teach_ref-5

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. This was frustrating, as there was RR quite a steep learning curve in getting to know the new system, and I really AF hadn’t created a plan at the start which might help AR guide me through the process. I attended workshops that EP the university ran for staff, but mostly I found them to be NR focused on the EP new interface, which didn’t really address my main problem: how to transform AR my materials into a format compatible with the new faculty Canvas template. A considerable amount of time was spent trying to get AF a handle on the EP huge amount of content that was copied from blackboard. To help staff, this copy of previous content was done RR automatically, and while this probably helped with units that were mostly powerpoint RR slides and lecture and tutorial materials, this was not helpful for me as much of my content resided in Jupyter notebooks. At the time, I did not realise that EP I was focusing on RR structural issues rather than on the EP main unit content. This is something that I can NR change for the same process next semester. I should be able to AF make this process easier by separating the content from the structural form of the unit, and plan sub-tasks for both. I intend to try AR this for next semester.

Another significant frustration was the need to EP adapt my previous assessment to fit nicely with the NR Canvas way of doing RR things. I wasn’t expecting to have to change NR my assessment at all, but in the end, I made quite a few changes to help AR the assessment fit into the new style. This was time consuming and annoying at the time, but ultimately I’m glad that I commited to doing it rather that putting EP it off. A downside of this is that the changes meant that quite a EP lot of previous video material was now subtly different, and really needed re-recording during the unit – something that I was hoping to avoid. This cascade of changes nearly drove me crazy in RR the early part of the unit, but now that EP I ’m EP aware of it, I can plan to AR minimise it next semester. I also plan to AR do this by focusing on unifying the main aspects of the unit and drawing heavily on what I NR I have done RR this semester. 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.

Despite being a very frustrating period, I can certainly treat these challenges as learning experiences. This won’t be the last time that significant EP change is forced upon me, so I need to take advantage NR of what I have learnt in future RR . In particular, it will probably help to spend AR time at the beginning of a challenge to identify the difference between structural and content tasks, and plan processes for dealing with both effectively.