a small victory for not policing students

21 March 2023 - kudos:

I’ve never been a fan of policing student behavior in my classes. I don’t take attendance, I’m pretty generous when it comes to late work and making up assignments, and I try to make participation in class something that’s organic rather than something structured and forced. In recent years, this hasn’t necessarily gone well. For example, the undergrad class I’m currently teaching has lousy attendance, and I struggle to get anyone except the 3-4 same voices to contribute to class discussions.

2 February 2022 - kudos:

I wonder how many people right now believe both that university instructors indoctrinate students and that they shouldn’t be allowed to do so online because it wouldn’t be effective.

7 January 2022 - kudos:

There are worse times than three days before the start of the semester to realize that you were preparing the wrong modality for a course, but not many!

7 September 2020 - kudos:

Sick family member, so I moved my blended class to 100% asynchronous online this week. Almost definitely not COVID, but it’s a slower week in class, and this seems like the kind of semester to be overly cautious.

22 July 2020 - kudos:

Lots of talk right now about students dissatisfied with online teaching. While those voices shouldn’t be ignored, I’ve also already had three students (of thirty) in my fall hybrid class specifically ask to take it fully online.