T-minus four days to online teaching

By AMH

I have punted on Microsoft Teams and am now recording my lectures in Zoom, recording locally to my computer and them uploading them to the storage space in Stream. After failing to record the window I had shared several times, this morning my Teams recording didn’t even capture video of my face – it was 20 minutes of me talking over a static image of a circle with an “AH” in it. From what I can see of others talking online, all of these services are getting overwhelmed with the number of people using them.

We got the notice that we’re not just online as of Monday, but we’re blocked from being on campus after tomorrow. Course planning was interrupted by a trip to my office this evening to do a final pass for anything I might need for the rest of the semester, as well as clearing out all food. Half my department was there and we had an impromptu “department meeting”, yelled from opposite sides of the building.

I had my first on-line committee meeting today in Teams. Technologically, it didn’t go great. One person couldn’t get audio to work at all and the rest of us had some pretty bad audio feedback. And it’s disorienting when people’s heads pop in and out depending on who has spoken most recently – it makes it hard to tell if the people not shown front and center have left or have just been quiet recently. We managed to settle in and get some work done, but the first ten minutes at least were rough. I’m keeping this in mind as good expectation-setting for any attempt at an online conversation with more than three people total.

I’m have more preparation to do over the next three days, but I have at least hit a point where I have a sense what the shape of my teaching will look like. Now I have to put my head down and push out some content. I’m in pretty heavy denial that I’ll be doing all of this and back at grading as well soon, especially since I have always, always graded on paper with a pen and dread the move to electronic grading. Perhaps I should have dragged my scanner home from my office while I was there.

T-minus five days to online teaching

By AMH

Back to a bullet list again today:

  • Three videos recorded today, so the monotonically increasing trend continues!
  • Actually recorded five videos today, but twice the screen capture failed and I ended up with a recording of me looking at the screen describing the code I am writing that you cannot see at all. Only accidentally added one of them to the class channel before catching it and deleting.
  • I really have to do something about this typing noise thing because it seems to make my webcam drop out the audio track periodically.
  • I have a bad feeling that I am organizing things wrong in the Forum in our CMS. I might be expecting too much to go in a “conversation” and not enough in a “topic”. I’ll see how it goes and be prepared to adjust midstream.
  • Related – I can tell that two weeks from now I’ll be rolling my eyes at how many mistakes I made my first week at this. I have to keep telling myself that I won’t go back and redo lesson plans that are already done (unless they are disastrous), I’ll just keep doing better as we move forward.
  • My attempts a video “lecture” are unsatisfying, but I actually sort of like giving students video they can review of how I’ve gone about debugging something or solving a problem. There is a chance that once this is all over and we return to face to face teaching, I’ll still record a few of these to share with students as a resource.
  • Or – gasp! – I just realized that I can re-use problem solving videos I record this semester in future semester without any additional work. Amazing.
  • Because my videos tend to be a very little of me talking at the camera, and a lot of me typing in an editor, I’ve determined that having a hand-written plan for what I want to cover is helpful. I have decided that this is what I am going to use the box of my mother’s legal typewriter paper for. It is super satisfying to write on and one sheet is about equivalent to the amount I should cover in a video before it gets too long. Hooray for very, very old office supplies bringing a sense of calm and fun to this crisis.

T-minus six days to online teaching

By AMH

Today was the day that things started to click a little. I had three online meetings including one with a student. I recorded and posted two new videos (up from my prior one-a-day pace). My bare bones list of the minimum I need done to get started is shrinking, and I’m hoping will be tied up tomorrow, and then I can focus on getting enough out ahead of things that I am not literally teaching day to day.

I’m even starting to understand Teams a bit – including the fact that I’d probably understand Teams a lot more if I’d used Slack, since I get the sense Teams borrows some of their terminology and assumes you understand it. I understand that the big “Add Channel” button with the plus sign on it adds a channel to my team, Teams, but if I don’t know what a channel is or why I would want one, that doesn’t really help me.

Had a video meeting today where all of three of us were wearing glasses and observing that we could see what was on each others’ screens in our glasses. A good note to us all that clicking away from the video chat window to check your email may be even more obvious than you think.

Tomorrow hopefully gets to be more of the same, setting in with the technologies I’ve figured out and then seeing how to use them to do what I need to. I expect I’ll start panicking again on Friday.

