Work and Travel Usurping Studio Time

Putting Studio Time Aside

Most years I spend nearly all my summer weekdays working in my clay studio at home.  This is my main time to get sculpture built and prepare for shows during the year. Also, this work refreshes me for the coming academic year.

I did glaze a bit before settling down to do some online work

This year I am not going to be able to spend much time in the studio. It is disappointing and I feel a bit sad about it, but I have made the decision to prioritize other things this summer. I have three different types of activities that will be taking precedence this summer: union work, preparing interactive lessons for my online Art History classes, and travel. I had hoped that I would get to supplement this work with a three-day workshop with Beth Cavener on the YVC campus, but with less than a month to go before the scheduled workshop, there weren't enough folks signed up and we had to cancel.

Other Responsibilities this Summer

Union Duties

This spring I took over as union president for the AFT faculty union on my campus. As union president there is some stuff that ends up on my plate naturally, stuff like meeting with faculty groups and representing faculty in disagreements (major or minor) with administration. This year I am also researching and organizing a group of faculty to prepare for the contract negotiations that will take place next year. The work is important, though it isn't fun, relaxing, or refreshing in the way studio time is and it doesn't lend itself to sharing publicly at this point.

Interactive Lessons for Art History

Over the 2018-19 academic year I took on the daunting, but rewarding, task of "gamifying" my online Art History series. Since I only have so much control over the learning management system, the game elements are not quite as seamless as I had initially hoped, but with game play (and student learning) in mind, I redesigned the classes to feature interactive lessons in SoftChalk.

I also made a character "Art Student" who is meant to travel with the students on their journey.

I wrote about SoftChalk before because I'm a big fan. I used it for my Clay Studio Safety training lesson and apparently our safety person on campus is now using a similar SoftChalk lesson to run his own trainings. The SoftChalk lessons allow students to interact with the content in more ways than Canvas does, allowing them to do multiple choice but also click on areas of maps or images, drag and drop labels or cards into categories, and even give answer that generate feedback instead of grading.

I made achievement badges for the Ancient & Medieval class, but I'm not sure anyone cared about them, so I didn't bother for the Spring class.

Last summer I spent about a month on the SoftChalk lessons and integrated them into my Intro to Clay class and my Ancient & Medieval Art History class. The clay safety lesson is used by all of my clay classes as well as my work study students in the studio. But I only had time to prepare SoftChalk lessons for about half the Art History class before I simply ran out of time and energy. I complicated things by working on some other significant changes to testing and assignments during the same time.

Interactive map plan for the Clay Safety lesson

Because the SoftChalk lessons and organizational overhaul took so much time and energy in the summer and fall quarter, I ended up teaching the Ancient & Medieval Art History class twice (Fall and Winter) and skipped the second class in the Art History series last year. I was able to make 70% of the changes I wanted to make in the first of the series, about that much or more in the third in the series, which I taught in Spring, and I've made none of the changes in the Winter quarter class.

Did the SoftChalk lessons result in improved results in the clay classes? I'm going to just say yes.

I was able to get a lot more done for the spring class because I was able to recycle some of the interactive lessons from Ancient & Medieval for use in Impressionism through Post Modernism. I had also made some of the smaller changes in the Spring class during my ESCALA project last spring and I also teach a reduced load in the Spring because I teach a slightly higher than average load the rest of the year.

planning calendars and todo lists for the online classes

So this summer I have set aside some time to make ALL the changes in the Winter quarter Art History class, Renaissance through 19th Century and, hopefully, the remaining additions to the Fall and Spring quarter classes.

Travel

Of course I am not spending my entire summer working. My family also has three significant trips planned. Last week my daughter and I were in New Hampshire visiting my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew at their house. We had a lovely time watching carpenter ants at the Museum of Science in Boston (and then getting hailed on!), playing board games in Manchester, and visiting Flume Gorge in the White Mountains. 

