I am an early adopter of online teaching and learning and have been experimenting with remote delivery and alternative approaches since the 1990s, so when everyone everywhere "flipped" in March 2020, it wasn't that traumatic for me or for students who were taking my classes. Content ranged from 50-75% web-based before COVID-19. Since then it's 100%. I don't plan to go back to the physical classroom even post-pandemic (assuming that time ever comes ). I'll tell you a secret. My classes are *better* now. Radical redesign has been cathartic for me and students. Converting some classroom activities is challenging trial and error. Every semester since Spring 2020 I've been trying to figure out how to effectively play the game Set in small groups over Zoom. I use it to teach qualitative analysis and it was always a fun day in the classroom but I haven't been satisfied with the online approach. Yesterday I think I figured it out!! It's the plan for Thursday's class so stay tuned.

Forgot to post this a week or so ago.

First FTF class for the blended learning summer course was last night, and it went well. Technical glitches are not unexpected, so I’m not surprised that I couldn’t show the webinar link in class last night. What I didn’t expect was for Java to be the barrier, I thought I might have trouble with camera or sound, but would be able to show chat at least.

Not that I don’t know the classroom machines have protection so faculty and students can’t install programs. I know that, which is why I told classroom tech support weeks ago what I planned to do last night so they could have the PC ready.

I reported it to them today so they could do the upgrade by July 10 and they told me to get there really early to test it in advance (I guess in their opinion 30 minutes wasn't enough time yesterday) and then suggested I bring my own laptop because that would probably work better! My contact in that office is nice ‘n’ all, but "Are you kidding me?"

The most difficult aspect of designing this summer course – so far – has to be figuring out the video component. I want to record the FTF sessions, so they can be watched in real time and later. I knew I could use a webcam for this, but didn’t want to use a typical Skype camera, since I want to capture the entire class. This led to an enormous amount of phone calls and emails to a dizzying number of offices. The library has wonderful cameras, but the file has to be converted and uploaded to a server, and the office responsible has banker’s hours and a two-week turn around time. No office on campus seems to have anything more than a cheapie webcam. I was being advised to just use my laptop webcam. I found a great wide screen webcam on amazon, sigh. Late last night I was resigning myself to having to buy it, when the tech guy for the SoE told me his office would buy it! Yay! Problem solved.

I am up to my eyeballs in evaluation, and the calculation of whether I'll make the deadline (or more likely, with how much time to spare) has started. I managed to get my blended learning class all ready, since it went live yesterday. It makes the deadline question above more difficult.

One inspiration I had was to create a "Sound Off" journal in the class. I named it after the wonderful anonymous call-in forum in the Troy Record, but the in-course variety will not be anonymous. It is a space for me to reflect on the class delivery. Does technology enhance learning or does it get in the way? I've invited students to join me. I will probably post my entries here as well.

This is my first:

During this past academic year, 2012-13, I served on the Online Teaching & Learning Task Force. Since I am an adjunct faculty member, I am not required to perform university service, but the topic interests me a great deal, and I did not want to refuse the invitation from the Provost and CIO.

I am not a big fan of meetings, conferences or task forces. My attitude has been that “I was so done with” spending my time that way when I left SUNY System Administration in 1998. I said arrivederci to keynote speeches accompanied by spring mix salad with mandarin oranges, vinaigrette dressing and chicken a la Marriott.

So I was a touch skeptical when asked to be a member of the OTL Task Force. We were given a short time frame; our first meeting was in November 2012, and after several interim deadlines, the final report was due in April 2013.

I think about educational technology a lot already, and have for a long time. I was an early adopter; I started teaching online in 2000, after taking two experimental classes that relied heavily on new delivery methods as a doctoral student in the mid-1990s. But the OTL Task Force caused me to think about it 24/7, and to discuss it extensively with members of the task force, other faculty, and students.

The response rate to the student survey was 12 percent; this was not as high as we had hoped, but it still is a lot of students, and the comments in particular are a rich data source. Surprisingly, 80 percent of students reported needing no technical support for their fully online, blended and web-enhanced courses. (This contrasts with the wishes of the faculty, who report needing help desk availability on weekends and during the evening.)

Access to grades is something all students want. Undergraduate students want lecture capture, and graduate students want access to the Blackboard site for a class after the semester is over.

The OTL Task Force was a good experience for me. I gained some inspiration and insight that I hope will benefit this class. Of course I’ve already encountered one or two roadblocks (chiefly involving the logistics of recording and uploading video captured during the face-to-face classes).

Toleration class ended last night, and foundations ends Tuesday. Then grades are due May 21 and Spring 2013 comes to an end. Last night, I did my best to "motivate" (assuming the stick approach works, I've nothing left in my toolbox at this point) students to put more effort into writing the final paper.

I've been with SUNY (as an employee) for 25 years, and teaching at UA for 13. If you include my time as a student, SUNY has been a part of my life since 1978, minus five years in the mid-1980s.

