Been pretty down and out about teaching, my work, my job, etc. But this week things look to turn around. I have two pretty good opportunities that are coming together this week so I just have to figure out what I’d like to be doin. As a friend said, it’s time to take a look at what you want the back 9 to look like. A great way to think about it.
Also got some feedback that online students really love the course and apparently praise it, so that’s good. I think that there are a lot of fraught things about teaching online. Most of them don’t bug me, but perhaps the one thing that I don’t have a good feel for is whether the class is feeling good and feeling like they are getting good things from it. There’s no good feedback mechanism: If the class is going well and making sense, the students are quiet. You don’t get a lot of messages or emails.
I do wish the students would use the Discord server more but they simply don’t do it. I don’t think I’ll require it going forward. I think that there was a brief moment where students really connected with Discord but that quickly passed. I don’t know what they are using today, maybe tik tok, maybe a combination of things, maybe nothing? Whatever it is, it’s not going to work well for online courses. I wish Canvas would add a live-chat plugin or something. Maybe there already is one?
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