An epic paper airplane afternoon

The kids getting absolutely wild with their sparklers (both fearless pyromaniacs as you can see)

the family trolling other hikers in the White Mountains

beach glass and shell collection, properly sorted

Later this month the whole family is traveling to London! My daughter is very excited. It will be the first time she and her dad have been out of North America. It will be my second trip to London, but the first in nearly 20 years. I spent J-term (January 1 month class) my second year in college in London taking an education class. We spent nearly all of our time in London and had lots of free time to explore. It was great and I anticipate it will be great again this time. We already have our tickets to see the Harry Potter stuff at the Warner Bros Studio Tour and a mile-long list of other things we want to do there, too. 

this month: real Harry Potter, not just Wizards Unite

Our last summer trip is one we've planned tentatively but we've done nothing to make it official (like booked a hotel). The plan is, assuming we still have energy in August, to drive down through Oregon to the northern part of California and see the redwoods. My daughter has never been to California and Sean and I have only ever been to San Diego.

Badges? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges

This week I have a recommendation for all my fellow teachers, especially those who teach online: Don't try to make all the changes in one quarter.

Of course I don't like to take my own advice, so this quarter I have significantly reorganized two of my classes and I am trying to learn two brand new tools and one or two additional new-to-me features in Canvas as well. Unsurprisingly this is all taking me longer than I hoped.

The tool window for adding a badge in Badgr.

I've written before about SoftChalk, which I am continuing to use this quarter. I now have required students in all 7 of my Fall 2018 classes to complete at least one SoftChalk lesson. Two classes, my online Art History and my Intro to Clay, have had several lessons in SoftChalk, and between all the groups, I'm pleased to say, I've had relatively few accompanying tech problems in the first two weeks of the quarter. I'm happy with the SoftChalk lessons, and I think they improve the students' experience or learning in class, but they are an awful lot of work to set up. Luckily, many of them will be entirely reusable, and some will be adjusted to fit other classes.

My Unit 3 badge. Pay not attention to the crooked text.

Another new tool, Badgr, is really pretty quick for me to set up. This morning I timed myself as I made new badges and it took me just about half an hour to make and import two badges from "scratch" using Photoshop and some stock badge designs I purchased online. 

My Section 1 badge (for a test covering 2 units)

The Badgr tool is designed to add a competition feel to the class by awarding badges and allowing students to see how their progress/badges compare to their classmate's. The students names are not shared, but they can see a "leaderboard" of where they stand compared to other anonymous students in the class. 

I thought the badges/competition it would be a good fit for the online Art History class I am attempting to "gamify" this quarter. So far I haven't gotten any feedback from the students as to whether they like it, but my view of the Badgr tool shows me who has completed both the required and the optional modules so far. It actually serves as a quick visual reference for who is behind (and who is ahead) in their class progress.

My Ancient Egypt (Unit 4) badge.

Though there is probably a correlation between how far students have progressed in the class and their overall grade, the badges really don't show or indicate grades themselves. Right now I am only able to award badges for module completion. As I am also using module completion as prerequisites for moving forward in the class, the badges only show that students have completed the required tasks.

For example, there is information in the first module that sets the tone for all the rest of the class. I need the students to understand the organization of the class and requirements before they proceed through the class. Therefore, the first module requires students to view to pages, contribute to a discussion and score at least 0 points on their first quiz. I keep the quiz scores at 0 because I don't want students who have done poorly to be blocked from continuing, especially since a computer problem is occasionally responsible for a low grade. I also don't want the students to proceed to chapter 2 until they have at least attempted to finish chapter 1. This means that the badges are awarded for going through the motions, not necessarily for mastery.

My Ancient Greece (Unit 5) badge

My original grand plan for badges and this competition between students included awarding special badges for students who submit early, catch typos or errors early enough so that I can fix them, or ask really great questions in the discussion forum. Since these sorts of things should be celebrated, but aren't directly tied to test scores, these would be both fun to reward with a badge and would celebrate the right sorts of things in a class, but I would not end up comparing scores directly and students who are struggling, but doing the right things, could feel good about their progress. Right now YVC has only a more basic package for Badgr, but it sounds like, later this year, I might have access to awarding badges for other these other sorts of things, too.

