Unfinished Business

Hello again everyone!


Well, we are just a few short days away from the first day of the semester.  I  can't believe it is almost time to start using all of the things I have been working on this summer. 

I am looking forward to finding out what works and what doesn't.  I think that one of the most important things I have realized throughout this process is that no amount of planning and prep work is going to make the course perfect the first time it runs.  There will be things that do not work out as I have them planned.  There will be things that the students do not respond well to.  Finding out those things that don't work will be as important as finding out the things that do.  I don't know about you, but I find that I am rather hard on myself when things don't go exactly as planned, so coming to these realizations was quite the process. 

The list of things that I already know I want to improve are:

-the layout of the course in Moodle, I can see that it could be better but I'm not sure how

-the audio lectures, I know I need to develop more but I spent too much time designing the pre-class and in-class assessments

-the group projects, they are structured the way I want them to be but may be too ambitious

 Some things I am already planning to assess, both formally and informally:

-completion of required pre-class assignments (this will be monitored each class period an assignment is due and also over the semester as a whole)

- student performance in different groups (each group project will have a different combination of students in each group)

-student perspectives of the new course format at the beginning of the semester and again at the end


I am looking for a way to share the in-class activities that I have planned for the semester.  I am not uploading those into the Moodle course because I do not want students to have access to them before we do them in class.  When I figure out a plan for that I'll let you know.  : )

As of this point I will say that I am happy that I chose to undertake this project.  While it has required a great deal of work and extra planning I fully believe that it has been worth it.  The value in terms of money saved by students alone makes the process worth it.  At this point I would say that the thing I have found to be the most valuable is the critical thinking skills students will have to build in order to be successful in the course.  These are skills that students will be able to use in other courses and in other areas of the personal and professional lives.

I will be periodically updating the blog throughout the semester to let you know how things are going and when the semester is over and I have had time to calculate some of the assessment results I will provide them to you here as well.


I am sure that many of you will have questions and I am happy to answer them anytime so feel free to email me, call me in my office or stop by anytime you like.  : )