Learned helplessness

I agree, there are reasonable expectations that can be applied to different subsets of students. This seems like some sort of media and/or communications course, no? Forgive my ignorance if it isn't, I'm just guessing based on the content and what I know about "reporting news" fits into a thimble. If this isn't a freshman survey course then I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect students to have familiarity as well as access to appropriate materials suitable for their major.

I agree that it also depends on whether this is a required element, or a student choice as to what level of "hand holding" makes sense. Further, if it is a course where doing independent research is an important prerequisite skill, then I'm not convinced that it's an instructor's responsibility to show students how to "google" basic things.

I get by the responses below that some seem to think that students should be babied at all levels. They're adults, they've graduated high school. They have never lived a day in their lives where they were able to effectively sit in front of a computer or phone and not have Google available to them. It's not that they don't know how, they want you to do their work for them. If by the time they've been through a year of college they still don't know how, then perhaps college is not for them. I'm sorry, it's 2020, is there a major today that doesn't have some kind of computer research work associated with it?

/r/Professors Thread Parent