Okay. So I used to teach a Readings class where the student would select a book (or books, depending on length and complexity) in his or her subfield of biology, they would read the book(s), meet with me a few times to discuss them, and then hand in a 3-5 page summary and critique of the book(s) at the end of the semester.
But, as part of the ongoing, "Let's keep the faculty unsettled and guessing" initiative that is a subpart of "let's run around and freak out a lot about the pending HLC visit," I was told that wasn't good enough, that for a class to be worth one credit hour, even as an arranged class, there needed to be the equivalent of a one-hour meeting per week. Okay, fair enough. I always felt the readings class was a bit of a cheat but I didn't say too much seeing as it never counted towards my load anyway.
So I revamped the class this summer. It's now a "hybrid" class, which means it's half (or more) online. This is mainly achieved through the use of discussion boards - I post questions and prompts about the readings, and the idea is the students respond and discuss.
I also had a late add for whom I wrote a letter explaining why they should be permitted to late add.
As of today, half the class has responded to my questions (this counts two weeks' worth of work). The other half, including the late add, has not.
I've posted a fairly stern (well, stern for me) message on the front page of the class website that essentially says "You need to step it up and start using the discussion boards; this is a big part of your grade."
ETA: I just modified the announcement to be even more blunt, that essentially says "weekly participation is necessary to pass this class."
But I'm frustrated, and frankly, this does not make me want to ever do any online teaching again. My frustrations are these:
1. The maintenance, checking the site every couple of days, coming up with questions/topics
2. Finding readings. (Though there's also a fun aspect to this; I'm trying to find odd interdisciplinary stuff. One of the things I'm having them read is a fairly thoughtprovoking paper by Ewald on the evolution of disease virulence, and I just found an article from American Scientist that suggests that we could use a model similar to what Public Health is using in the fight against cancer to deal with invasive species. The class is a wide range of people - from pre-med to botany majors - so the more interdisciplinary, the better). But still, it takes time to track these down.
3. I was essentially begged to do this, and it was strongly suggested to me that "at some point we're going to have to rejigger this class to fit the new guidelines" which I interpreted as "Best to do this now." So I put in some extra time and effort fixing it, making an all-new syllabus. (And did anyone care that I put in that time? NO NO THEY DID NOT. I know that I shouldn't expect fawning or anything, but a "hey, thanks for fixing what might have become a problem during the HLC visit" would be nice)
4. There is another individual in the department who took on a readings student without telling me he was doing this and without consulting me. And this individual is teaching it the old, easy (for both faculty and student) way. Because they never consulted me even though I'm the faculty of record for this class and have been so for YEARS.
5. Because of that, I am going to be very unhappy if someone from my section comes to me and goes "Dr. B. doesn't make us do all this stuff" (heh, reminds me of this oldie but goodie - "John the Baptist's disciples don't have to learn this stuff!")
6. If someone earns an F by virtue of not having done any discussion, and then cries foul because they won't get to graduate.....well, I will just be SO DONE.
7. I posted, last week, a "We need to schedule a time to meet as a group next week" (meaning this week) and I listed the times I had available. Again, half the class has responded, I have no idea if the other half has even bothered to look.
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