January 2, 2021

Planning covid-19: day 285 | US: GA | info | act

I’ve spent the last couple of days working on spring semester classes. I only have one new course to design, but the work is putting my World Literature and WritDM classes on to D2L. Yes, D2L still sucks, but I really want to give students one less thing to complain about, or to put it more charitably: one less thing to get in their way of success. Ergo, D2L. So far, I have put a lesson into one section of World Lit, but the going is slow. I predict it will get better as I work. I should look for a best-practices guide.

To help, I’ve pared down my syllabi to the required contents only. Students don’t read it anyway, so why spend a lot of time working on something that will be ignored? Each year the powers-that-be send out a syllabus checklist that oozes EduCorp by mandating “required verbiage” to ensure that all-important “consistency across the university,” so I followed it precisely this time. You know me: I’m all about making middle management happy, and with D2L, that’s item number two. I am a team player.

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