It's been close to a week since I submitted the final grades for my students. I'm still giving my sigh of relief that the crazy semester is finally over, and I'm sure the students felt the same way too.
For someone who has had a bit of training on how to run blended or hybrid classes, it was still a huge challenge to modify an existing on-site classes to run 100% online. And as someone who is a strong advocate of active learning, it is an even bigger disappointment that all the meticulous planning and in-class activities along this line of learning had to be thrown out of the window. But as they say, life happens while you're making plans!
After this whole debacle, I'm taking the entire summer off. I was planning on going to Hawaii at the end of May and fulfill one of the items on my bucket list, which is to view a sunrise or sunset on Mauna Kea. But of course, all of that had to be cancelled.
Still, I won't be just sitting on my rear end doing nothing throughout the summer. This whole pandemic thing has force me to get more official training on the best-practice way to run online classes and lessons, especially for a course that requires labs, etc. I've signed up for several accredited training courses, with the hope of improving my online lessons and presentations. I'm very much interested in the best ways to minimize online cheating during exams, etc., because I consider that to be a major issue and why I am skeptical of the skill and understanding of students taking online classes. Other faculty members who had taken such courses mentioned that it also helped with their in-person classes, so it definitely sounds like a positive thing to do. We shall see.
I've also realized that I've been consuming more than my usual amount of wine during this stay-at-home order. Not sure if that's good or bad.... :)😁
Zz.
2 comments:
If you have recommendations about genuinely good and useful training materials/courses re online/mixed-mode teaching, I'd greatly appreciate any pointers.
Doug,
I enrolled in Quality Matters courses to get additional training in running online and hybrid classes.
https://www.qualitymatters.org/professional-development
They seem to be recognized in many institutions, and certainly at where I'm at. As of now, I'm only enrolling in the necessary courses to get my certification as having the credentials to teach online courses. But I may enroll in more in the next year or so since there are at least a couple of other courses that I find intriguing.
Zz.
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