Wow! The entire maga-writing course is updated and online in Canvas, and it only took about five hours! Started a little before lunchtime and was done by 4:30.
By about 3:00 my teeth were grinding, but then I reminded myself that most of the hang-ups were user error, not software issues (as they tended to be with Blackboard).
The most egregious error, which surprisingly was not caught by the department’s hawk-eyed Syllabus Nazi, sprouted from a moment of true stupidity: I failed to change the dates in the calendar that we’re required to install near the end of the 18-page production. So, in the middle of uploading stuff and juggling data around online, I had to drop everything and rewrite that section of the syllabus, matching the due dates against a hard-copy calendar. That was annoyingly time-consuming, and all my fault.
Otherwise the actual conversion from spring to fall semester went pretty smoothly. Canvas imported the assignments and announcements smoothly from the spring semester into the fall course shell. The online course calendar, which the program automatically compiles from the assignments’ due dates, got a little dorked up — but that may have been my doing, because I shifted a few entries that were not assignments around and in doing so probably confused things. That took some time to undo…after the time required to figure out how to undo it.
A lot of stuff from the spring syllabus had to be deleted or rewritten, now that it’s clear there’s no need to have students send their assignments to my e-mail address. Canvas seems to be pretty reliable, unlike Blackboard, so I’m hoping that it does as well this fall, when the whole district goes cold turkey, as it did in beta last spring with just a few of us using it.
But just in case, I’m keeping my DIY course management system up in WordPress. That necessitated a bunch of up-dating and out-throwing there, too. Pretty easy, but still…somethin’ else to have to do.
In the past, it’s taken almost two weeks to update courses in Blackboard, and that’s two weeks of eight- to twelve-hour days. So I sure can’t complain about four or five hours to update content and design for not one but two websites.
Things might have gone even faster if I’d had more than five hours of sleep last night. Up at 3:30. Then off at 6:45 to the weekly Thursday morning shindig. Crawled back in the sack after I got home but couldn’t close the eyes, so after an hour or two just gave up. Have you ever noticed how when you’re really tired you miss stuff…and it seems to take forever to fix the things you discover you screwed up? Argh!
So anyway, that was four or five hours of unpaid time.
Then as I’m about to check out of Canvas, what should I notice but lo! They have me “enrolled” as a student in not one, not two, but THREE of those stupid hoop-jump tutorials they require all their employees to stumble through: one on FERPA (the federal privacy act), one on something called “Consumer Information,” and another on “Employee Access.”
What an ineffable waste of time. You can’t just go and click on the obvious answers to the brainless questions. To get to the questions, you have to plod through each stupid little pitch and then read a long-winded “case” about which the brainless question is asked.
It’s now quarter to seven — it’s taken me at least an hour, maybe more, to get through these three chunks of bureaucratic bullshit. Another unpaid hour of labor.
Did you know that if you have a 14-year-old who’s bright enough to be in college (as many are represented to be — around here, some high-school AP programs simply foist the kid onto a community college to take a course, thereby earning both college and AP credit), and you think the kid is going off the track and, to confirm or deconfirm his progress, you’d like to see his grades, you can’t. Nevermind that he’s a minor. The fact that he’s in an institution of higher education nullifies your rights as a parent.
Jesus Aitch Keerist.
So what do you teach? Worthless liberal arts or perhaps physics.
Went I went to Regis I had to take many classes that I thought were just plain silly.
If I had to do it again I’d just go to law school.
‘What about that Mr. fung’
If you come back as a human in the next life, DON’T go to law school. It renders you unemployable faster than a Ph.D. in English. Check out this blog, which was wrapped up in February but contains two years of incisive commentary: http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/ Also google the term “scamblogs”…it’ll pop your eyeballs out of your head.
Good luck to you. I hope you’re going to have a fun school year!
Thanks. 😀 I’m afraid there’s nothing very fun about proctoring an online course for minimum wage or less, by the time you calculate in the unpaid hours.
Mercifully, the last time I looked only a half-dozen people were enrolled; ten are required for the course to make.
And mercifully, it’s only eight weeks long and doesn’t start until mid-October.
Unmercifully, the book whose gigantic index I agreed to do is now supposed to be in final page proofs just about six or eight weeks from now. Meanwhile, one of the excellent Chinese students in Singapore has suggested I should edit her dissertation, and another student here in the US is said to be seeking edits on a dissertation. And mean-meanwhile, I’m about to hustle something altogether different in the work department. If only a couple of these come to fruition, I’ll have more work than any normal person could even dream of handling.
In this vain I was truly shocked that I was not allowed to see DD’s grades…test scores…etc…without her “permission”….even though I pay entirely too much money for the privledge of paying for her education. My thought….”ARE YOU KIDDING ME!”
Yup. I think that may not be so in high school unless the kid is of age. But you can’t know anything about the expensive college career you’re underwriting, nor can you know anything about the state of your child’s health — not without the kid’s written permission.
Now, given that a lot of kids are abused and that American wackiness surrounding pregnancy wanted or unwanted leads to some nasty treatment of girls and young women, I can support a privileged relationship between a medical provider and a teenager. But I’m sorry…your relationship with your Registrar’s Office is NOT privileged. Especially if you’re under 21 and someone else is paying your way through school.
God. I’m beginning to sound like a TeaPartier. Must be the weight loss…have I lost brain cells as well as belly fat?????
Love your comment on first comment above.
It would be great to edit dissertations–perhaps your people can refer others.
I, for one, am glad that I am exempt from being hounded by parents of college students.
LOL! Ain’t that the truth!
Actually, the chair has said that parents often show up at the school demanding to know why Little Einstein got a C in English. I’ve never seen any of them, thank goodness!
When I worked in the business office of a local community college, parents would call and rage about us not being able to discuss the balance owing on their kid’s student account (because their kid had not signed the permission form that was provided to each and every student in orientation). They would scream “but I’m the one paying for everything, this is X!#@ ridiculous”. I would say “How lucky your kid is that you are paying their tuition and room and board. Most of our students are not as fortunate and the student is considered responsible for payment of tuition, so we do need the student’s permission before discussing their finances”. I would then suggest that they contact their kid and have them drop by my office and sign the form. About 98% of the time, the kid would be in there within the hour…
😀 I wonder how quick the young folks are to open their grade records to the aging parents? Money’s one thing…a look at how they may (or may not) be spending their time on campus is another.