Reminder that I'm not OOP. OOP is u/GrayPots and this was posted with their permission.

Trigger Warnings: None

OP's Note: I've edited the second post so that it reads chronologically (ie newer update later to the original post). I've made no other changes

Is it a terrible idea to write a letter of complaint to my professor/her chair after the class ends? (recovered via Unddit) December 03 2022

I am taking an online intro psychology class with a professor I'd actively sought after seeing good reviews for her on RateMyProfessor. The class has been beyond disappointing for several reasons:

• NO lectures from the professor. Instead, she posts links to the videos put out by the Crash Course YouTube channel
• Syllabus says weekly quizzes, exams, discussion posts, assignments, projects are each worth 20% of our final grade. When asked, she said course grades aren't weighted. This means each exam (there are 3 total, each covering as many as 6 chapters) is worth only 2% of the total grade. She only clarified this to me via email, and only when I explicitly asked, and not to other students.
• Syllabus says weekly discussion posts will be graded with feedback and engagement within 1 week of due date. It's December now and no submissions have been graded since Sept. The 3 posts that have been graded were graded months late and with NO feedback and surprisingly tough grading. (e.g. it's a freshman-level course; I was a former English major and have worked proofreading Ph.D. papers and received a 70% on one submission) With seven other submissions waiting to be graded, students didn't have a chance to refine those posts in response to her grading.
• Syllabus says assignments will be graded with feedback. None have been graded.
• Syllabus said the first exam would cover chapters 1-5. It ended up only covering chapters 1-4.
• The "study guide" she posted for the first exam was just a list of multiple-choice questions from prior exams. 90% of the questions covered only one of the four chapters.
• The Canvas announcement said the second exam would cover chapters 6-10. I asked her about chapter 5, which we hadn't been tested on. She emailed me that the second exam would cover chapters 5-9 and gave me the date. She then gave the exam one week early and covered chapters 5-10.
• She said a final assignment would be assigned a month ago. It still hasn't been assigned, but she's now changed it to say it will be "peer-reviewed," which means students will grade each other. The other "big" assignment, due 2 months ago, was also peer-reviewed. Grades for it still aren't posted. I emailed to ask her how/if the peer-reviewed portion was to be graded (I spent an hour on it). She never responded.
• Our final discussion post was also changed to be "peer-reviewed," which, again, just means we are grading it for her. She noted to fill out the grading rubric. But the rubric includes an area to grade the discussion AND the response—but there is no response assigned to grade. It is due tomorrow and she still has not responded.

The only thing she has done all semester is copy/paste from the textbook onto Canvas and she's graded Discussion posts through September, giving no feedback. There are 8 weeks of ungraded discussion posts and all assignments that aren't auto-graded through the textbook software are left to "peer-review," which was a thoroughly unexplained practice that basically amounts to us grading each other so she doesn't have to.

I've had other online courses with instructors who didn't post lectures, but who engaged with the class--posting highlights from people's contributions, sharing personal notes about that week's subject, and assigning papers that they responded to and engaged with.

This professor has everything either auto-graded (textbook software assignments and exams) or peer-graded (non-textbook assignments and some discussions). She's given arbitrary grades for a handful of discussion posts. My brother is a college professor and was aghast when I told him about this class.

Our grades online are incorrect, with some things being counted twice. It works out in my favor, so I'm not bringing it up, but it's also inexcusable.

I'm clearly pissed: I rearranged my class schedule to take a class with this professor, but she definitely doesn't care about her students. She is an adjunct instructor who lives in a different city than the college, 7 hours away.

Would any good come from emailing her after the class to, diplomatically, express my disappointment? Or would any good come from emailing the department chair at the university? The dean?

Relevant Comments:

I agree that all of this is unacceptable for a professor. However, considering that this person has gotten good reviews on RateMyProfessor (and if you trust those reviews to be truthful/accurate), then consider maybe something has happened in her life to cause this mess. I would send a (diplomatic) email to the professor first instead of escalating to admin right off the bat.

Interesting: she received 8 stellar reviews on RateMyProfessor in the span of 3 days.As of yesterday, her 2 most recent reviews were very bad.As of just now, 1 of those bad reviews is gone.

Were there comments on RMP specific to why she was rated so highly? Also when were the reviews posted?

I ask because 1) that was a reason provided that you rearranged your schedule to take the class and 2) I'm wondering if this is something that has only happened this semester. I agree with the other comments to focus on the deviations from the syllabus and no feedback.

She just announced to my class that we can get extra credit for leaving her a RateMyProfessor review. So that explains why there was a slew of 5-star ratings all left in a 4-day period last spring.

UPDATE: Is it a terrible idea to write a letter of complaint to my professor/her chair after the class ends? December 09 2022

Original update:

I made a post here a few days ago asking what I should do about a professor who has completely changed the grading policy without notice, is having students grade each other whenever possible, and says they'll provide feedback/grades within 48 hours but is currently 2 months behind and has never provided feedback. The post was removed (a short version is in my post history on r/college). The overwhelming consensus in the replies was that I should consider speaking to the department chair.

I found my college's policy for student grievances, which requires an attempt to resolve things with the professor before being able to file a formal complaint. I emailed the professor a letter, stating that I was beginning the informal complaint process, and listing my main concerns. I forwarded the email to the department chair with a note that I wanted to document the informal complaint process and asking for any advice regarding seeking a resolution or escalating to a formal complaint.

The dept. chair was very kind, said she took my concerns seriously, and that she would speak to the professor, and scheduled a Zoom meeting with me for tomorrow.

This evening, my professor graded ALL of my ungraded assignments, most with feedback. I get an email each time something is graded, and my email shows that she graded all assignments in exactly one hour. From this timing, I'm pretty sure that she graded only MY assignments and no other students' submissions.

I'm going to chat with the dept. chair tomorrow about my concerns, and appreciate all the suggestions to focus on the stuff that actually matters as opposed to more trivial complaints (such as she offers extra credit if you tell her via email that you posted a RateMyProfessor review).

Thanks all, and feel free to delete if this isn't allowed

[in the same post]

UPDATE (to the update) :

The dept. chair spent over an hour talking to me about my concerns. She was amazing and also really horrified. She said the professor admitted to being behind in grading, and also said that the turnaround time for grading assignments should be within 1 week with a max of 2 weeks (as opposed to 2.5 months). She'd told the professor she needed to grade my work and then catch up on grading the other students' work, which is why all of my assignments were graded within an hour last night. She said a lot of red flags were coming up, particularly in regards to "punitive/retaliatory grading," as the assignments I had graded yesterday showed an average of 80%, with grades as low as 50%, while my scores on things graded objectively (multiple choice exams, auto-graded assignments) are a high 90%. I mentioned that regarding a post for which I was graded 50% for not meeting the word count requirement, I went and looked at other students' submissions and noted only 2/12 met the word count. I surmised that if she's grading consistently, the class average overall must be at or close to a failing grade.

The chair was also especially alarmed when I said I wasn't sure if the department had a policy around incentivizing RateMyProfessor reviews, but that my professor offered extra credit points for leaving her a review and emailing to let her know you'd left a review. The chair said she'd never heard of that and that the most important thing that always comes up when asked what's important in a professor is "fairness." She's also concerned that the final paper will rely on subjective grading and said she will tell the professor that if she feels she can't grade my work objectively/without bias, she will need to bring someone else in to assist her in grading.

She said that it's unacceptable for students to not know what their grade in the class is, and also said that if I'm unhappy with my final grade, I can request a grade review where a panel will look at the grades and make sure grading was done fairly.

Thanks to all for your advice.