03/15: Ideas of March

Yes, March is always my month of ideas and I used the Ides of March to re-evaluate my resolutions and see what I can do to make life easier. With spring on the horizon, this is the perfect time to reflect and make changes.

I surveyed my Prof Comm class and half of them hate it. Not necessarily me (I hope) but the book is too simple and the material to basic. So, while they are on spring break, I reassessed and decided that I'm going to let THEM run the class (under my watch, of course). They are working on their simulation and I'm having them do weekly presentations which they must apply to real world situations. I told them that the more creative they are, the higher the grade. Let's see how that flies.

I'm not sure with to do with my Advertising class.

Market Research was easy. There are only five surviving students and it's online so I have them going out and doing research. I gave them steps along the way and they simply post their experiences. Simple. That reminds me that I have to post their midterm today.

The problem class is this stupid Leadership class I'm teaching. The students are AWESOME but I'm co-teaching it with this person who has never taught before. Let's use the name Bob. Bob is panicking and constantly emailing me. When I walk into the office, he bombards me with questions even though I teach outside of work, not during work time. Bob doesn't post responses to the students' postings but is always online. I have no idea what the hell Bob is doing! However, on Tuesday when I walked into the office, Bob actually reprimmanded me in front of peers because I didn't respond to his email on Friday (which was actually Saturday afternoon and, sorry, I didn't do work this weekend). I was really pissed.

Here I am, doing 80% or more of the work, putting up with a teaching neophyte and...here's the beauty...I'M PAYING THE COLLEGE TO DO IT! That's right. Bob's getting $2K and I'm PAYING $800 b/c I need this course to complete my MBA. We had worked out a deal where I would co-teach it for the grade (I wrote the darn course, for crying out loud).

I'm just biting my tongue and biding my time. Since I manage the schedule of who teaches what, guess who ain't teaching any more online courses? That would be Bob...

BTW, back to the Ideas of March...I've been finding killer content to include in my online courses. Some of these publishers have some really awesome material. It's exciting to think how advanced these courses can be. Now, if we could only fight grade inflation to motivate students to try harder...