Week Two covid-19: day 160 | US: GA | info | act
I like my new online course layout, and I think it’s working pretty well. I’m using a combination of Google forms for quizzes and test and Discourse for my forum. There has been some resistance (For example one student wrote “with life being upside down, I wish we could just use D2L, and not forum.” And, or course, I’m getting the “I’m so confused” complaints.), but students will be students, and I certainly will never please them all. I made the mistake of asking them about D2L, and of course they all love it. I caved and decided to use D2L’s grade book, though it’s still clunky as hell. Since I have four classes, I have to have four grade books—it’s just a lot of extra work, but maybe it’s worth it for fewer complaints?
I have tried many times to use D2L. It’s just so cumbersome. And joyless. And institutional. I have always found the name a bit ironic, as I think it crushes all desire to learn. It certainly does to teaching.
So it goes. I had a couple of new students and about six show up to class today. A couple left after I answered some questions. We’ll see what happens when we actually get into the material next week.