My Section 2 badge (for a test covering units 3 and 4)

Like I said, this morning I made up a batch of badges. Because they are meant to be fun, but they aren't central to the class and don't impact the students' learning process, I didn't fuss about the look of the badges too much. The ones I've made aren't as professional as they could be, but the Badgr leaderboard tool only allows them to be seen at a pretty small scale. I figure they are at least more interesting than the straight clip art badges that come standard, and students won't be able to see that I've trimmed the edges of the border crooked or that the curve of my text doesn't quite match the curve of the banner.

My list of badges in Canvas (so far).

Most of the badges I've made are simply a stock badge shape surrounding an image from our textbook chapter. This approach offers me a reasonable balance between my fairly rusty Photoshop skills, the fact that I need to not spend a ton of time on this task, and the fact that the students can barely see the badge detail anyway.

On the other hand, the badges might be a complete waste of my time if students don't find them useful. As I said, the original idea was to reward not just module progress, but actions and skills that are used by active learners. Before I learned about Badgr this summer, I was seriously exploring how to (automatically) reward students for excellence by unlocking or sending them Art gifs that would be a reward they could strive for (related to but separate from a test score). 

I even collected a bunch of art gifs like these dancing prehistoric female statues. I am still considering how I might use them this quarter (in, uh, my free time). Maybe I should just email the top scorers or something.

My thinking was that rewards of this sort are often used in silly little iPhone or video games and then tend to make these sorts of simple activities addictive. It would be nice to add enough competition and "addiction" to my class to make students want to keep coming back and interacting with their class.

Gamifying My Online Class

Last month I finished making some sculptural work for a show in Hood River. That may be the end of my studio work time this year, because I've taken on a significant new project. I am planning to turn my online Art History class into a kind of game, and that daunting process looks likely to take up the bulk of my time until classes begin in September.

planning a mind map for the Art History class/game

I've heard a little about "gamification" over the years, but haven't encountered any faculty who've actually done much with it. The idea is to make an online class more like a video game and less like a lecture class. A gamified class would be interactive, fun, and engaging. Of course, I hope my classes are already interactive, fun, and engaging, but the idea is to make some changes that reduce the fear and test anxiety and increase the students' motivation to do the work. 

Ideally my gamified Art History class will have a kind of story, in this case the story of journey, which students can follow and tasks, challenges, and activities throughout that provide opportunities to earn points, badges, rewards, and praise. The overarching idea is to keep their attention, not just on the class content itself, but on doing the work. To determine if they have learned the content, I need them to show me what they know. Showing me what they know, through quizzes, tests, and writing assignments isn't always inherently fun, but if they are rewarded immediately for their efforts, and if the quizzes, assignments, etc can be broken up into smaller pieces, the hope is that they will be easier and/or more rewarding to complete.

the "physical properties" tool bucket includes a form hammer, medium pencils, and a size ruler, the idea is to remind students to think about size, form, and materials when discussing physical properties

I am modeling my framework partially on things like Khan Academy and DuoLingo, both of which give credit (in the form of beeps and bings and electronic badges or points) for brief activities, quizzes, answers, and even just for watching videos. Because of the rewards, both Khan Academy and DuoLingo are fun to use, apart from what one learns. 

the first part of Art Student's journey, collecting tools, equipment and training in the first week/introduction section

I have some idea of what needs to happen and what makes games addictive and fun, but I don't have really any experience in making something like this myself. I don't know how to make the quizzes have beeps and bings (and it looks like Canvas isn't ready to enable this for me, but I'm not sure why not). I also don't know how or an unable to incorporate moving parts like a video game (I'm really thinking that Canvas' next update should include some kind of a health bar on the top and students can refill it by watching the required videos and participating in the discussion forum). 

