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How can we help you? (August 2026)

Now that it’s August, it’s time for a new “how can we help you?” thread.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query. 

As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon’s mission) that you could use help with. Ask away – we’re here to help! 

Finally, a quick reminder of the following RULE: Please do not submit replies to other comments in this thread. It makes these threads unwieldy and difficult for me to keep track of. If you’d like to respond to a comment in this thread, please wait until I dedicate a new post to the person’s query myself and comment in that thread instead! I have not been enforcing this rule consistently recently, but need to recommit to it as it has been hard to manage these threads. Thanks!

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10 responses to “How can we help you? (August 2026)”

  1. Anonymous

    As the fall semester approaches, I am rethinking some of my assignments in light of the rampant use of AI. In the past, I have used Perusall’s social annotation software in assignments designed to get students to pay closer attention to the texts we are reading and to show them that these texts can be interpreted in different ways. However, I am rethinking these assignments in light of AI use. So my question is, does anyone have any suggestions on how to make students less prone to using AI on social annotation assignments. If not, does anyone have an suggestions for alternate assignments, or in class writing prompts that might achieve similar learning goals?

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I would be very grateful for advice about a revise-and-resubmit situation.

    A paper I submitted to a well-regarded philosophy journal has gone through more than one round of revisions. After the most recent decision, one referee recommended acceptance, while another thought the paper had improved but requested further substantial revisions. I completed and submitted the revised version at the end of last year. Since then, the manuscript status has remained at “Editor assigned”. About a month ago, I sent a polite status inquiry through the journal’s submission system, but I have not received a reply.

    I am now trying to think clearly about what to do next. In an ordinary case, if a paper had been sitting for this long with no update and no response to an inquiry, I might start considering withdrawing and submitting elsewhere. But because this is already a later-stage R&R at a reasonably prestigious journal, withdrawing feels risky: I may be giving up a real chance at acceptance and starting over from scratch elsewhere.

    So my questions are: How long is it reasonable to wait in a case like this? At what point, if any, would it be appropriate to send a second inquiry, perhaps to the editorial office rather than only through the handling editor? And when, if ever, does it make sense to withdraw a paper from a good journal after multiple rounds of revision because of prolonged silence?

    I would especially appreciate hearing from people who have been in similar situations, either as authors, referees, or editors.

    Thanks!

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    In the paragon of arrested development that is UK higher education, I am required to assess my MA students this autumn like this: 100% of their grade will be an at-home essay of 3,000 words. Essay prompts must be submitted by me in advance. What the hell do I do given the state of LLMs, which are better than the vast majority of my students. I also don’t think there is much room for us to accuse students based on pangram or similar, there has to be hard evidence and the process is an ordeal. I am beyond being outraged by this and now just wondering:
    – is there anything i can do to mitigate this more than a sham assessment?
    – if it’s not, how should i approach it as a grader? Just mark the best essays with the highest grades regardless of how obviously they are AI-generated (assuming they aren’t catchable).
    – how should i explain the assignment to my students? should i just say ‘no AI use’ and we all pretend they won’t? Say ‘we both know you’re going to do it so let’s just focus on the non-assessed parts of the course and learn some philosophy’?
    -how would you approach this? Give a spiel about how they’re wasting a great opportunity to expand their minds if they outsource their essay to AI, etc.?

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Just to add: I can’t do anything interview the students / do oral exam type audits, and I can’t do anything like ask them to use software that monitors their workflow.

      Reply
  4. Anonymous

    This may be old man shouting at the clouds, but I’ve noticed undergrads lacking basic preparation for college.

    First, they can’t write straight even on ruled paper.

    They mix uppercase and lowercase letters randomly, so I’m not sure they understand the difference.

    I’ve never seen so many college students write in pencils.

    They cannot read a five hundred word excerpt and tell me the main idea.

    By far, the most alarming thing I’ve noticed is they have difficulty manipulating their learning. What I mean is, they have difficulty combining the skills they’ve learned to solve a problem on their own. They wait for you to give them the answer, and they will write it down to give the answer back to you.

    I’m increasingly at a loss of how to teach them, because they’re not really at a level to understand complex texts or how to apply it.

    Has anyone experienced similar things and have tips on how to teach?

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I was hoping to get some advice, or maybe just a discussion about a troubling side effect of the enormous length of time papers are under review.

    On several occasions now I’ve had a situation where one review report takes much, much longer (on the scale of several months) than the other, and it affects the subsequent dialogue in response. E.g.:

    1) Paper submitted in March
    2) Reviewer 1 submits review in two weeks.
    3) Second reviewer (who admittedly may have been secured later than Reviewer 1) submits review in mid-August – R&R granted.
    4) Since the reviewers raise deep, substantive concerns, I work hard on the response and substantially re-write the paper, resulting in a response to R&R in early November.
    5) Reviewer 1’s response to my response reflects impatience with delay or a change in the dialectic (“As I wrote early this year…”; “A now forthcoming paper from X raises this point…”).

    Is there anything that can be done to avoid what seems to be a sense of resentment on behalf of Reviewer 1 that they are being dragged back to a long-forgotten or slightly out of date paper?

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    Has anyone in the UK banned laptops in their classroom? How did it go if so? And for anyone who has done this, how did you justify it to the students, and did you face any opposition? What did you do if a student was using their laptop or phone anyway?

    Reply
  7. recentlytenured

    I teach and supervise MA students who, increasingly, lack the basic executive skills of writing papers on time (or at all, in some cases). These students are smart and are great in class discussions, but they can’t seem to get it together for their written work – in term papers and in thesis chapters. I meet with them regularly, I offer timely feedback on writing (when I get it), but I am feeling a bit burned out – I just can’t bring myself to chase them anymore to actually do the writing, do the revisions, etc. Recently, that has meant that they just aren’t doing the work. Some of them are in danger of having to pay for extra semesters/getting kicked out of the program as a result. If they were otherwise unskilled in philosophy, it would feel self-resolving, but these are smart students who could do great work. Does anyone have advice for motivating them to actually follow through (or coping mechanisms for me)?

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    Does anyone know what is going on at Phil Review? Their submission website is not working and it would be good to know if it’s something that is just a temporary blip or not to decide where to submit (and yes, I’ve emailed them, as I suspect others have!).

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    I frequently teach intro symbolic logic. I’m looking for ways to illustrate logic’s importance and application to students. Has anybody done anything that works here? I’m basically looking for something that I can use as a supplement to the formal machinery; something that reminds students why we’re bothering with that machinery, but which isn’t the tried and true “in order to represent and evaluate argument forms”, which they hear me say far too many times throughout the semester.

    Reply

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