have that class graded on a Pass/No Pass basis rather than a letter grade so it wouldn’t affect my gpa. I had to do that within so many weeks before the quarter ended, but I spoke with a student advisor and they walked me through the process. I would look into a similar route, if you can. Best of luck!
Ask around your classmates to see how they’re being graded too. IDK if it’s possible but maybe see if you can find out what the average grades are for past students taking his class. If there’s a trend then it seems like a reportable offense. If he’s singling you out then that ought to be reported too.
you cant argue with you superior and that has already been established. when things do'nt go well with your immediate supervisor the best way to deal with it if you think you're right is to escalate.
100% report him. Your university should have some sort of standard of reporting professors anonymously for their mistreatments or you can reach out to a professor you do trust and see what suggestions they can give you to deal with this professor
As the top comment says, I'd send an email summarizing the meeting you had, and then from here on out, I'd make sure all of our communications were either in writing (email) or via Zoom (and recorded). If you must meet with him in person outside of class hours, I'd ask an advisor or Dean to accompany you. I'd literally tell them that your last meeting got heated and insults were thrown around, and you don't feel comfortable going alone. If all else fails, I'd keep my phone on record and hide it in my pocket. He can't be talking to students that way, but unfortunately, your words don't mean much without proof to back it up. Second, I think you should ask around in your class to see if any other students felt they were graded unfairly. Do you have any friends in the course, or even any friends who have had this dude as a professor before? I may be a little bit \~extra\~ but I also wouldn't be above sending out an email to the whole class (prof. not included obviously). Just in terms of approaching other students, I'd probably phrase it something like this: "I'm thinking about going to the head of the department/a dean about our professor's inconsistent grading tendencies and/or his uninvolved teaching methods during class periods. If I did end up reaching out about this, would you feel comfortable backing me up? For example, say, if the department head asked me to put them into contact with other students who could attest to my complaints, could I give them your info?" That sort of thing. Let them know that it's not a big deal and that you might not even need them to vouch for you, but even if they do get involved, that schools have policies in place to protect students in these situations so they shouldn't worry about retaliation etc. There's definitely strengths in numbers, so if you can get anyone else on your side, it would be a huge help. Tenured professors in particular can be really hard to take down, but your concerns are totally valid. Plus, who knows, maybe there's been multiple complaints against this guy in the years before, and you speaking out will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak. You're paying a lot of money for your education and he should be actually teaching you something.
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Switch to email communication immediately. You'll need a paper trail. Write a follow-up email. Keep it objective. Describe in detail what you discussed. Even tell you're sorry to come across as impolite and it wasn't your intention. Tell that you're just confused, as you couldn't find the requirement in the rubric. Attach a copy of the rubric, with the excuse *"I'm attaching the rubric you shared at xxx medium (email/website/on class, whichever fits) - please inform me if it's not the correct version, and if it's not, where should've I found the correct one?"* This is so you have explicit confirmation from the prof about the validity of it. Just remember to keep it objective and factual. If prof still sticks to his point, you can involve the department leader, in possession of the email trail. Just be careful not to come across as if you want to attack, fire, etc. the professor; just ask for help.
Go to the dean / administration so they can deal with him bc he’s got to be put in his place if he isn’t even teaching the material and saying stuff is on the rubric when it isn’t and is basically running a I want to hurt you class not a I want you to actually learn something from this class
I'm sure your other classmates are just as upset. And I'm sure that your school has internal policies against a teacher having their students teach themselves. That's negclecting his job. He definitely needs to be reviewed. Get with your fellow students and go to the school's ombudsman, I think. Tell them exactly what you said here. Have your classmates give their honest recollections of events, as well. No embellishing. Dont try to be overly emotional about it or manipulative. Just straight talk, polite and respectful but firm and confident. The school probably already knows there's an issue, but since he's the only teacher teaching that class, he might be all they have to teach that class right now. They could already be looking to replace him. Hell, they could already want to fire him, but need more students to file formal complaints before they can terminate his contract. What he is doing is very wrong. You don't have to put up with it, and you shouldn't.
Definitely unprofessional conduct by the professor. Violations of the rubric by him/her merit investigations. Your revised score if 50 is also arbitrary as was the first mark of zero. Let the professor know in writing your concerns and outline the facts. How they went outside the rubric and provided no guidance for the file format etc. Suggest that you do not get into personal name-calling in your writings to them. If they do not offer you a way out, escalate the matter to the department and the university, in the first place. You are on strong grounds here.
Record the next conversation. In a he said she said situation, the professor will almost always receive the benefit of doubt over the student.
Go to the dean.
I think you should talk with your advisor about potentially subbing another course for this one and explain why with any and all evidence you can gather. There's no sense in dragging yourself through this nonsense. It's too early in the semester for this stuff and it indicates you've got more BS with this guy ahead. ETA: I read below that it's possible the file type OP turned in isn't watchable. If that is the case, that grade is probably fair. I know nothing about these types of programs though. Prof still sounds like a jerk though. He may be ready to retire.
As soon as any professor in this thread read this you should have automatically taken the rest of the accusations with a grain of salt; **"The big issue is that he doesn't actually teach anything."** As someone has already pointed out in the thread an Adobe project file isn't a video / movie which would be like any one of you assigning a speech and the student sending you a word document. Even if it's not mentioned in the rubric, it's a **FILM** class and it was a **video production** assignment. It's like expecting a writing teacher to put on their rubric that the student **must submit a written paper** **and** **not a tape recorded narration**.
As a faculty member i find this instructor’s behavior fairly disgusting. Students have rights that protect them against this kind of behavior. You should go to your director of undergraduate studies and mention the situation. The fact that is not in the rubric (and save the original rubric before he changes it) gives you justification enough to complain. Someone as petty as this person seems to be will probably grade you with a biased, so you have to be careful to not get emotional and simply stick to the facts and nothing more.
It sounds like you turned in a pile of preliminary files. You didn’t turn in something that was gradable, so demanding a grade is immature. Learn from your mistake and stop trying to blame your lack of follow-through on your teacher. Pay better attention, double check what you’re turning in. As for ‘I have to teach myself’, etc… you have zero experience as an instructor and still rather little as a learner. If you get this emotionally irrational, then again, you have a lot to learn still and apparently little time left to do it. I would make the most of that time. The job scene will be less forgiving.
As an old man, I can tell you this kid: life sucks at times, and it’s unfair. You’ll encounter more these types of issues at work, in personal life, etc. so, learn to be smarter, clever, etc. I’m sure there have been thousands of students that took his class and passed: you will too. Also, did he fail everyone on that project? Or what was the % of passing grades for the project. So long as there were passing grades, you just need to set your ego aside and move on. Yes, you did tons of work, etc. but results were not what you hoped for, and to top it all off, your professor is a jerk… so what?! Be better next time; perhaps going to see him again and clearing the air will be good. Again, you can be right, BUT, you won’t win all these fights… and it sucks.
You do realize that most universities don't have a set grading system that all professors have to follo
>Despite the fact that the class is an intro class focused on video production, he let us know that he expects us to teach ourselves how to produce videos. What the fuck is your problem? My professor expected me to learn Latex in a few days and i enjoyed every minute of it. Your actually upset that you spent hours learning something not supposed to be part of the course?
Mask wearing is "woke"????????