Spring Cleaning

It’s hard to believe that we are about two weeks away from the end of this semester. Or are you counting the days?

Smooth

• With the huge numbers of students, my courses and my program’s courses went pretty smoothly.
• With the change in LMS and the uncertainty on the part of the instructors about D2L, this semester went pretty smoothly. None of my instructors have been tearing their hair out or want to return to our previous LMS.
• Technical issues have been minimal.
• The end of the semester is moving toward ending on a peaceful note.

Spring Cleaning

We were very concerned at the beginning of this semester about the “big picture” and getting all courses moved into D2L, that we might have overlooked some of the smaller details.

Now that you have taught your course, it is time to think about the small stuff.

• fix any typos or misspellings that you noticed (if you haven’t already done so)
• fix any stylesheet issues so that all your pages have the same nice clean look (if you need help ask your D2L mentor)
• take care of filing away your email messages in proper folders so that your email is empty for the next semester
• gather any email, files or other communications about any potential student issues into a folder in D2L
• make sure your assignment dropboxes show all assignments graded
• verify that your gradebook is working and that students see the grades and total points
• make notes for next semester on what you would do differently, new assignments and/or discussions (don’t make any changes in your spring course as this is a permanent record but wait for your summer course shell)
• review your News archive and make notes on which items to delete and which to recycle.

A little bit of spring cleaning now will give you time between semesters to enjoy the break.