The process of change

Change.  Boo.  Thumbs down.

This semester I'm not doing anything "new."

I'm not launching a new curriculum like I did last spring.

I'm not teaching an Honors section for the first time like I did last fall.

Everything I'm doing this semester I've done before.  However, there are tweaks:

In 2311:

*All students are online.

*I have more students enrolled in this class than I ever have before.

*They are using Day One Access to purchase the curriculum.  If all goes well it should be cheaper and easier for students.  Fingers crossed that all goes well...

In 1411:

*I'm making attendance required in F2F again.  I stopped this after COVID but a student last semester asked me to add it back.  She said it helps her be motivated to attend class.

*I'm giving grades during my F2F classes again.  I used to give a general "participation" grade in each class but I dropped it because it wasn't really working.  This semester I'll give specific participation grades tied to activities we do in class.  If they are absent they get a 0.  They can make it up with me but they need to attend class.

*I'm going to stop Zooming each class session.  I've been doing this since COVID and I think it's caused attendance to be low.  Instead, I'm going to start uploading my PP slides before class for students to access.  They can use them during class as we go through them or they can use them after.

I've resisted this in the past but my 1412 F2F section requested this.  On my end it's not much extra work so I'm happy to give more access to students in this way.  Well not happy, but I'm willing to try it.

*A new project.  During COVID I added a final project to my 1411.  It was OK but lots of my dual credit students didn't really get what I wanted.  This semester I'm going to copy what another professor does and assign a culture project in the modality of a screencast.  This is asking a lot--new technology and lots of ways the project can go awry.  

Change is uncomfortable.  

I hate looking foolish.  I like being in control at all times.  New makes me vulnerable.

I went to 2 tech trainings last week.  Tech trainings always leave me grouchy because I  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discussing AI usage with students

Today in class we wrapped up Ch 1.  Ch 1 Quiz is later this week. I have found that many students have test anxiety.  I have weekly announcements I send out to my beginning classes that give study tips.  Hopefully this helps them feel more prepared as we go into quizzes and tests.  This point of the class is a natural time to discuss ethical usage of AI. Today we discussed ethical usage of AI with Spanish.  It was a great discussion.   A student pointed out it's helpful to use AI to make practice material to study.  This was new for me. I give them a chapter 1 summary that has everything on it.  In my mind, use that to study the material.  Make flash cards.  Practice them. I'm unsure how an AI can improve upon that, but if a student has found a way to learn the material, fantastic.
Read more

Amazing OER materials

As I'm building my Spanish conversation class, I'm thrilled that our librarian helped me find an amazing resource.  It's videos of Native-Spanish speakers telling about specific topics:  numbers, food, colors, etc.  The videos are very short and easy for beginning students to understand. They also already have CC in English and Spanish.  This resource is fantastic.   Hooray for wonderful OER resources!
Read more

Receiving feedback

 I'm in the process of creating my 5th class using OER materials.  Whew.  That's a lot. This time around, I'm creating a class I haven't taught before.  When I redesigned my 1411 class I had already taught it numerous times with 2 different curricula, both excellent.  I knew what the class should feel like.  I switched over to using different materials, but it wasn't really new to me.  The same was true for the other 3 classes I redesigned. This time around I'm creating a conversation class.  I'm at the point now where I have the scope and sequence complete and each chapter has a summary of the vocab we'll be studying.  I'm now building out the drill assignments.   When I build assignments I like to label them as "drill" or "apply."  With a drill assignment, students know they are practicing the information at a very basic comprehension level.   Today I wrote a drill assignment and just wasn't sure if it was good....
Read more