The Remote Delivery - Reviews

I'm going through (cleaning out?) some of the stuff I have left over from our abrupt switch to remote teaching and learning due to the Covid pandemic. I was online almost two full years, from March 2020 to the end of February 2022. (I previously wrote about that experience.)

(← crappy AI-generated image, thanks to Microsoft Bing Image Creator)

I never went through my evaluations and feedback comments (partly because the Department of Psychology has stopped giving out in-house teaching awards--which is another topic entirely). So here they are. Sorry, I've lost track of which courses these are from, and exactly which term. It all just blends together now.

“I really enjoyed the approach he took for the remote learning. Many profs seemed they had no clue how to go about it; some profs didn't even give anything like videos or notes. He was really fast acting in such a stressful and unique situation. I hope he knows that his hardwork and dedication to his students and his classes don't go unnoticed."

“Thank you for staying so consistent and working so hard. As a student watching and seeing that, it is truly inspiring.”

“The speed of which the instructor moved his material online. Some of my other instructors took a while to do so (which is understandable since it all caught us off guard) but it is really nice that Karsten Loepelmann had a lecture online the day the in-class lectures closed. He always updated on time as well which helped to keep me on schedule rather than waiting around for the next lectures to come.”

“The notes with blanks allowed me to listen more in class which helped me with my understanding of the material and concepts. I appreciated the ability to follow along with the PowerPoints while he voiced over the lectures. As well, the introduction and conclusion videos really helped and was something some other professors did not do.”

“I personally found that I was more motivated to engage with lectures during the set class time when they were initially conducted live, and I think some others may feel the same way. However, in the youtube format, I felt I was able to better absorb and understand the material as I could replay parts that didn't immediately register so falling a bit behind was traded off for clarity which isn't so bad in my opinion.”

“This course was very well suited to my style of learning and was one of the best classes I have taken in 4 years. The transition to remote learning was very smooth. Thank you for all the effort and enthusiasm you brought to this course, especially when everything went haywire.”

“The remote delivered lectures were of excellent quality; definitely appreciated the humour in them as well. Whether it's knowing the course material inside out, preparing well-thought out test questions, or editing his Youtube videos, you can tell this guy goes the extra mile and more.”

“Karsten was an awesome lecturer, he made the online classes probably as entertaining as they could be and he was really easy to stay engaged with. My only complaint is that there was absolutely no way to review our midterm exams and the final is cumulative so it’s impossible to know which areas we need to work on for the final.”

“Lecturer displayed content in an interesting way. Great quality lectures with great sound. Was pleasing to the ear to listen for more than 3hrs a session. Enjoyed this course overall.”

(More than 3 hours? You poor soul! Take a break, for heaven’s sake! Gah!)

“If you are going to do more asynchronous videos in future semesters, break them into smaller, better focused videos so that each one feels more self-contained and to better space out the watching to execute the spacing effect of learning.”

(Excellent application of course content. Sorry about the length. What happens is I get carried away and lose track of time. And I hate chopping a video when I'm in the middle of explaining something.)

“I was very impressed by Dr. Loepelmann's delivery of this course given the circumstances. The effort put in was noticed and appreciated!”

“I feel like there is so much content to be covered, and the online videos make are longer than class time would be. It is a lot of information to try to teach myself and remember.”

(I didn’t work out if they were longer or not. If there were longer, it’s not because I added more content to the course. I probably talked more slowly than I would in face-to-face classes, because I’m not getting feedback on whether you’re understanding everything so I just go slow.)

“Absolutely outstanding professor. He did very well at making online courses fun and interactive. Very engaging and well spoken.”

(Aw, thanks!)

Why aren't you studying?

The New LMS

LMSs are boring. Or rather, they should be boring--the less excitement, the better. First: What the heck is an LMS? A Learning Management System is used by institutions to deliver courses. They can deliver a course fully online, or be used to supplement an in-person course by hosting the syllabus, allowing assignments to be submitted, and deliver marks. So eClass is the UAlberta LMS. At least, that's our name for it. Our LMS is an instance of the open-source LMS Moodle. I'm not completely sure why "eClass" was chosen, but it's likely because no one knows what a "Moodle" is. It sounds like a cross between a muddle and a noodle, which makes no sense. So it was probably coined to make it clearer that it's the system for Electronic Class.

