The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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7:39am on Thursday, 3rd October, 2024:
Anecdote
I don't have any teaching this term, so am currently going through all my lecture slides updating them for next term. I do this every year, having made notes the during previous year of any changes I need to make.
Some of the changes are trivial (FIFA <year> is now EA Sports FC <year>), some involve a little extra work (checking that all the links to web sites still work and finding alternatives for those that don't) and some involve new slides, typically to cover problems students had in the exams (thinking a positive feedback loop concerns the feedback they get from their assignments, or thinking that tokens are casino money, or thinking that puzzles are specifically jigsaw puzzles).
I also remove slides. New slides accumulate over the years, and many of my lectures are now at risk of overrunning. This year, I'm being especially ruthless: interesting material I added during the pandemic when my classes weren't face-to-face (and so involved no practical work) is now in my sights. Much as I'd like to give my students a 20-slide grounding in the predicate calculus, I probably don't have to do so.
One of the changes I'm making this year is structural, forced on me by the fact that for my second-year module the classes precede the lectures. Normally, I'd give a lecture then cover the material practically in the following class; this time, thanks to the way that timetabling has panned out, classes come first with the lecture the following day. This kind of thing does happen occasionally, but I can't look back for the previous solution because the module has been updated since then.
Hmm. The class is timetabled for Mondays 11:00-13:00 in a room with flat tables (so the students can play games on them). The lecture is timetabled for Tuesdays 16:00-18:00. By coincidence, it's also in a room with flat tables. I could, therefore, teach the lectures in the class slot and the classes in the lecture slot. There's a fighting chance that students might come to an 11:00 lecture, rather than a 16:00 one.
Maybe I'll ask the timetabling office to switch the class/lecture order, then switch it anyway if they refuse.
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