It usually takes several elements to go wrong in an online situation for things to get really nutty. And reversing this little catastrophe early in an online course is not difficult to see at all. First, I trusted in a pre-made class. While I had gone in and rearranged files, I hadn’t looked to check if the calendar was set up. I didn’t check to make sure that a learner walk-through was working. Mistake 1.

Next, I did that “haste makes waste” thing. I agreed at the last minute to teach a state-level course for new online faculty. This is a course that attracts a lot of faculty firepower, and there’s a reason for that saying—about how teachers are hard to teach. They’re smart; they’re well educated; they have high expectations. They bring lots of great learning to the space. And they know what I’m doing (or trying to do). 

Inheriting a Digital Short Course

The price of inheriting a course is that one has to keep it as pristine and protected as possible because that course may well be re-used by others. That limits changes to those that are temporary. And if the lead instructor who developed and taught the course has moved on to another institution of higher education, it’s just not very effective to ask what happened to a missing lecture.

Due Diligence

It helps to do a walk-through of inherited courses. This involves going through the steps that students do in order to make sure the digital elements are live and where they should be and are behaving as scripted. This involves checking every link to make sure that the contents that need to be in place are actually there.

So on my “next times” list, I sincerely plan to walk through the contents earlier and truly be fully ready… That whole “assumptions” danger is true, and whenever possible, the prework will pay off in spades before a course launches.

The above referenced course itself is going very well. Faculty are a forgiving bunch. They understand how things can go wrong live…but if one comes through for the rest of the term, they hopefully won’t have that long of a memory.