Rewriting assignments

When I designed my 1411 section my goal was to make it completely free for students to use.  I accomplished this goal and students were very appreciative.

I was warned to not begin designing 1412 immediately.  The advice was to let 1411 be for a while and make sure it all worked well.  I intended to follow this advice, but students wanted 1412 to also be free and the issues that made me want to switch to using OERs became that much more glaring after the success of 1411.

In June I found 2 OERs that fit well for my 1412 class.  I got permission to use them.  I have a soft goal of January to have the 1412 ready but I've also tried really hard to relax this summer.  I don't relax well but I made myself to a break from work over June.  

In July I've been teaching Summer 2 so I've been working on the 1412 build.  So far, I'm almost done with the "learning" portion of the class.  I'm glad I've worked slowly because a lot of thought needs to go into this plan--more than was needed in 1411.

Last time, I did all steps a chapter at a time--learning, practicing and assessment.  This time, I decided to do all the learning for all 4 chapters first.  I want to be sure they're exactly how I want them before I move to the next step of building assignments.

I was almost finished with this when I realized a huge part of my 1411 class would no longer work. 

I learned an important lesson:  when you're relying on free material that you haven't created it can be taken away.  

Quizlet was a perfect fit for my class.  The "Learn" feature on Quizlet gave students exposure to every vocab term and most grammar terms while not being busy work.  It worked beautifully and I could also use Quizlet for group review in class.  I paid for the teacher subscription so I could use it.  I created assignments requiring students to use it.  I thought it was an excellent component to the class until students couldn't access it anymore without paying.

Quizlet is no longer free for students.  It bugs me that Quizlet didn't send me an email telling me of this change.  All of a sudden, for my assignments to work, students must purchase a subscription to Quizlet.

Luckily, I had enough time to pivot.  I created "drill" assignments within Canvas that do the same thing Quizlet did.  They aren't as fun, flashy or sophisticated but they get the job done.  Also, they are immediate feedback so students can practice what they missed just like they did in Quizlet.

Fixing this took a lot of time.  The silver lining is that by going back through the assignments I made some things tighter and more efficient.  The frustrating thing is I could have used this time to work on my 1412 build but I guess this is life.