Since my skill and the current course management system won't do all that I can imagine, it is my intention is to be somewhat reasonable with my time and simply take some steps towards gamification. The first step has been thinking through how this will work. What is the story of this game and how can the various tasks that need to be completed for the students to learn and demonstrate their knowledge, be integrated into that story? 

my first sketch of the student avatar and tools

Strangely enough, I am finding this process to be quite edifying. Generally, I am having fun envisioning what this could look like and how it might work. Next week, I am planning to attend a Webinar about how to use badges and I find that to be very exciting (because I am apparently a huge course design nerd?). This week I tried to figure out badges on my own and gave myself a pounding headache without making a great deal of progress. The next day I learned about the webinar.

"subject specs" are gear that Art Student can collect to help with quests on the journey

I hope that the webinar will be useful and will allow me to use badges as rewards without making a lot of work for me creating and activating them. On the day I developed a headache I was trying to figure out how I could make them visible, make them look like actual badges, and award them to students after certain tasks. I was hoping to use art related gifs or small images that illustrate concepts, but I was running into size issue with the gifs and permission issues with the images. 

I came up with two possible solutions, on is drawing the badges myself and scanning them, and other other is using artworks from our textbook as the badges. Both of these will probably work ok, but I'm hoping for more from the webinar. The good news is that the drawing part of the process is fun and restful in a way similar to working in my home studio, whereas looking for stuff online and trying to manipulate it is frustrating and headache inducing.

A sculpture related SpongeBob gif could be a fun reward badge, right?

There's one more tool that I've been starting to try to learn. SoftChalk is a new software/tool YVC is adopting. It has been pitched as a way to create more interactive activities than we can do within Canvas itself. Of course there is a learning curve and no one on campus who knows the tool yet. It has been suggested that the person on campus who will explain the tool to others is me. Uh oh. 

I tried watching the intro video and discovered it explained how to edit text, adjust heading size, and use folders. My mind melted from boredom after watching this 8 minute video (at 1.5 speed), I decided to just try to use the tool myself. Making the pages and importing content was basically fine (though importing from YouTube isn't as intuitive as it could be), but when I tried to create an interactive assessment, I apparently missed a very important step. The result looks like my nephew's etch-a-sketch drawing.

This first attempt does not look like an enjoyable assessment activity.

Now that my headache has abated, I do intend to go back and try again, but with so many parts of the project, I haven't done so yet. The next day, after taking care of some unrelated work at school, I sat down to sketch some plans on paper. I found the drawing to be relaxing and enjoyable, similar to working in the clay studio and unlike working on the computer. 

Sketching and drawing has been very helpful for visualizing how this class will work in this game or game-like iteration. At the start of the summer I bought a very large sketchbook and started brainstorming and categorizing ideas and plans for the first few weeks.  

The "visual structure" section of the mind map and a suitcase of tools student will collect in the class/game. 

The process is seriously challenging in both conception and execution. I enjoy the drawing part, but it has been more difficulty to come up with a relatively cohesive "story" for the game and useful symbols or images to help the students understand how these class concepts can be used to understand art and to navigate the gamified class. At this point I am envisioning a journey, but I am not completely confident in how I will translate taking a quiz into the world of the journey.  

So far, I have developed an avatar for the class, an ambiguously gendered (hopefully) person named "Art Student" (I figure Art can be short for Arthur or Artemesia) who can go on a journey. In the first week of the class, students will collect some supplies or tools and equipment for themselves and the avatar to aid them on their journey. 

Art Student

At the start of the class, students will see a barefoot Art Student inviting them on a journey. The first step will be to learn about the structure of the class and, in so doing, earn Art and themselves a pair of hiking boots and a back pack. 

I usually record a video or two about the structure of the class, and I figure I can use a backpack as a prop when I pull out the textbook and a planner to talk about timing for the class and successful study skills. As I describe this here, I feel I'm balanced precipitously between this being a fun way to start class and an absolutely cheesy way to do it. Either the students will go along with me and my cheese drawings and limited technology integration or they will groan and flee the class in droves.

boots and backpack, the first equipment students will collect for their class

The rest of the first week will be spent on learning some terminology and attempting to set up a structure for how we approach the class. I like to work with a framework of four different categories when looking at art: subject, visual structure, physical properties, and cultural context. I've illustrated each of these as different types of tools or containers that Art Student can wear or carry. I am hopeful that this visual will help students learn the concepts, but also keep them connected to the story of the game.

