r/Professors • u/[deleted] • Sep 08 '26
My students can open a web link on their laptops/tablets
[deleted]
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u/masstransience FT Faculty, Hum, R1 (US) Sep 08 '26
I’ve started turning website/links into QR codes that they can just scan with their phones to try to avoid this hassle.
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u/blankenstaff Sep 08 '26
Hard to dumb it down more than that.
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u/BroadLocksmith4932 Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
Unless you have older students. My dad can open a link just fine but never manages a QR code. To be honest, while I can open a QR code, I am annoyed by them and avoid restaurants that use them.
10
u/IronOk6478 Sep 09 '26
I have walked out of restaurants that didn’t have a printed or chalkboard menu for me. These eyes are too old to be reading on the phone.
2
u/TheCloudForest Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
What annoys me is when you scan the QR code and the link ends up being something really simple like "alexcafenyc.com" -- just include that below the QR code so we can type it in if we want. If it's that simple it could be faster.
2
u/Life-Education-8030 Sep 10 '26
Same, except it’s my spouse. My dad used to wear an inactive cellphone on his belt. He didn’t want a cellphone but someone gave it to him and he didn’t want to hurt his feelings 😂
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u/DancingBear62 Sep 09 '26
Today's young people are not digital natives in the way we often assume. They are simultaneously immersed in technology while being generally computer illiterate.
Previous generations had to learn how a computer worked because computers were actively hostile to the average user.
The situation reminds me of a 1960s Startreck episode,"The Return of the Archons". The Enterprise encounterd a planet where its the ancestors built a perfect, automated system (Landru) to take care of everything so the society could live in peace and harmony. Over generations, the people lost all understanding of how their own world worked.
I think this could be a precautionary tale about over reliance on AI.
1
u/thelosthansen Assoc. Prof, Engineering, Public R1 (USA) Sep 09 '26
That is also like the TNG episode When the Bough Breaks.
5
u/PseudoSane00 Sep 08 '26
I feel ya. We use SPSS in my course and so many students don't know that once you download an install file you have to run it to install the software (yes I have instructions written it and explained in a video). This class has like 4 prerequisites, so many have been in college for several years at this point, and don't know what to do with an installation file. It's easily 20-25% of the class.
2
u/RadiantImpression579 Sep 09 '26
Entering the license can be confusing. I also get why students get confused using the actual software. It’s antiquated and works and looks the same as it did in the early 2000s. But yeah, my students still get confused despite having a step by step video showing them how to install it.
18
u/Full_Prof Sep 08 '26
Easiest way to think about it is that millions of Americans watched television for decades without ever thinking about resolution, aspect ratio, frame rate or many other technical concepts. They just enjoyed it.
When people my age used to get a computer, the idea of having a computer was a special thing, you generally bought it for one or two specialized reasons.
These kids have four different computing devices in their backpacks at all time, a phone, a graphing calculator, a laptop, and usually something else like a Nintendo. They don’t know how any of them works, they use them the same way you used the television.
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u/darthdelicious Adjunct, Market Research/Intelligence, Public (Canada) Sep 08 '26
I tried to do something like this in one of my classes not realizing that all of these pings from the same IP address we're going to show up on this website and we ended up getting blocked because they thought it was some kind of DDOS attack. Lol
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u/jccalhoun Sep 08 '26
I encountered that several years ago. They start to type it in then auto I'll fills in something and they just click that. Never mind that I want them to go to a specific url bleh.org/whatever and not just bleh.org (I just made up a random url as an example. Watch it be something horrible). Or I want a review game and they go to the teacher login or something.
2
u/TheCloudForest Sep 08 '26
I don't understand. What can't they do? Type something like "www.cnn.com" into a browser? Really? All my students can do that.
You could also create a QR code with the link.
1
u/RadiantImpression579 Sep 09 '26
I tell them the entire paper has to be double spaced. I don’t expect them to know how to remove the extra spaces that word and google doc installs between paragraphs and after headings but a quick google would show them how. Or, I dunno, maybe the guide I created on how to remove these lines could be helpful.
0
u/alaskawolfjoe Assoc Prof, R1, State School Sep 08 '26
I hate to say this, but why would you ask them to type a link into their browsers?
It is more common to google or use a hyperlink. I think maybe once every year or two for some reason I type a link in to my browser. It always takes forever since it is hard to do that without making an error--which means you have to redo it a number of times.
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u/kiki_mac Assoc. Prof, Australia Sep 09 '26
My students often can’t even type in a shortened URL …
1
u/alaskawolfjoe Assoc Prof, R1, State School Sep 09 '26
That is my point. It is so rare that anyone needs to type a URL, you cannot criticise anyone for messing it up. Especially students who might never have done it at all before.
It should be easy to type a short URL. But it should also be easy to write a headline for a reddit post. But if you do not do it much....
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 Sep 08 '26
Maybe they were looking for a hyperlink when you wanted them to type in a resource locator/web address? Perhaps your instructions were unclear?
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u/devilinthedistrict Instructor, SS, Public R1 (USA) Sep 08 '26
Yeah “go to [link]” is very unclear
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 Sep 08 '26
A website is a not a link. Your terminology is incorrect.
'Link' is short for 'hyperlink,' which is a clickable object or piece of text on a webpage. The word you're looking for in the brackets above is 'website', 'web address', or 'url'.
If I were a student whose understanding of the web was already limited, I would likely be confused by your instructions to 'type a link'.
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u/devilinthedistrict Instructor, SS, Public R1 (USA) Sep 08 '26
You are joking right? 😂
-6
u/Fresh-Possibility-75 Sep 08 '26
It's really weird that you can't acknowledge how you might have played a part in your students' confusion.
2
u/devilinthedistrict Instructor, SS, Public R1 (USA) Sep 09 '26
There is an 14 character link/url/web address spelled out on the slide projected onto three giant screens in the classroom. I asked the students to simply type it into their browsers and they failed to do so. They can’t seem to follow basic instructions but this is somehow my fault? No wonder we have students that are getting dumber and dumber with instructors like you coddling them. Next time I’ll just do the activity for them so they don’t have to use their brains whatsoever 🙄
0
u/Fresh-Possibility-75 Sep 09 '26
This is considerably more detail than your original post and paints your students in a much dumber light.
1
u/Thundorium Physics, Searching. Sep 09 '26
The people who understand the distinction between “link” and “address” will not be confused if one is used in place of the other. The people who are flummoxed by typing a thing in a place will not recognize the difference between the words.
0
u/Fresh-Possibility-75 Sep 09 '26
Yeah, the hyperlink died with social media, so you're right to suggest students might not be clear about the term (much like OP).
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u/HonkyMOFO Associate Prof., Arts, R1 (USA) Sep 08 '26
My professor can't post a title correctly on Reddit