Yeah-- I'm regularly appalled by it in some of her classes. I'd NEVER have done that kind of thing. I always considered a syllabus my contract with students, and they knew when every quiz, exam, and assignment was due on the first day of class, and I tried for about a 48 hour turn-around. DD would LOVE to have a professor meet that kind of standard now.
The other thing that she's had happen is that document-sharing (for scheduling appointments and such) requires that students have access to do data entry-- but the problem is that they can then OVER-WRITE others' entries. Oh-- and so can the TA's, which is what I strongly suspect is happening at least some of the time.
DD basically only got about 4 hours' worth of unrestricted time on campus each week to do required appointments for a computer science class. She has also fairly routinely had an appointment over-written/deleted/moved without warning or notification. So she shows up, and voila-- she no longer has an appointment, in spite of having documented it with a screen shot on her phone (yeah-- it's been that regular a thing, that she wised up and started documenting it).
She doesn't like to be "a butthead" about this kind of thing-- but I finally INSISTED that she needed to let the class professor know about it, as she is a commuter with an overload that includes lab times-- there is simply no WAY for her to compensate for this kind of nonsense on a regular basis. The professor agreed (with alacrity and ire) and came down pretty hard on the TA corps.
She also quite regularly has to REMIND two other faculty to please post the week's assignment-- but only because she and I sit down each Sunday to see what her schedule for the week holds. She has practices three evenings a week, is doing a research hour and working in an arts activity as well-- which isn't a problem but for the executive demands of that 19 hours at the hands of 6 different faculty, all of whom have their own idiosyncratic method of doing things.
She has a schedule grid in an excel document. The uni doesn't provide them with anything to help them manage their time. WE do, and before anyone suggests that this is helicoptering-- I got the idea from her 19yo friend's parents, who do the same exact thing. It's just too scattered for kids who are age-appropriate in terms of executive function-- and I mean that even for those are are more typical in age.
This is what we have to take into consideration each Sunday:
I still sit down with DD once a week and prompt her to go through:
a) all of the paper that she's been handed that week,
b) twitter notices from one activity and one professor/TA
c) e-mail accounts (two-- one on campus and one regular account for an extracurricular)
d) Canvas online system
e) Blackboard online system
f) Pearson's MyMathLab for math homework
g) Pearson website for a gen ed class
h) other independent class website
i) each course syllabus to check for reading assignments, exam dates, etc-- there are few reminders, and sometimes she has to PROD a faculty member to post an assignment if it is due in the coming week and not up by Sunday evening...
We have an excel spreadsheet with a running schedule grid and additional notes, including upcoming events, homework slots, entry spaces for extracurriculars by the day, and a timed grid that runs from 8AM until 10PM 7 days per week.
It's nutty. Truly. I'm an insanely organized HG++ adult, and it's a LOT even for me to keep on top of. DH can't-- and, um-- he's got her schedule grid each week, and is HG/EG and enormously successful professionally. He still has to ask me re: when her practices are, what she is doing at any point in time, who is picking her up from campus, etc.
It isn't that technology has made it "better" so much as (from what I've seen) it makes it an order of magnitude more complex; students are expected to just deal with that and cater to each idiosyncratic set of preferences. That has always been somewhat true-- but the range of conduct is now so broad that it's kind of crazy. IMO.