Art Student ready to begin the art history journey

I found that SoftChalk doesn't appear to let me draw directly in the tool, which I thought it would do. Instead, it seems that importing images is the way to go. The day I was working with SoftChalk, I just drew up a quick sketch of a mind map to use in the activity, but quickly realized that SoftChalk "grading" won't allow the different parts of the mind map to be put in a different order. 

The mind map is simply a visualization of the categories I use in this class, and as such it doesn't matter if "subject" is in the top right or bottom left of the map. However, SoftChalk thinks it does matter. I realized that I will need to include some other kind of clue if I want the students to put the mind map together "correctly" in the SoftChalk tool. 

the "subject" section of the mind map

So today I drew a new mind map, but in place of the word "subject" I drew the tools or equipment I intend to have the Art Student collect when learning about subject. In this case I have developed "subject specs" as well as a symbolism sunglasses, a magnifying glass that identifies iconography and a set of binoculars that discern conventions. As I write this I realize that I might be basing this class game more on Dora the Explorer than some mature video game that teenagers and young adults will appreciate. 

In this vein, I've also created a map (Dora again) and watch to suggest cultural context, a suitcase for visual structure, and a bucket of tools for physical properties (including materials, form, and size). In the mind map activity, if I can get it to work right, these visual clue should help students correctly identify the sections of the mind map, which they will later be able to use themselves to create mind maps for particular artwork. 

"I'm a map!"

I've also sketched a graphic syllabus in the form of a map of the conceptual journey that the real students will take with Art Student through the class. The idea is that they are moving through the course content as through a physical space (even though, uh, the different sections of the class happen in some of the same spaces at different times in history/prehistory). 

a lightly sketched version of the graphic syllabus or map of the course

The other element of the gamified class that I want to integrate is the idea of quizzes, activities, and assignments as "quests" the student/avatar/player goes on to earn points/energy/knowledge for the class/game/journey.  I am thinking of it all of these different tasks as ways of gaining energy points for the journey, and I can almost see how it will work, but I also want to distinguish between the types of practice, studying, cooperation, etc that students do when learning the content. Combining the two ideas, of the game and simply being students, is much more complicated and I don't want it to confusing things.

I have barely started on the actual integration of these new images, revisions, and changes to the class in the online course management system itself. It is a big project and less straight-forward than other revisions I have taken on in my classes in the past. I hope it will work. If you have any suggestions or if you've gamified a class or know someone who has, I'd love to hear from you. 

Teaching Online

This past fall I taught an online class for the first time since 2008. Teaching online, at least for the first time, is a lot of work, but I am now teaching online for the third time ever, and the work is starting to feel like something I can handle.

Teaching Online with a New Baby

The last time I taught online, in 2008, I decided to pair the brand new online format with a brand new baby, because no one thought to tell me that this was a terrible, horrible idea. Teaching online during the first months after bringing a newborn home is a terrible, horrible idea. New mothers should take time off from work after they have a baby--real time off.

"Why are you teaching online right now?"

In 2008 I taught Art Appreciation, which I had been teaching regularly for 4 quarters before the maternity "leave" online quarter. Immediately before I taught the fully online class, I taught a hybrid section of the same class, meaning that the class met three days a week in the classroom and students were expected to do 2 days worth of work online. Mostly they just did three days worth of work total and in aggregate that class suffered compared to the daily section I taught during the same quarter.

