Scheduling Problems

Post date: Aug 28, 2013 4:13:25 AM

I'll try to address two topics in this post:

1) the difficulty of scheduling everything into a semester

2) what happens if you don't have a computer room

Let's do #2 first because it is more of a preview than anything else. In short, I was assigned two sections of Freshman Composition this fall, but only one is in a computer classroom (where each student has their own desktop to work on). Obviously, this difference between the classes causes some difficulties in terms of planning the class schedule. It has always been my intent to have students actually play some of the games in class as part of activities. I'm trying to find ways around it thought. I'm planning some gameplay as homework. I'm scheduling a couple days in the library computer labs (thought I'm limited to three such days). And I'm planning on showing some games on the projector (having one student play while others take notes). There is no ideal solution that I can think of, but I'm sure I'll have more to say as the semester gets underway.

Ok, and now for the bigger problem. As others have discovered before, planning a class that can intelligently incorporate games takes a lot of time. I'm really struggling still to find that balance between composition instruction and time to give students the background knowledge to write effectively in this discourse community. Ultimately, the prior has to be the emphasis of the class, but the latter cannot be wholly ignored. Thinking back, I can definitely recall times when students' essays have struggled due to a insufficient knowledge of a topic area. And so many times in the past, I've chalked this up to their own lack of research. This time, I'm adding a lot more reading and structure to the work of the class, but requiring less outside reading. More on this later.