Officially the week work ends on July 22, but for consistency…
It was a nice ease back in to work after a couple of weeks off. As you can see, I sat around a camp fire and got to read a bit for fun. Camping is not the most ‘relaxing’ kind of time off as you still have to cook and do dishes, but getting away from screens was nice.
Day one was primarily cleaning up email and getting back into the swing. I had set out some priorities before I left, the big one being the ‘Student Training Course’ for Blackboard Learn. I still don’t love the name but I guess that’s what it actually is. I made it several years ago when there was virtually no student support and the instructors who were using Blackboard felt that they had to explain how everything worked. It is still functional but needs a lot of work to bring it up to date. I met with someone from Student Technical Services to walk through my plans and some initial updates. I like the way it’s taking shape. I have a couple of new pieces to add, some screen shots to update and then some aesthetics.
I tried registering for a course this week and had an eye-opener. As a former student I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. There are a couple of ways you can work through the website and there is some key information missing the way I did it. I figured it out eventually and we’ve sent a message outlining the issues to the powers that be. I also met with one of our advisers and walked her through the steps I took.
The more I dug into the student course, the more I want it to be better. It’s coming along. I’m going to add a section on how Kaltura fits in.
I’m getting into the half-time groove and I think I have my fall work hours figured out Next week, it looks like there will be a little help desk and some instructor meetings. I want to go over the upcoming sessions I have in August and make sure everything is ready as I’ll be taking the week before off as well to use up some vacation days.