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Here and There ... and Back Again
Brand Selvia

The 'teacher' within me

Posted Wednesday, July 8, 2020, at 1:49 PM
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    What are your thoughts on Canvas? We're thinking about switching to it or D2L from Blackboard (BB)... We've grown tired of BB's support and despite their licensing increases, their overall product hasn't aged well.

    Anyway, the modern day boredom inherent to curriculum design (or "ed tech," as some schools try to sell it), or even just the general graduate-level education process many places pitch today, well, sucks! Maybe it's just my experiences or my interpretations (probably is) but when I endured it, it prioritized false interpretations of how valuable online learning was without showing any real, accountable regard for the actual learning experience the learned were being invested with because there was too much pressure to believe that you can replace traditional learning with whatever online amalgamation a respective school can provide and call it a day. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it and many professors who lose their jobs can attest to it. Unfortunately for them, that's their rock and hard place...

    Reading your entry here, I find myself thinking back to the pretentious idiots I dealt with during my stint of mingling with the self-important sycophants I called classmates. I remember all the moments I spent convincing myself that the monotonous legwork I wasted hours on in BB would eventually be worth it... It absolutely wasn't. Not by a long-shot. I had a great GPA and had great standing with everyone and everything I dealt with (despite hating it all). I could've finished in a couple years but it was just too boring. I actually believe that it sucked some of the soul out of me because I never looked at education the same way afterwards. I guess it was simply that I never felt like I was actually learning anything of any interest and despite the conferences being the best part of my experience, it was actually the *food* I liked during those trips instead of the actual conferences themselves. It was all just so unfulfilling.

    Sorry, don't read any of this the wrong way... People have different experiences, I get that. Plus, I was in a program that was more of a fall-back or disposition during a bad time in the economy. So I'm sure things would've been different for me had I an opportunity to pursue something I actually wanted to pursue. But it's just that this new leeway that instructors enjoy is for the birds and it really makes me angry that they get away with it. They get to upload a bunch of junk onto some online whatever-thing, pretend they're teaching without actually having a single iota of knowledge worth consuming due to having outdated and abstract skill sets, and the end-result often translates into a barista position being filled. I hope things change if this is the actual benchmark kids are enduring on average. We can't keep going on that way as a country.

    -- Posted by DouglasQuaid on Wed, Jul 8, 2020, at 6:40 PM
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