[As my 20th (!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semester previews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses. Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited about as well!]
One of the
more unexpected ways my teaching career has evolved over the last few years has
been the chance to teach the same course in multiple modalities, and thus to
really experiment with variations of the syllabus, readings, assignments, and
more in those distinct spaces and time periods. This past year has been a
particularly striking case in point: in Fall 2023 I taught an online accelerated
section (which met for only the last 8 weeks of the semester); in the Spring semester
I taught an in-person section of my American Lit II survey; in the Summer
semester I taught a 5-week online version; and this Fall I’ll be teaching it
online again, but this time for the whole 15-week semester. For those keeping
count, that’s four distinct versions of the same course in about a calendar
year—a blend of in-person and online, full-semester and accelerated in
different ways. I can’t lie, I still don’t always feel that I’ve mastered
online teaching (despite having done it for more than a decade now). But I do
know that each way I teach a course challenges me and helps keep it fresh as a
result, and for one of the classes I’ve been teaching throughout my 20-year FSU
career, that effect is a welcome one indeed.
Next
preview post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
are you excited to teach or work on this Fall?
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