They set up BlackBoard pages for everyone. They turned them on for the students to see WITHOUT US KNOWING THEY HAD. (in the past, we had to do it. Some people forgot, so I suppose that's why they did it, but I didn't forget - in fact, it allowed me to fix and tweak everything and THEN make the page live)
The bigger thing? They decided to force-fit all the classes into the format that the online classes use, with 'adaptive releases' where stuff rolls out every single week. If, like me, you teach upper-division classes where topics are longer, and may stretch over several weeks, this DOES NOT WORK.
but they did it ANYWAY.
And so, I am having to go through and delete all the junk they larded the pages up with. And there's no way I can find to batch-delete, so I am having to click on "delete" for each week, and then click "OK" when BlackBoard - in the way of every program - asks me if I REALLY want to do that. Then I have to wait a few moments while it decides to do that, and then I have to do it again.
I have had five classes to do that for, because one of my classes has a graduate-level section (though it is the same class, just extra work for the grad student, but I realized he would be unable to see stuff in the undergrad section, so I'm going to have to have a Bb page for just one person..)
It makes me ragey. I should not have had to do that. The campus-instructional-tech, in the past year, has felt empowered (I am SURE this is because of our collaboration with a Parnership that does Academics - where they get part of the tuition in return for, I don't know, marketing or something) to do stuff without consulting or even telling the faculty.
And then, I happened to click on the "faculty guide" and it contained some deeply patronizing language that basically sounded like it was assumed I didn't know how to do the job that I happen to have been doing for close on 20 years.....and you know how I said my feelings didn't get hurt easily?
Wrong. They're hurt now. Once again I feel powerless and disrespected. I complained to my chair about things and she agreed, there's a clear over-reach, but there's nothing she can do. And it does feel very much like those of us who teach face-to-face are being told "YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED" and that we are hurtling towards being like Flim And Flam's University of Friendship, and I don't like that.
I did cycle fairly quickly from despair ("Nobody respects me, everyone thinks I'm an idiot, everything is going to Hell") to rage ("Well, dangit. They can't tell me I can't CHANGE the pages. I still have academic freedom on some level") and I have spent the past hour deleting all the junk and setting them up the way I want.
But that's an hour I shouldn't have spent.
And I realized why my research student was stressing about the training certificate: that's another things that's been added to every page, even for the pure face-to-face courses. So I e-mailed her back saying "If this is why you're concerned, don't be, you don't need it for my class" but holy HECK, someone could have TOLD THE FACULTY THAT UP FRONT and saved all the trouble.
And if they change my blackboard pages back without my permission (stranger things have happened), I JUST WON'T USE THEM.
I will rebel and set up, I don't know, a Dropbox or a Blogspot or some damn page for each class, and post my handouts and stuff there. And keep a paper gradebook and just tell the students they have to come see me to get their grades, or they can go complain to the campus tech and tell them to stop altering the faculty's work.
But yeah. This is inefficiency at its worst: making faculty undo things they didn't ask for in the first place and were just given.
So damn much lip service is paid to "academic efficiency" but it really only means something when it saves money or is literally ANYTHING other than faculty not having to spend extra time on stuff.
As I said on Twitter: Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be professors. I would not counsel ANYONE to go into ANY KIND of education now, unless they were doing something like small private high-school teaching where they had a high degree of freedom and there was no threat of it going online.
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I feel stupid, too, that I'm this hurt by all of this (especially the patronizing "guide to instructors"). I know I should "be the bigger person" (The problem with "being the bigger person" all the time though, is if you're like me and are the kind of person who east your feelings? Then you LITERALLY become the "bigger person").
I'm just....part of this is it feels a lot of the time like my career is ALL I have, and if things are going badly at it, things are all bad. I don't have a kid, I don't have a spouse, I don't even have a pet. My hobbies, I have been "told" enough times how insignificant they are that I come to believe it....so I feel like, if higher ed is circling the drain, I chose unwisely.....And I don't know what to do.
I'm now tired and sad and I feel like I want some kind of a treat but there's nothing I can think of that would help.
And I feel like no one really understands: I tell my parents about this and they think I'm either being alarmist, or that I'm not good at rolling with the punches, or whatever.
It's just....I would like not to be disrespected by people in offices, especially people who haven't really been in the classroom (and so, don't know how it is) and who also make more money than I do.
I dunno. I almost put my head down on the desk and cried but instead I managed to power through and delete all the crap I had to delete, and I really hope they don't go back and put it back in under the grounds of "it has to be there" because I don't have the energy to fix things again.
But yeah. This is a very bad way to feel for going back to school. I'm sad and discouraged and defeated and would like to quit already, except I don't know how I'd find work without having to move house, and I don't want to move.
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