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October 21, 2009, 2:00 pm
What’s on your mind?
How’s your semester going?
Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?
Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?
What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?
Let us hear from you in the comments!
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13 Responses to Open Thread Wednesday!
JennaMcWilliams - October 21, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Can someone offer me advice on how to survive my first semester of ph.d. school?
John - October 21, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Anybody have issues with IT. We are supposed to be migrating from WebCT to Blackboard 9 and since IT is opposed to Blackboard, they have stalled it for another year. Quite frustrating.
Rohan Maitzen - October 21, 2009 at 6:52 pm
We, on the other hand, are using Blackboard–I don’t like it at all, but it’s what students are used to and what we are pressured to use ourselves. So, given that I’m trying to make it work for me, can anyone give me tips on whether there’s a better way to handle student papers from within Blackboard? My students submit them as attached files, which I then dowload to my own computer, comment on, and upload again–one at a time, which is very tedious! It seems as if there should be a way within the system to open the file up, work with it, and close it again, in such a way that it is now (or still) in the student’s assignment box. Am I missing something? (I can download them in bulk, though they arrive on my desktop in individual folders which I then have to open up to find the document.)
Madeline - October 21, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Accept current students’ friend requests on Facebook? Why/why not?
Cardinal - October 22, 2009 at 9:15 am
@Rohan, in the couple of different versions of Blackboard that I’ve used, it’s at least possible to zip up a set of files, upload them, and then unzip them from within Blackboard. Then you would still have to redistribute them to the students individually within Bb, but at least it would save one step of the annoying process.
I’ve been using Google Docs on a trial basis in a couple of classes. It worked pretty well in a 4th-year lab class where we had a common data-tracking spreadsheet, but students in the 3rd-year lecture class are still struggling with sharing documents with each other for peer checking. I hate having to provide tech support so I try to make my instructions really clear, but I can never anticipate the things they can’t figure out for themselves. Anyone got any ideas for helping students become a little more tech-adventurous?
Amy Cavender - October 22, 2009 at 10:01 am
I’m actually working on a post for next week, on not assuming students’ technical skills. I don’t know that it gets around the issue of having to provide tech support, though–if anything, I find I have to plan it in (and so far, I consistently fail to plan enough!).
Julie Meloni - October 22, 2009 at 10:12 am
I do exactly the same thing, for the same reasons.
Julie Meloni - October 22, 2009 at 10:13 am
What’s your field, and what is particularly difficult for you right now?
Amy Cavender - October 22, 2009 at 10:04 am
I don’t initiate friend requests with current students, but I respond if they initiate the request. Mostly that’s because, within reason, I’m prepared to communicate with them in whatever way they prefer to communicate with me, and their initiating a FB friend request is one way they can indicate a preference.
Tria - October 22, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I’m looking forward to that post, Amy! With all the mobile technology I see my students using, it’s been particularly surprising to me that so many of them are confounded when faced with a real live computer. I often find myself doing basic tech tutorials on top of teaching the actual course material, and any new ways to approach this would be welcome.
Brian Croxall - October 22, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I’ve been thinking about a post along these lines, Jenna, but I too would like to know your field since my advice will be limited perforce by my own experiences.
Brian Croxall - October 22, 2009 at 4:08 pm
I don’t friend current students. Not that I get many requests, since my privacy settings are fairly high. But I do tell them this rule of mine as an aside somewhere in the first week of school. My reasons are to keep particular boundaries in place with my students. But I see why Amy and Julie do what they do.
William Patrick Wend - October 24, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I also do the same thing, for mostly the same reasons, as well.