Enrollment Cut-Off

[Esme Lancaster]

So this suggestion comes from a group chat where I expressed the frustration of having a class with 0 students for the majority of the year, for someone to enroll at the last second. When it comes to classes with no students for most of the semester, I opt not to bother with posting up those lesson, as I've seen it as a waste of my time if no one is going to be responding to it. So from this came a thought, which others also agreed might potentially be a good idea - for enrollment into a subject to have a cut off date during the semester, perhaps halfway through. Something that prevents new students from choosing to jump into the course late when they feel without permission from the professor of the subject. There have been cases where I've posted, or known of professors who have had to post all of their classes at once when a single new student decides to jump into the subject, and for the student to not even go through with doing the classes anyway.

Thoughts?

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

Hi Jesse,

Thanks for the suggestion. I can certainly understand the frustration of having to post many lessons so late in the semester similarly to how I understand the frustration of having many students signed up for a subject and having no one post. However, we’re against the idea of an enrollment cutoff because, in thinking about the reasons why an individual might enroll their student(s) late, in our minds it always seems to boil down to the person being impacted by real life in some way, either in whole (ex. they were completely off site and returned midway into the semester) or part (ex. they were busy so devoted time to only a few characters and then realized this character needed a certain class). And considering our unofficial motto is that real life comes first, we don’t want to penalize individuals who might have been dealing with real life concerns more than they already are. We believe it’s enough of a penalty that their student will have a P(oor) grade for not doing lessons which does impact what their character can do after they’ve completed school.

In choosing to not post lessons weekly, professors are assuming the risk that they might have to post a bunch of lessons all at once as the only responsibilities as a professor are to post and grade lessons. If you do want to avoid doing that when a student enrolls after the semester has already begun, you can always feel free to PM that student and find out their intent. I think most individuals on the site should be prepared to communicate whether or not they intend to complete lessons, and that could work towards saving you some time. Perhaps the student wanted the P grade, which they wouldn’t get unless they were enrolled? That’s something you can easily find out via PM and then work from there. If that’s the route you choose to go as a professor, it would be your responsibility to let site staff know why you’re not posting lessons so that you don’t receive a PM from us about not having posted them. I think communication is key here and can go a long way towards helping solve this problem and alleviating frustration all around.

~Cyndi