Joe Oldham: SMP

Spring 08 I tried using this blog to manage courses. Semi-painless semi-flop. Too many static pages, which will only grow worse and worse over time. It would be great if I could use webCT, since that is supposedly designed for the task. But I find the interface so awful I will only use webCT for material that needs to have access restricted to a specific class. Static web pages had the growth problem — the archive is a mess. I’m not going to try to roll my own. So this time around I’ll rely more on the wiki. Here are the hopes:

• The interface is decent.
• Students can watch a page, so they can get email when things change. SHould help with “keep up” — maybe better than an RSS feed here.
• Part of the role of the wiki is archiving communal knowledge. As it pertains to a course, that iterates over semesters, the wiki seems to make sense. There will be an end-of-semester winnowing burden; separating the parts that need to persist from parts that need to be archived.
• Archiving may be manageable. Wikis hold lots of static pages. The course article can link to its own archive kind of naturally.
• Heavier use of the wiki for courses may promote use of the wiki, which is something we want to see happen.

Wonder what the approach will be next time…

Centre begins the term on Thursday, for my classes Friday. Pros and cons aside, it’s awkward. Last term I read Ken Bain’s Book, What the Best College Teachers Do along with some colleagues. It was in at least some ways inspiring. The idea of making the question explicit just has to be the right thing to do. I don’t recall Bain suggesting we begin with figuring out what we know, but that is where we’re going to start, in every class this term, if for different reasons.

Meanwhile, Centre is holding a “pedagogy lunch” Feb. 5 to discuss the article Death to the Syllabus (actually, it is .. Syllabus!, but who would put a ! in their title. Sheesh.) While not buying every word of that piece, the author nails my syllabus — it has crept to become an almost contract-like compendium of all that can go wrong and the consequential pain to rain down on the head of violators. A few terms ago I took to calling the first day ritual of going over the syllabus “Gloom, Doom, Death and Destruction”. Shortly after, I quit going over it first day because that is a lousy way to begin anything. My sense here (at Centre) is that the students want too much structure and are sometimes too grade focused anyway. So when I do post syllabi this term I will deliberately induce some uncertainty and ambiguity into the mix. Bwahaha. (Will Larson has posted on this article as well, by the way.)

What is the effect if you post comments on teaching in a blog that your students read?