Previously, we used other LMSs: WebCT and a later version, called Vista (Microsoft Windows Vista was released around the same time, and boy did that lead to some confusion). At the time, the provincial government bought a license for WebCT for every post-secondary institution in the province. (I know: hard to believe. This was at a time when the government actually gave a shit about post-secondary education.) After everyone had gotten used to WebCT, the company was taken over by Blackboard, who wanted to phase it out. At that point, about 10 years ago, the University of Alberta faced a decision: force everyone to go with a new, unfamiliar Blackboard LMS or force everyone to go with a different, unfamiliar LMS. That's when we Moodled! (Ugh, sorry.)

In 2000, I taught a hybrid course (part online/part in-person), when we didn't have any LMS. I had to use a lot of hand-coded HTML. There were no lecture videos back then, just online notes and discussion forums. I wasn't interested in continuing that, and had no use for LMSs. I grudgingly learned how to use Moodle, but still relied mostly on my own hand-coded website. Again, this was before assignments were submitted online: students still handed in labs and term papers on, well, actual paper.

Grudgingly, I learned how to use eClass, gradually putting more assignments online. Some people used eClass to make MOOCs (massive open online courses) like Dino 101. But there was just no need for me to learn more. I mean, it would take something like a global pandemic to make me--and everyone else--re-examine boring old LMSs.

Oh, right. Pandemic. That's why we need an LMS.

When Covid hit, many of us instructors were in the same situation: I need to know how to do everything online, and I need to know it now. Lecture videos. Assignments. Exams. Grades. This was one of the most difficult aspects of the abrupt shift to remote teaching and learning. Many of us were constantly pinging eClass support, and when they became overwhelmed, we turned to each other for help.

By no means do I consider myself an eClass expert, but I was able to help a graduate student who was teaching their first class online. They even bought me a very nice bottle of wine as a thank-you present! So now that I'm fluent in eClass, now what? This is what: the email that sent a cold shiver of fear down my spine in September: "Transitioning to a New Learning Management System." Wha--?

That's right, starting in Fall, 2024 (and rolling out to everyone by Fall, 2025) is a new LMS. Moodle will be no more.

There are a few good reasons to ditch Moodle. There were several high-profile outages of eClass during the worst possible time: during online final exams. This even hit me in December of 2020, when eClass crashed right before my PSYCH 367 final exam. (Students were given the option to write the final at another time, or allow their term marks to serve as their final grade: 14 out of 123 students chose to write the final.) Also, even though Moodle is free open-source software, the university has to pay for servers to host it, and for developers to maintain it (fixing bugs, adding new features). All of these costs start to get pretty expensive, so going with a hosted option looks like a better option.

A company hosts the LMS, running and maintaining the servers. They may add features (maybe). And they will covert existing eClass sections to their new format so we don't have to create new ones from scratch. This last one is a verrrrrrry sore spot for a lot of instructors. We spent so much time over the last 4 years learning the ins and outs of Moodle, and now we have to learn something completely different!? There are some existing custom plug-ins that may not work in a new system. (Departments like math & stats and physics use custom software to manage their grading workflow, for example.) Most other universities in Canada that are similar to the University of Alberta have already moved to other, hosted LMSs. Even UCalgary uses D2L. I mean, c'mon. Even Calgary.

So, it's going to happen, no matter what. What's the new system going to be? I don't know; it hasn't been decided yet. But the timeline is pretty short--we should all know by the end of the month. And then the new learning curve begins. A note to students: please, please have patience with us. We're all going to be trying our best to learn this new system, and there are going to be glitches.

(One final thing. The University of Alberta provides tech support to MacEwan University, who are also using Moodle. If we ditch Moodle, it kind of puts MacEwan in a difficult spot. Maybe they'll end up hiring the eClass support staff who will inevitably be let go.)

Why aren't you studying?

Update 2/26/2024:
After much delay, it's finally been announced: we're moving to Canvas. Yay?

