jliedl.ca

Yet another day of snow and my Firefox weather plug-in promises nothing but clouds and snow as far as it can see into the future. It’s a frigging winter wonderland out there and we’re not even to American Thanksgiving (for those of you who celebrate it).

With the shorter days and no sunshine, we are all feeling gloomy and grim. Worse, there’s no hope in sight. Nothing but homework for kids, marking for me and snow clearing for my poor husband. It’s going to be a long winter if it already feels endless and we aren’t even into December!

With recent budget cuts, our department is feeling the pinch in our printing budget. Many departments are urging faculty members to move to WebCT to distribute their course materials (thus the heady rush of sign-ups for my workshop on the same, subtitled “Tips for Teaching Without Wasting Time”). I’m faced with the reality that my eight-to-ten-page course manuals must be replaced by one-to-two page course briefs.

The bare minimum to include? Contact information, textbooks, marking scheme and brief schedule. This will pretty much fill up both sides of one sheet of paper, so it makes sense to leave it at that.

Banished to the ether of the courseware? Course description, learning objectives, policies on everything from attendance to plagiarism, detailed schedule information, daily “Terms to Know”, assignment details, sample test, recommended resources, writing guide, research guide, citation manual.

I’m going to be designing much more comprehensive “Course Policies” and “Resource Centre” sections of my WebCT sites that will have all of this information in easily digestible bite-size chunks (and in HTML, not in opaque PDF, DOC, RTF or ODT formats!) but there will probably be a mandatory syllabus quiz of some sort or another to ensure that students have actually read and hopefully internalized most of the important information.

I think that my Chicago-born mother would have been proud of all of the interest her hometown’s garnered in the last few weeks: NYTimes: A New Wind Is Blowing in Chicago.

Because this Norwegian comedy clip (from Øystein og jeg) never ceases to make me laugh:

Caught a cruddy cold on Friday and have been laid low ever since. Of course, tomorrow the first wave of the final assignments for the term start to come in and there’ll be no rest until December 18th, according to my Google calendar.

Time to batten down the hatches and lay in the supply of Kleenex, no?

Does the chair still circulate minutes?

before I sleep.

Youngest finished her homework a few minutes ago. Offspring have been fed, dishes have been stowed, spouse will be fetched from work. And still there will be marking. *sigh*

Next month, I’m co-leading a faculty workshop on teaching with WebCT. This came at the request of our Dear Dean who noted that more faculty are turning to the course management software, however, that’s less out of enthusiasm than desperation (budget cuts have pretty well excised photocopying money in many departments, for one thing, so WebCT is promoted as a cost-free alternative). Dear Dean felt that we could show them a little bit more of what the system can offer them and their students.

I’m an enthusiastic advocate (more of the whole course management system than of WebCT in particular, I hasten to note). I have to admit that if you don’t understand at least a bit about web communities, you won’t get the utility of discussion boards or the ins-and-outs of chatrooms. And if you’re not used to managing documents on your computer, you might not see any advantages in having assignments submitted electronically. (However, who wouldn’t love the ability to archive copies of every student assignment ever submitted in your class? As co-leader said, “What a great resource for documenting student work in the next undergraduate program evaluation!”)

I’m not hubristic enough to imagine that I can impart all of this information in an hour or two (even in a computer lab classroom where every participant will have his or her own workstation, following along with what we’re projecting on the screen).

So, I’m far too close to the system to know what is of the most immediate appeal to new users. My impulse is to give them a fairly limited list from my personal essentials: how to create an organizer page with essential information (”Welcome to the Course” and other introductory materials), how to configure and effectively manage discussions, the joys of online assignment submission and marking, how to use the gradebook (esp. pushing grades from offline assignments to the online gradebook).

My bleg is this: what features or aspects of your own course management system do you love or hate? What tips would you consider vital for novice or intermediate users hoping to see a marked pay-off for the effort they’ll put into setting up a digital companion to their course?

I’m forcing myself not to look at the CFP alerts on H-Net these days because, realistically, there’s no time at the present to consider any new projects. I’m starting to fall behind with the marking, despite my best efforts. This weekend might pull me back up to even, but the first major essays will be on my desk as of November 19th. Then the clock really starts ticking right through the end of term!

Committees, projects, revisions, meetings, workshops, paperwork, class prep: I’m swamped. Yet I’m aware that my colleagues are all putting in a full-out effort. No one’s slacking. It’s just that our best effort isn’t always enough when there are so many things that need doing.

Argh! If it weren’t for my Google calendar reminding me what to worry about next, I’d be hopelessly lost!

Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States of America.

The world rejoiced because instead of a maniacal John McCain warbling “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” we have a president-elect for what might still be the world’s most powerful nation who is reflective and controlled.

American expats no longer feel like we have to hang our heads in pure embarrassment before the rest of the world, as we have since the ill-conceived and soul-destroying invasion of Iraq.

I’m proud of my country and my fellow citizens, especially those who have sacrificed for their country in times of war and crisis. But I’m unbelievably happy to be looking forward to the day in January when I can be proud of my president and proud of my country’s policies.