Week 2

At last, classes are settling down in that whoever I had this week is who will be around for the rest of the course. I am sure students get frustrated with all the moves but I doubt they appreciate how much more hassle it is for instructors. The main new features I had to introduce to students this week were of course the completion of a blog and a podcast. This week, after the movement of students around sections, there were considerably more students who knew what a blog and a podcast were. This was somewhat of a relief to me. A couple of students actually were already keeping a blog.

The deadline for creation of the blogs was Friday at 5pm and I am pleased to say that most students met this deadline although of course there were a few who didn't. An instructor can always tell a lot about what's going to happen later in the course by how students perform in the first couple of weeks. Those who have already written in their blogs have tended to write fairly positive comments. The word "fun" has been used quite a lot but I hope students appreciate that attending courses at a university is not all about fun. My own university life was possibly the time when I had most fun but it wasn't during classes. The fun part was what I got up to outside of class. Classes were hard work. It worries me when students have the expectation that classes should be "fun". I have tried to incorporate a certain number of fun elements but overall the course is going to be hard work and the sooner students realise that, the better. Things will start to get tougher as they will realise when they read the next text I assign. When they then have to start writing, they'll realise how even tougher it is.