By Ciara Hooks
If there is a universal method to letting students know class is canceled, all the teachers didn’t get the memo. The most common universal method I’ve had the pleasure of encountering is showing up to an empty classroom at 9:30 in the morning with a nice sign on the door that says “Eng 449 with Professor Karpuk at 9:30 is canceled.” Better yet getting up, getting ready and driving to school for the only class of the day and once again I’m face-to-face with that lovely sign.
Once in a while I’ll get a random e-mail, but about the time I get that it is still a bit too late because I had already showed up to class expecting to learn. Now that could just be my fault because if I had checked my e-mail I would have known it was canceled, but I don’t know too many people who wake up every morning and say, “Hmm let me check my e-mail today because my teacher might just cancel class.”
It seems like there’s no likely medium for the situation, unless there are cell phones involved; the only device that nearly every human being on the face of the earth especially on Central’s campus has. A mass text forwarded to the class can delete a lot of unhappy campers and prolong sleep that we so desperately need. I might roll over and groan when I hear the text message ringtone, but I’ll appreciate it when I read the message that adds a couple more hours to my beauty sleep. Now I know we don’t want to give out our numbers and stuff, I know I don’t, but the school has them on file anyway so why not give it to our teachers so they can use them for that purpose and that purpose only.
There are some teachers who know certain dates when they will miss class so they incorporate it in the syllabus or let us know in advance, and that heads-up goes a long way. Others have started to use sites like Black Board Vista, Moodle or even Twitter to get us the news more quick and efficiently and I feel like that’s a great idea. Even if there was a class Facebook group that they sent out e-mails and notifications from. I feel like these methods could work as long as the teacher lets us know that’s what they’re going to use.
We all check our Twitter and Facebook every day, probably every hour on the hour so if the teacher makes a page with the class, their name and the time and drop a quick status update or message on a day when they need to cancel for any reason we would get that in a heartbeat especially if you have the application for the website and get the notifications sent directly to your phone. We as students could even respond back or leave our own comments and statuses if we are having the same issue. Those would be great efficient methods to ensure that we’re all on the same page and everyone is happy.