We must be doing something right. The evening before the course started, I received an email from a student who had taken my class last summer saying ‘I am very excited and ready for your summer class this year!’ Yesterday, a student wrote ‘I’m loving this class.’ Monday, another student wrote, ‘On a good note, I am surprised that I ended up enjoying learning about religions this much, and can’t wait for future classes.’
As I’ve mentioned the past couple of days, it seems that the use of Cohorts, where students can work together in a separate Google Meet (to which they invite us so we can check-in and which they record so we can make sure work was being done) seems to be a hit. We’ve offered ‘Office Hours’ in the morning prior to class but thus far (it’s only been one day) students didn’t take advantage of it, so I don’t know how that’s impacting them. Maybe it’s not the delivery so much as the content? The Bible can be really interesting!
Also, I keep saying ‘we’. That’s because a former student of mine, a recent graduate named Emily, was hired to be a ‘Assistant Teacher’. She’ll be majoring in Religious Studies at UT Austin soon. Maybe it brings gravitas to the class to have both a ‘Teacher’ and ‘Assistant Teacher’?
At some point, I’ll need to ask for feedback to see what we did right because whatever we are doing right needs to be done again if the pandemic (when) has a second wave this winter.
LePort 