It's hard to remember exactly what was so bad about the 2008 teaching experience itself, since mostly I remember being exhausted and not knowing how to make the baby stop crying. I vaguely remember that students had trouble trouble with the technology in a way that annoyed and frustrated me. I specifically remember I had to teach some students how to attach files to an e-mail and that there was some confusion over saving things as .doc or .docx. It's hard to know now whether their trouble and mine was because online was tough or simply because I was tired and impatient. At roughly the same time I also found leaving the house to be challenging. I broke into tears on my first excursion out of the house without the baby and I had to be told that I could take the baby outside even if it was cold outside. I also had to be told she was old enough to ride in the stroller. Basically, I am saying that being a mom didn't come naturally to me.

Teaching Online 8 Years Later

Based on my previous experience, I was not exactly looking forward to teaching online. I am not teaching online this year because I chose it, so much as because students sign up for online classes.

In teaching online and in scheduling courses for our program, I can see that students sign up for online classes and online classes fill better and more quickly than similar in-person classes, but as an instructor, and in talking with other online instructors, it also seems clear that a significant proportions of those who sign up for online classes find the format to be more challenging than in-person classes. I have some theories about why this is, but there isn't an elegant way to get that information to those students before the quarter begins.

This time around, however, quite a few things were stacked in my favor compared to last time. In 2016, though I have only taught these particular Art History classes once each, I have significantly more teaching in general under my belt, which makes it easier to know how to deal with or preempt a certain class of question from students. Having been at YVC longer, I also know who to ask when I don't know why the technology won't work. Back in 2008 not only did I not know who or how to ask, I'm not sure the person in that role was as helpful as the current folks.

Technology and online resources have improved since 2008. I barely remember the setup in 2008, but  I do know that Canvas in 2016 feels much easier to operate and modify. Canvas might have its flaws, but coming into it with the nightmare memories (my overtired baby-brain stored memories of that time as nightmares) from my previous experience made the current interface look something like an online idyll.

Teaching Online without a New Baby

Of course, this time I don't have a newborn demanding my attention and I am not trying to learn how to keep a tiny person alive at the same time as I am trying to discern whether this college student has e-mailed me before or after reading the directions. This year, the bulk of my online course related activities are done at work and then I can come home and be a mom. The kid also keeps herself alive for hours at a time without parental intervention.

"What? You're busy, mom? Ok, I'll just make a thousand tiny pieces of doll furniture while you're working."

All this is to say that this time around was much better, but fall was still a lot of work. And unfortunately, the online course I am teaching is a series, meaning it changes every quarter, so once the fall section finished, I didn't get to revise, improve and teach the same thing again. Instead I spent a solid week after finals putting the Renaissance to 19th Century Art History topics into an Ancient and Medieval Art History shaped box. It was a whole lot better than starting from scratch, but a not-insignificant amount of work remains to be completed and will be done this winter while I try to stay two steps ahead of the students.

Comparing the Courses

It's hard to compare two different courses, two different course operating systems, and myself at two very different times in my career and my life, but I suspect the fact that I'm teaching different courses has very little to do with the difference I feel with year's online experience compared to the previous online experience.

I take advantage of quite a few online tools that I didn't use extensively in 2008, either because they didn't exist or because I didn't know about them. My course now has an online textbook that works fairly well, a collection of online resources like YouTube Videos, Kahn Academy videos and articles, interactive sites like this and this and tools in Canvas to help keep students on track. I have a larger repertoire of online resources, the textbook has more stuff online, and I have colleagues who direct me to useful resources as well.

As for the change in me, its fairly obvious that at 10 year veteran teacher has a more complete sense of how a class needs to be organized and what sorts of questions and problems to expect from students, as well as what kind of workload students can be expected to sustain than someone who has been teaching college for just over a year. Going into the quarter expecting problems probably helped me plan more thoroughly ahead of time, too.

Fall vs Winter 2016: Organization and Accountability

In the fall my focus was on making sure things were organized and clear within the course. I made sure that requirements and due dates showed up in at least three places so students knew what to do when. What surprised me was that students responded to the clear and sometimes redundant organization and explanation by skipping steps. I introduced the chapter requirements one "Overview Page", where I also had links, but I also added in the links as separate pages so that students could click through to each requirement in sequence instead of coming back to the "Overview Page" each time. I borrowed this organization from a course I took online because I found it to be helpful myself.

