And we're off... sort of

Yesterday marked the start of the four-week summer session and the professional writing class I am shepherding. I have never taught a class that normally spans 16 weeks in a mere month, but maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. 

My skepticism is based on there being no real time for rewriting or simply rethinking a problem or challenge or situation. For a guy who spent decades asking for multiple drafts and engaging in conversations directly with writers, the lack of a process approach seems heretical.

The sheer volume of quizzes and readings and videos and various writing assignments that students will be navigating adds to my skepticism. Fall behind by just a few days, and the inexorable torrent of work may overwhelm even the most well-meaning student.

But the concentrated approach may also force concentrated attention on writing and creating persuasive documents, free of competition with other courses. A bit of enforced focus may be just what some students need to improve. We shall see.

In a normal semester, technical problems or the lag between when a student switches sections or adds a course can wipe out 2-3 work days, adding more pressure to the few remaining.

Our first tech issue arrived on the first day, as a student emailed me saying that he could not get the PDFs of most lecture PowerPoints to download. I fiddled a bit looking for a fix, but since I don't have much to do with the nuts and bolts of creating the course in Canvas, I had no luck.

Now my students and I are at the mercy of overworked technical course managers at CSU. 

I am but a small cog in a complex and forbidding system. That's the life of an adjunct professor.