Ungrateful students

There's a reason why I hate teaching and would rather spend more time in my lab doing my research than to spend time to lecture. The students are such ungrateful mean bastards who can never put themselves in the shoes of lecturers. We lecturers take in so much time and effort to plan the syllabus, teach it and grade the stuff. All the students do is complain that the class sucks during the mid-term or final-term evaluation and that would be enough to wipe off all our effort. Of course there are professors who would rather jet around to attend conferences. And unfortunately, the students never bother to complain about these professors because the class size is so small they are afraid the professors would know they are the ones bitching about them. The class I co-taught with another 3 professors have about 34 students and these students think they are immune to repercussions if they decide to be mean in their feedback. They are right we can't do anything to them, but they broke our heart or at least my heart.

Read this comment from a student:

The primary weakness of this course comes from a lack of clearly defined learning objectives, stemming perhaps from a combination of poor communication with students and a poorly thought out curriculum. The cause of all of this is not the fault of any one professor, but rather due to the fact that the course was taught by committee. It is quite apparent from the students' side that the course is thrown together piecemeal in a few spare moments by the four scientists/professors tasked with leading it. As a result, the curriculum is spastic and fraught both with gaps and redundancies. What little grading there has been has also been unfair. (I got, for example, 4 marks out of 10 on one written answer question in which I stated and explained all points that the professor was looking for, but I did not mentioned a specific type of bacteria that the professor also wanted to see in the answer. This bacteria was stated by name as an example in the question, and while I knew plenty about Firmicutes and its role in the digestive system already, there was nothing in the question logically demanding, or even suggesting really, that it should be in the answer. But, because the professor arbitrarily decided that specific mention of this bacteria should be in the answer, my clearly demonstrated understanding of the problem and concepts involved was deemed only 40% adequate. This was dishearteningly arbitrary, and the only explanation I was given is that seeing Firmicutes in the answer was a way of keeping grading consistent, regardless of logic or demonstration of understanding.) The deeper problem though is not that I arbitrarily received low marks on a problem, but that I wouldn't have found this out unless I specifically requested to see my exam and set up a time to meet with the professor. This unfair grading, I believe, is also rooted in the lack of objectives. If we had had assignments, we might have some idea of the level of knowledge expected from us, or the level of detail expected in an answer. Instead, students went blind into the midterm, and since they have not had the luxury of being allowed to see their mid term exams except by special request, they will go similarly blindly into the final. If professors decide not to hand back midterm exams because they are afraid of student's reactions to seeing their marking (as was suggested to me by a professor in the course), this is a clear indication that something is fatally wrong with the course. Without feedback from instructors on homework and exams, what is the point of having a course? Why not just read a textbook? The few course expectations that were communicated to us took the form of instructors saying things like "this slide won't be on the exam," "this slide will be on the exam," and "memorize at least two, or maybe three of the species in each of these categories for the exam." While these might help one prepare for specific parts of an exam, they are hardly the kind of useful feedback that contributes to genuine educational growth. Lastly, I understand that the lab part of the course was hampered by a conflict in the scheduling of the facilities we were planning to use. Regardless, there was still a huge lack of information on our objectives. In speaking with the 36 or so students packed into the makeshift lab space, day after day, nobody knew what our overall goals were with the lab, why we were really there. Only after week three and a request from a student did a professor try to outline why we had been packed into the lab for so long, following precise step by step instructions of a sheet of paper. The lab exercises themselves were not conducive to the group sizes involved. Each week I have dreaded coming in to stand for an hour and a half, staring at the back of my classmates' lab coats, only to add 40 uL of buffer to a mixture before cycling back to the back of the group to wait for my next turn to pipette something again. (It was, truly, a waste of time; the professors', the lab assistants', and the students'.) In short, the fall 2014 session of B 211 Microbiology was an abomination of the educational process, and the course should be thoroughly rethought (or removed entirely) from the curriculum if KAUST wishes to establish itself as a credible institute of learning, let alone a world leader. As it currently stands, paying researchers professor's wages to provide students with this level of education is a gross misallocation of KAUST's funds. 

-------------

 Oh, btw the Professor who marked him "unfairly" was me. And oh, btw, the Professor who explained why he got that marks was me. And oh, btw, he forgot to mention I gave him additional marks after he requested for it.
I know he came from a good school in US. But to expect us to try to mark it in a manner where we look for logic and not for key words would mean that the local Saudi students would essentially get 0 and he will get 100. I'm not trying to be defensive. In fact, I think his comments are pretty valid. I admit there were shortcomings in having to co-teach with 3 other people and to class of 36 students. But be a bit more sensitive to our feelings. We DID all put in effort.