My plan was that students would read the Overview page, click through to the chapter and begin to read it, then click through to the worksheet, videos, discussion, quiz and writing assignments, in order, as they progressed through the chapter. My main goal was to make sure they could find everything easily. However, my plan backfired when students began skipping the carefully crafted introduction and just clicking through the series of requirements. That meant that the one time I accidentally left out a page link (it was included in the Overview Page but it wasn't included in the click-through pages), the students didn't necessarily make the effort to get to it. One student told me she didn't know the quiz was due, since she didn't see the link. Though each previous chapter required a quiz, the due date was listed in the Canvas calendar, and the syllabus indicated that each chapter had a quiz.

The other thing that surprised me was that even though the requirements were laid out for each chapter, most of the time when I required them to watch a video, a significant number of students didn't bother to watch the video (or watched less than 2 minutes). The underprepared students missed points on quizzes and assignments, of course, but either they didn't notice, didn't care, or they didn't understand why they missed the information.

This quarter I added checks on whether they actually watched or read all the required videos and lectures. At the start of the quarter, there were two required videos. One ended with a 3 question quiz and the second ended with directions for a brief, but required activity: to earn the points, they needed to e-mail a response to me. The simple requirement to e-mail me has seemingly paid off (we're early yet) because it seems to have broken the ice and made students feel more comfortable e-mailing me directly with follow-up questions related to content as well as to organization and assignment requirements.

Changes for the Future

The list of things I want to add and change in last quarter's class is as long as my arm, but I am also able to recognize what I can handle and what I can get done during the quarter and what I simply cannot do in the midst of grading and planning classes and writing tests and running the clay studio as well. My biggest long term goal is to get rid of the textbook in favor of a free online version, but the textbook I am using right now, published by a big textbook company is customizable, includes video playlists, images for me, and quizzes (ok, granted, the quizzes are so bad as to be nearly worthless, but still good for practice and the occasional question) and I've already read it and prepped assignments based around it. The online options all require more work from me to get started and I haven't yet felt confident enough in the whole class to devote that amount of time to assessing and integrated an online text. I hope to be ready to start the change over in the spring.

This weekend, the first weekend since before Christmas that hasn't been crammed with activities and travel, I had time to simply think about planning, structure, and changes. I had time to think about how I might organize the content of the spring quarter and fit that content into a Renaissance through 19th Century Art History shaped box (which is itself a variation on the fall class). I also had time to research some online resources and even think a bit about how I can pare down the content from Ancient through Medieval Art History so it fits a little more neatly into a 10 week quarter next fall.

Allocating Time for Planning and Changes

At the start of the summer, knowing I would be teaching online this year, I knew I should organize the classes but didn't have a clue where to start. In August, I took a short online class that helped me figure out how to organize the day-to-day of how students would navigate the class. In September, I was fairly sure that the class would function, more or less. In October I couldn't figure out why students wouldn't watch the video and why they couldn't access GoogleDocs. In November I stopped rushing immediately to look for my error every time students e-mailed to say they couldn't find the assignment. In December I started assuming those students just hadn't looked very carefully, and before Christmas I was pretty sure the winter class would run more smoothly than the fall class. This weekend I've been thinking about how to organize the spring class--that's more than two months away. I'm ahead of schedule.

The past few months has been extremely educational for me, in that I now have a much, much clearer sense of what Canvas can do and what I can do within Canvas to help students be successful, and more than that, to force students to operate in the class in a way that will make them more successful. I have a fairly solid idea of what I need to get done, what I can get done, and what I simply have to set aside to be done in a future quarter.

I write about work-life balance sometimes on this blog, and this is one of those times when I think I have developed a realistic approach to balancing the demands of the teaching job with healthy limits on how much time I devote to one class. I haven't been in my home studio since November, but I have spent time with my family and I haven't been tied to the computer for grading or prep like I sometimes was during the fall quarter. Special bonus, as I finish writing this, my school-age child is standing patiently so that I can finish.