The 2012 Fall semester will begin soon. For me, the first day of class is Friday, August 31. I think that it would be useful to discuss what people are doing to prepare for the semester.
So, to start things off, here are some of the things I’ve been doing:
- Making sure that my Blackboard shells are up and running. Blackboard is an integral part of my courses. I use it to communicate with students, post announcements, share course materials with students, and moderate out-of-class discussions.
- Polishing my syllabi. At the beginning of a semester, I like to give students an idea of what to expect in the course. So, in addition to the standard stuff one usually finds in syllabi, I include a course schedule with reading and writing assignments, and I try to stick to the schedule as closely as I can.
- Going over my PowerPoint slides. I make sure that all the links, videos, and interactive media are working properly. I don’t want to click on a dead link or get a “this video is no longer available” message during class.
- Learning students’ names. At my institution, I have access to rosters with photos. Before classes begin, I go over my class rosters and I look at the photos to get a head start on learning names. This semester I will have approximately 160 students, so I need all the help I can get. In addition, I choose an ice breaker for the first day of class that will make it easier for me to learn names.
What are you doing to make sure that your semester is off to a good start?
I go over notes I took during the previous time I taught the course about what worked and what didn't, what connections between various materials flowed and didn't flow, and I try to do my best to tighten the course as much as possible. I think a lot of about the transitions from week to week as I've always wanted to students to see the class as on the whole related, instead of fragments of this or that bit of material that they are evaluated on in isolation.
Posted by: Kyle Whyte | 08/24/2012 at 02:47 PM
I do more or less what Kyle says. I mostly focus on figuring out making my reading schedules flow better than in previous semesters. I also always try to think of what sorts of things worked well the previous semester and what didn't, and rework my classroom strategies (I "experiment" a *lot* every semester, though usually in small ways that build upon things that have worked well while cutting out things that don't).
Other than that, I mostly try to rest up. It's a *long* academic year, and it's good to go into it well rested.
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 08/27/2012 at 09:23 PM