Update Feb 2

By | February 2, 2015

A few things to update:

  • Deadlines & Assignments:  I know a few (ok, many) of you are getting a bit anxious about the slow start to the course, what we supposed to do this week, the syllabus says there’s a deadline ahead, etc.   Just RELAX.  I know I’m new to most of you, but if you check around you’ll find I’m a pretty “cool”, easy-going professor.  I am definitely NOT one of those “I said it’s a deadline and you’re just out of luck- too bad for your grade, tough” types of professors. Believe me, even when I’m not running an experimental design of a course where I’m learning as much as you are, I’m not one of those professors.
    • This is how I view the deadlines – they’re more like guidelines. I’m not going to ding somebody because they’re a day or week late (except for the last week!). I’m especially not going to do it when I’m so lagging behind in getting my own posts up!  Rather, they’re guidelines. The most important thing is that I want people to participate as we go and not try to procrastinate and do everything in April by putting up 24 posts in a couple weeks.
    • We may well lag behind the syllabus version of the schedule for a few weeks. But we’ll likely be caught up before break easily. I’m going to adjust the expectation on how many posts per unit for Units 2 & 3.
  • The latest delays for me are in trying to fix some software-backend issues.  Most students (approx 2/3 of you) have figured out the blogging and your posts are posting to the main course hub. I’ve got a few where we’ve had some problems. Part of that is learning curve on my part. A few things happened in setting up your blogs & my instructions that allowed some students to try posting a different place and it got confusing.  I’m fixing those student-by-student now.
  • There’s also a glitch right now of commenting or replying to a post.  That’s at my end and I hope to have fixed later this week.
  • Unit 2 assignments are getting posted tonight along with a longer readings post(s) for unit 2 by me. The quiz should be ready tomorrow (Feb 3 or 4).  Don’t worry too much about the quizzes.  They are primarily 10 multiple choice questions intended to check if you actually read the material. The quizzes will remain open throughout the semester.

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