The Provost’s office at UNC issued a call for proposals for MOOCs back in November of last year. I’d been wanting to teach a MOOC for some time at that point, having taken 3 or 4 as a student by then. So I submitted 2 proposals, one for a Metadata course & one for an XML course. Obviously the Metadata course was the one that the selection committee liked, and.. Read More
On teaching an overload
I’m teaching my regular 2-course load this semester. Of course, because I’m in Seattle, I’m teaching both courses online. But that’s no big deal: I’ve taught online several times before, though never 2 courses at the same time. But I’m also teaching my MOOC –- in fact it launched just yesterday –- so I’m effectively teaching an overload this semester. (Though not getting paid for an overload, I would like.. Read More
Parsing WordPress URLs for fun and profit
I’m writing this post at Yvonne’s urging, as she suggested that this might be of broader interest than just me feeling pleased with myself and bragging to her. What monumental achievement have I achieved? Only this: I’ve just made my grading easier, by figuring out how to parse WordPress URLs. Oh BTW, by way of background: I use WordPress as my courseware platform, almost exclusively. About the only thing I.. Read More
Redesigning the Reference course
Please spread this post far and wide (I ask of the 4 people who are reading this)… I’d like to get feedback on this from as many corners as possible. I’m one of the two faculty instructors for INLS 501, the Reference course in the School of Information and Library Science. That’s not to say that only the two of us ever teach the course; the School has several other.. Read More
More on Social Media Classroom
I promised in a previous post that I would document my experience using Social Media Classroom for my Digital Libraries course, and here it is, almost Spring Break, and I haven’t revisited the topic. So here we go. In fact, the primary reason I haven’t written much about SMC is that we’re actually not using it much. There have only been 10 posts to the blog, 6 of which have.. Read More
My adventures with Social Media Classroom
I’m using Social Media Classroom for my Digital Libraries course this semester. Why? Why not. Yes, it’s a new tool to learn, my students aren’t familiar with it, so it will be a learning curve for all of us. But one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I have a need to always be doing something new (a personality trait that got me into some trouble as a younger.. Read More
Membership has its privileges
I’ve been doing some weird things to prepare for teaching the Library 2.0 course in the Spring: I recently finished reading Teaching As a Subversive Activity, I’ve become a disciple of Howard Rheingold’s pedagogical stylings, I upgraded our free LibraryThing account to Lifetime membership. I’ve also finally caved in to my CueCat lust: I asked Y to get me one as a stocking-stuffer for the holidays. (I mean, it’s only.. Read More
Better course evaluation questions
Here at Carolina, as I’m sure at every college & university, we have our standard end-of-semester course evaluation forms. There are the closed-ended questions that are students answer on a scantron bubble sheet, and open-ended questions answer freehand. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, we have a standard set of 3 additional open-ended questions that we’re all supposed to have the students answer. We all usually just write these on.. Read More
My very own wiki
Once again, I come late to the party, but once there I join in with abandon… I now have my own wiki! I’ve installed MediaWiki in my ibiblio space. I’ve been meaning to install MediaWiki for a while now, but I had no real reason to do it other than just wanting it, so I never bothered. But Paul and I have recently been discussing proposing a course on Library.. Read More
Sakai Action
Apparently our Information Technology Services here at UNC has started a Sakai Action Group, to investigate the use of Sakai as an enterprise-wide course management system. One presumes the unspoken here is: instead of Blackboard. Pam Sessoms in Davis turned me on to this, as apparently she’s in charge of the library’s efforts to pilot Sakai. So I met with Kim Eke from ITS yesterday, and I’ve officially volunteered to.. Read More