It's hard to finish up this Spring's high priority tasks, when my imagination is already focusing on my blended learning class, which starts officially on May 28, but becomes accessible May 14.

And of course there is the glorious weather calling me -- I think I will fire up the weed whacker this afternoon for the first time this year. I should plant the potatoes too (which are now vying for second place to my annual tomacchio tomatoes in the Little Shop of Horrors competition).

And, of course, the remnants of my cold conspire to make justifying procrastination easy on those allegedly high priority tasks...

Added: I made a faculty webpage.

"Ignorance is bliss" and "the unexamined life is not worth living;" was Thomas Gray or Socrates closer to the truth? I often ask students to reflect on and discuss quotes and the one from Socrates generally is favored more by them. I don't think Gray meant this exactly -- but I do wonder if being shallow or self-reflective leads to greater happiness. Not that I think "deep" people are necessarily less satisfied than others; the ignorant have their share of disappointments too.

I was thinking about this the other day (ironically as I was performing the rote task of cleaning the cat box). It isn't the only time I've turned the dilemma over in my mind, and this time it wasn't just to amuse myself while doing something unpleasant (though that would have been a good enough reason) but because I am engaged in a difficult and rewarding project -- creating a new syllabus for a class I am going to teach for the first time this summer.

I am going to attempt a blended learning class again, after what I consider to be a disaster with that type of delivery (in 2008). This time the class will be graduate, and I am going to use a combination of face-to-face on campus, web conferencing, and online.

To that end, I am likely going to buy a new laptop. I don't have a camera for video recording, and although I know I could get by with audio and text web conferencing, I want the option of video. It will also allow me to take the current laptop to Samsonville, because the desktop there is minimal (can risk a decent wired machine there with the chance of lightening strikes) and I hate packing up the laptop to schlep it back and forth.

I've also created a reader for the class, sort of like a course pack of journal articles, but instead of photocopies, this is a real book that will also be available as an e-book. I am so happy with the experiment that I will do the same with foundations and toleration in the future.

So aside from grading "papers" from this semester, this is what has been occupying me. I've had a productive break, and in spite of my prediction otherwise, feel pleased by my progress. The on campus meeting yesterday was interesting (for a task force about online teaching and learning that I am on), and I feel in fairly good shape for this semester. More "papers" to go, but I'll get there.

In other news, we got tickets for BNL at Tanglewood in July. (Really good tickets, in fact!) And, I am successfully managing to (re-)read The Winter of Our Discontent a little at a time, without letting it take over my life and crowd out all else. This is the third book I've been able to read this way, and I'm pleased.

I bought a recumbent bike, which will be delivered this week. (One more effort to combat my aversion to formal exercise.) Spring (not that it feels like it) and summer invitations are starting to arrive. Will have to be careful about not getting too booked up. Things are good!

Finished the midterms!! Now I have journals, and a new batch of essays.

I met again with the hybrid class. They are having a better experience I think, although there are clearly some "lost" students. They aren't putting in much effort. Whether they are weak students generally, or if it is the technology...who knows? Some of the comments the students shared this week:

-add a link ane/or chat, where I will answer their questions on content of the material
-the day class may have been more suitable for turning into the hybrid (meet once per week, online once per week)
-videos are practically not watchable - too slow, audio and picture don't match
-AIM is way better than blackboard chat
-blackboard is often unstable
-uneasy sense that they don't know how they are doing in class
-audios and powerpoint slideshows are helpful

The class becomes mostly an on campus, standard delivery, face-to-face arrangement now - there is only one more online session left. There are four on campus sessions.

I have a long list of things to do today for all my classes - write a midterm, grade essays, make updates to the blackboard sites. But I, like everyone else in the Capital District, as well (I suspect) as the rest of the state has had something else competing with the To Do list for the past few days...that would be refreshing various Internet webpages to see the latest news on the governor's scandals!

I am not given to write much about politics here. In fact, the only time I have written anything about the governor was here, in January 2007, and here, in July 2007. However, I have been thinking for the past almost-year that, being no fan of the prior governor, and even less of some of his appointees (I had a major run-in with one shortly after he was elected), that it is important to be careful what you wish for. In other words, I didn't think the governor and his appointees could get any worse, but then the latest jerk was elected, and "worse" got redefined in short order.

Two things come to mind that make that especially true. First, that he has been the pinnacle of hypocrisy, and that is something I can't stand. Second, that his enthusiastic supporters were always mouthing stupid lines such as "we're very energized" by his election, as if somehow having him in the Capitol was going to usher in utopia.

It's a shame that his downfall was a sex scandal, because the most ardent of his supporters will transform the "we're very energized" into statements about how prudish a country we are and allusions to Bill Clinton's troubles, when I haven't a shred of doubt that there are tons of non-prostitution related skeletons in the creep's closet. I admit sex scandals sell, and policy wonk ones don't. On Charlie Rose's show last night, Alan Dershowitz was saying what I have heard from others, that having private character flaws does not translate to being a bad public official and if we use such litmus tests we will eliminate everyone from the candidate pool. I've also read comments that it was just a "mistake," no biggie. How dumb and how naive can supposedly smart people be?

