Back to school...

It's been a weekend of digging out and cleaning up and getting back to life as usual. I was thrilled to make it back up to my office on campus both Saturday and Sunday (today). If you know me, you know I do really well with normal routines, etc. and getting lots of work done at school is a major part of my routine. (Yes, even on the weekends...sad, I know).

Campus looks great--the grounds keepers are amazing. Of course, there are a lot fewer parking spots (again, where do you put 40+ inches of snow?), but on the whole, we should be back in business tomorrow--even with another snow blast hitting us tomorrow afternoon/evening. (This one should be relatively tame--maybe 6 inches at most. Funny how your definition of "tame" changes...)

Some follow-up on the discussion board experiment: I think it actually worked really well. I am especially pleased with the English 204 boards. All I had to do was ask some questions (admittedly leading questions) and then sit back and watch them go. They covered all the important points I would have made if we had class. This morning, I spent about 90 minutes reading over both classes' responses and then summing up/concluding each thread. One frustrating item to note: lots of students didn't post anything, or only did half of what they were supposed to do. If they don't show up with their reading responses tomorrow (the alternate response), I am not sure what to do. Maybe some zeroes for quiz grades? (This also means giving people who did their work some 100s for quiz grades.)

The upper division classes' boards are (predictably) looking very good. I haven't finished reading/responding to them yet, but I am looking forward to doing so.

Thanks, by the way, to those of you who suggested strategies for keeping on schedule using online teaching.