teach_ref-4

In the leadup to the commencement of semester, most of my time was spent setting up teaching materials in Canvas, the new QUT learning management system. I found there NR was quite a steep learning curve in getting AF to know the new system. I attended workshops that EP the university ran for staff, but mostly I found them to be NR focused on the new EP interface, which I didn’t find too difficult.

My biggest challenge EP was that most of my class materials were not in a format appropriate to the new faculty Canvas template. Therefore, it was time consuming to work through a new template and a new system and try and work out how to AR adapt my unit to suit both.

It was frustrating having to spend so much time adapting my previous assessment to fit nicely with NR the Canvas way of doing RR things. While I was generally pleased with AF how this ended up, I’m sure it is going to need more NR finessing once I see how AR it works for the students, and this will no doubt take more time and continue the frustration.

Next semester I will need to NR do the same process for a different unit, and there are some EP things I could probably NR do differently to make AR the process easier. For a start, I know now how to approach the AR new structure and I’m confident that I can AF adapt new content to work within the new structure. Planning this out before starting the process in Canvas will probably help. I also plan to unify some AR aspects and make them consistent across both units. Keeping the consistency not only makes it easy for me in making the changes, it should also make the EP units easier for tutors and also for students – particularly those moving from undergrad to post grad. Finally, I need to block out some time to do specific subtasks so that the whole EP process does not become over-whelming. Attending to these things will probably help, although I think it will take EP a couple of iterations of the units before I am completely happy with everything.