The Office (Good News and Bad News)

You never want to hear the words "There's asbestos in your office." That was the first bad news. It actually followed the good news of "We're cleaning the floor of your office." It's nice to look forward to a spring cleaning after a long winter of tracking snow, dirt, and muck into my office. But it's not really nice to open the door to my office and see that Bee Clean ripped up the flooring. I complained about this and a guy came and put down black tape. That's it--no fixing or replacing. At this point, I didn't even know that there was asbestos under the flooring; they only told me about that years later.

Does this look carcinogenic to you?

"No problem," he thought optimistically. "If it's a hazard, they would do something about it." But then the UCP took office and cut half a billion dollars and counting from higher education. There was no money for anything--not even asbestos abatement. And then Covid hit, and I taught remotely for almost two years. I guess that's good news? The fact that I wasn't in my office, being exposed to carcinogens. Okay, yes. That's good news.

Remote teaching eventually came to an end and I went back to my office. My asbestos-ridden, cancer-causing office. This spring, though, there was a glimmer of hope. Scarce money was being allocated to asbestos remediation. Yup, offices on the third floor would be completely redone. That's some good news, all right! The bad news is that my office is on the second floor, and there wasn't enough money for those offices. I looked jealously on as my colleagues packed up their offices. They would soon be asbestos-free, with spiffy new university-standard offices. This is the standard offices that new faculty get when they're hired: fresh paint, choice of flooring, new ceiling tiles, new window blinds. But not me: I'm old, not new.

But then--from out of nowhere--an email. Good news! More money had been allocated to redoing offices on the second floor! Except, as I peered through the documents, it wasn't so good. I'd be getting new ceiling tiles, and having the walls of my office painted. Wait, what? That's it? That can't be right. Every other office on my floor has either been completely redone (for new faculty), or was now on the list to be redone--except my office. That's, well, Bad News.

(Digression: What's the deal with ceiling tiles? The next time you're in the Biological Sciences Building, look up at all the gross, stained ceiling tiles. This building has leaks. It leaks a lot. When it leaks, it stains the ceiling tiles. Better not to look up. It's gross.)

 

I firmly outlined my case and eventually received (you see where this is going?): Good News. They would redo my office after all. It's just that, well, the renovations would start in the summer and run pretty close to the start of fall term. But there were a couple of weeks of buffer time in between, so that shouldn't be a problem. Right? Deep breath, and relax...

Packing up the office.

It took me four full days to pack up my office. Over 25 years worth of textbooks, papers, and knick-knacks. And an opportunity to pare it all down. (Marie Kondo, eat your heart out.) I went through every single thing in my office, recycling a few hundred kilos worth of old textbooks and papers, and boxing up the rest. Here's what it looked like:

 

Boxes, boxes, boxes!

(There was another bad news item that happened. The movers got tired (I guess?) and went for a break, leaving my office door wide open and all my stuff just sitting there unattended. Anyone could have just walked in and taken whatever they wanted. As if we don't have enough problems with theft as it is. Grr!)

And then I was done packing. I put it all out of my mind. There won't be any more bad news! Family vacation time in Victoria! Workers would be ripping up floored, remediating asbestos, and generally beavering away getting everything ready well before the first day of class. Except... Except not. Bad news: "delays" in getting the carpet. Which meant delays in getting everything else done, and getting all my stuff moved back. My greatest fear came true: move-in day was scheduled for September 8, with classes starting on September 5. So I'd be without an office for the first week? The busiest week of the year? Time to complain again.

Kudos to my department's executive assistant, who found me a spare office to use. I'll count that as good news, I guess.

A temporary office is better than no office?

And then, at last, finally, it was done.

 
Hmm, stripier than I thought.

Move-in day followed soon after. I've spent every spare moment over the past few weeks unpacking boxes, organizing stuff, and reconnecting computer equipment. After hours and hours of work, here's what it looks like now:

That's more like it!

All done! Good news! But...but wait. I noticed something. I stepped closer. I peered at my blinds. My old, unchanged, not updated blinds. Oh, they'll be replaced "at some point." So, some bad news after all.

Overall though, I am pleased with the reno. The office looks pretty nice. I finally have carpet like my colleagues have. And the reno gave me the opportunity to get rid of a lot of stuff I don't need. Thing are more organized, and there's a lot more room for my stuff:

Now that's good news!

Why aren't you studying?