Extreme, extreme frustration

Both mine and my students:

Tech Writing is a tough course for most students because it requires accuracy and correctness as well as the ability to read and process complicated instructions. It also requires that they think about audience and purpose in a way most of them have never thought about it before.

Now add the online component, which creates a less-than-robust learning environment, and some students get really overwhelmed. Now add summer session, which asks students to compress the work of a sixteen-week session into six weeks. Now add computer glitches that 1) make it impossible for me or my students to access our course website for extended periods of time, 2) send error messages when we post discussion questions or take quizzes, and 3) do not allow students to download documents that I have uploaded into their personal "drop boxes" with my comments.

Significant work is due *right now* in my course since it's the last 10 days of the course. A small-but-vocal minority of students misunderstood the last assignment and have to re-do it.

Panic has set in, I'm getting angry email messages, students threaten to drop the course. I'm sure they're trashing me and the course in the private "Student Lounge" discussion space on the website - wait, they can't get into the website!

When it comes to our technological infrastructure, I do not like how my college treats its staff or its students. I'm very, very ready for my sabbatical, and I hope the technology will have improved when I get back, but I'm not hopeful. Things have been getting worse rather than better, I think. This current frustration is just that - the current one. I have many, many more frustations, including the fact that when I have communicated past frustrations/suggestions, they are not heard.

Ouch. I'm crabby.