I call BS on those statements. In fact, I was so mad as I listened to Dershowitz on Charlie Rose that I wished someone like me had been there to tell him he is part of the problem. Maybe if once he stood in front of his law students and gave the testy lecture I give students about ethics, cheating and personal responsibility we would have a higher calibre of people in important positions in government and elsewhere. Because private character most certainly does impact public decisions. It has a role in every decision - personal, political, private, public, great and small. But no, I'm sure all Dershowitz does is teach students how to screw people and get away with it. It seems getting caught is the only problem for people with zero moral compass.

You know something? I could not care less about his sex life and wish I did not have the image of that ugly (inside and out, it seems) man not wanting to use a condom with a prostitute. (Bob laments, here the Health Department spends enormous sums on public education efforts aimed at getting people to practice safe sex and the governor clearly doesn't believe in the message.) I did feel bad seeing his wife looking so humiliated, but I also wondered why the h-ll she was standing beside him at the press conference rather than throwing his expensive suits out of the window of their Fifth Avenue apartment.

Regardless, I care very much that he is a person of bad judgment. I don't for one minute believe that this scandal is the only time Spitzer has done something unethical. I'm sure he has more often than not acted unethically, in fact. It was a part of the routine of his life, and until now, he got away with it. And gloried in it too. I'm also sure he surrounds himself with people who have similar values. In a word, "bad." People like that make my job as an instructor and mentor to students so much harder. How many times (12, actually) have I caught a student cheating and had to suffer through excuses, tears, insistence that is was only a mistake and the sole offense (and then caught the same student again)? Yeah right. Mistake, my a-s.

And speaking of a-ses, don't let the screen door hit you in it on the way out, Elliot. Not that I care one way or the other whether he stays or goes. I don't. He's history, regardless. A joke. Which reminds me...he has certainly given the comedians a lot of new material.

In completely unrelated news, I met with my evening/hybrid class again last night. The first thing I did was hand out slips of paper with three choices: Discontinue Hybrid, Continue Hybrid, No preference. I was expecting discontinue to win, or at least that it would be close, and I had planned to divide students up by preference to have a debate on the subject, with the no preference students serving as the jury. But something completely unexpected happened! Continue won by a landslide, so no debate was needed. It seems the experience of the past two weeks was much better than it was during the first session.

We are finishing up philosophy of education in one section of my class, and in the day class yesterday we talked a bit about why students in the evening hybrid version is not loving the experience. One student knows someone who is in the hybrid class, and several others chimed in as well. They believe that students prefer structure, that they learn better when hearing material in person, and also that online delivery may give students the feeling that they are not getting feedback. I responded that it is interesting because many students will profess a preference for "freedom" over "structure," that they almost always say they find lecture boring, and that I give the same amount of feedback to online, hybrid and on campus students. But perception is everything, I guess.

This is unrelated, but recently I have been doing some reflecting on my own struggles with an inferiority complex. I can't say that it is an overwhelming burden or anything, but consistently in my professional life especially, I have trouble in this area. I marvel at others who do not have this problem. Or at least they do not seem to have this problem, it may be that they do, but they hide it. What does it take, I wonder, for someone to overcome this? Or is it futile, because they never had the problem in the first place?

Last night, my hybrid class met and did I get an earful! This is what I took away from their comments:

• Can’t open long PDF files
• Can’t always log into chatrooms
• Shorten discussion titles
• Move most current Learning Module up on homepage
• Send email reminder to regular accounts of discussion deadlines during online weeks (3 days before deadline)
• Continue to post checklist of what’s expected during blackboard classes
• Uneasy feeling that not enough is being done during online weeks
• Uncertainty about whether expectations are being met during online weeks
• Confusion about deadlines and reasons for them
• Concern about missing assignments
• Skepticism about effectiveness of hybrid model

I told them that we will give it a go for another week - and at the next face-to-face session (3/11), we'll talk about whether they want to "bail" and go back to a traditional format.

I am concerned that this semester, technology is going to get in the way, and not be just a handy tool. I think next semester, once I am in the groove, it may be a different story. But I am not sure that me learning the coursewere while the students learn it is a great idea. I certainly wouldn't have planned it that way if I had any role in the decision.

Anyway, next week will be the first online week in the blended class. I am curious to see how that will work.

This must be the week for outraged students or something. I received two emails, one from a student who was in last semester's class, and one from a student in the current semester. The one from last semester is asking for yet another explanation for her "unfair" grade. I have explained twice already, what more is there to say? The guy from this semester hates the reading and I suspect he thinks I am a moron.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I continue to have so much work to do that I have no opportunity to return voice mail messages. Call me at your own peril!