About this semester in (post?-)Corona times
It’s still difficult to predict what the semester will bring. Right now, mid-July, the official attitude is optimism. In the autumn, almost everyone will be vaccinated, almost everything will be back to normal, in particular teaching will be on campus, or so that’s what’s believed. Let’s hope it will be so and not that some delta-, epsilon-, or whichever wave will thwart that plan.
Lectures, presentation etc.
As said, the plan currently is on-site lectures. As long as the people come to the lecture, I will most probably don’t make screen-cast videos for the lecture on top.
Exams
The exam will be oral, as always for this lecture, Corona or otherwise.
About this (and other) channels
There is a number of channels for ``information exchange’’ for the lecture. If there will be physical lectures, which is unclear, of course one can just ask during the lectures; the direct way is often the best. The situation, however, is still fragile. The university has bought some digital communication ``solutions’’, like mattermost and padlet (not to forget canvas).
They are intended to facilitate discussions and exchange between the lecturer and students, or also among participants. That’s a good idea.
How useful those platforms are depends largely on the course’s participants. Last two or three semesters, the usefulness (I think) was low to moderate, at best. I don’t even know if people did read things I posted there. There was very little feedback, and no discussion, so I did not have the impression, those platform were much used as information source, let alone for communication. Let’s see how it works this semester. Ay any rate, I won’t use those channels for official announcements. I can encourage to look at those things, if one finds it useful it’s fine, but it’s not mandatory.
Also posts like this welcome post are not official (administrative) course information. I plan to use this channel mostly for writing additional remarks concerning the content of the lecture, for instance background, perhaps clarifying questions that came during the lecture. I won’t use padlet or mattermost for longer texts, since I don’t want to type lengthy things into their web forms, and who knows, if next semester, there will be a new tools, and the information is gone, or needs to be ``ported’’.
For official announcements (like ``change of date for the exam’’ or ``lecture cancelled’’, whatever) from my side about things that you should be aware of, I will use the
- beksjeder at the official webage in vortex.
and direct emails. Not all announcements at the bekjeder-place will be important, but important ones (if there will be need for it), will be there.
Actually, probably the REALLY official announcements and pieces of information are inside the studentweb or similar platforms or sent via email by the student administration. Note: I have no access to the studentweb, I can neither send messages there nor can I check what information is in there, for instance whether someone is registered for the exam.