T-minus seven days to online teaching

By AMH

Some lessons learned today in the project of taking my classes online:

  • If you’re going to be screen capturing in a video lecture, do a very short test lecture first, flipping through all the windows you may show, to make sure you have your font sizes big enough to be legible. If you don’t you’ll end up re-recording a 20-minute live coding session.
  • Don’t get too update if you have to re-record something. It will probably be better the second time through.
  • In general try not to have 20 minute videos. Also, trust your students to forgive you if your first video is too long. Just try to pruning them down into more digestible chunks as you go along.
  • If you are using Microsoft Teams, let go of the need to understand exactly where your files are. The answer is probably “in SharePoint”. Or possibly “in Stream”.
  • You have no idea how loudly you type. (Okay, this is probably just me. I had no idea how loudly I typed.)
  • If you’re confused by the difference between a Forum, a Topic, and a Conversation and how to use them to organize discussion, your students will be confused as well. Time to write up some directions, or at least class conventions. Also maybe generate some sample conversations to get things started. And a test conversation they can use to try things out in.

However, my most important lesson of the day was a personal lesson – in the face of uncertain and stressful times, reminders that you are part of a community that cares for itself and for you as an individual does wonders for soothing anxiety. A friend texted me today from a miraculously well-stocked store, asking if they could pick anything up for me, and arrived later at my house as the bearer of smiles and supplies. It reminded me to take a breath and reach out to others in my network who might need help themselves. It’s going to be so easy to be so isolated in the coming weeks.

So, the teaching lesson here is to remember to help students feel connected to the wider world and to each other and to remember that even if we all aren’t close enough to each other to drop off a bag of groceries, we’re in this together and will help each other succeed.

Making the Jump to Online Teaching

By AMH

Like many (most?) faculty who started the spring term teaching in a face to face context, I’m finding myself suddenly figuring out how to move my classes mid-stream to a new format.

Based on what my college provides, the major platforms I have available to me are Microsoft Teams and Sakai as my CMS. I’m discovering there are a lot of features in these tools I didn’t know about. I’m also discovering that they’re a bit complicated to learn how to use and I’m concerned about how well students will pick them up – particularly without someone able to help them get over the bumps in person.

That’s what has sent me to Zoom for office hours. Based on my experience and some testing with others, it seems fairly easy to get up to speed in. I’ve confirmed it works acceptably well on a smartphone, even if I’m screen-sharing code in my text editor. I like that I can produce a single link that is how you get into my “office” any time you have an appointment with me or want to drop in for office hours.

Beyond that, my challenge for tomorrow is to start to get efficient at recording video lectures, as well as the process for getting them into a Teams channel that the relevant class can access. It is an unfortunate semester to be teaching courses numbered 220 and 230 and I anticipate content showing up in the wrong channel at least once.

The most reassuring thing is that I’ve gotten far enough into this process my to-do list is growing at an alarming pace. I am taking this as a sign that I now know enough about what I have to do that I can actually break it down into relevant tasks.

There’s a metaphor that is sometimes used around my campus that we may have to build the plane while it’s in flight – it tends to get used when we’re forced to get a project up and running without the planning time we’d have liked. Right now, it feels like we have a very short runway of the next seven days, and then hopefully we’ve built enough of the plane that we can in fact get the rest of it built mid-flight.

Teaching Goals for Spring 2020

By AMH

The start of the spring semester is looming all too close (about 60 hours left to go), and the pressure is exacerbated by having spent the past two weeks in intensive committee service (it is, apparently, possible for five people to sit in the same room for six hours multiple days in a row and churn out productive work, but it is exhausting and your evenings are not productive) and having a new course launching this spring. I’m trying desperately to get my ducks in a row (note to self: perhaps duck sorting would be a good programming exercise…) but also to take the time to step back and keep in mind what my high level goals are for the term. Because once classes start, it’s going to be all trees all the time (though not literally, data structures isn’t until next semester).

So, high level goals….

  1. For my programming course, I’m adjusting how I provide feedback on their code, to focus more on providing the type of feedback that helps them find and diagnose their issues rather than pointing out problems in specific lines of code. So, do more suggesting a test case they need to look at again or pointing out a portion of the specification they need to re-read and see how they aren’t lining up with it. There will be times when I know I’ll still point out an issue on a specific line, but I want to press myself harder to do that only when it’s the best way to provide the feedback in question. I feel like my mix of the two types of comments has strayed too far towards the specific line-by-line feedback and I am going to work on doing that less.
  2. For my artificial intelligence course, my goal is to keep careful notes on what works and what needs to be revised the next time around. I know that my first stab at AI for both majors and non-majors with no pre-requisites (no programming or math assumed) is going to have some rough patches. I already plan to go in being honest about this with the students and giving them space to let me know where we need to adjust as we go along. But I’m also going to be diligent of keeping track of the ups and downs. I’ve never been good at this type of note-keeping about my courses, instead telling myself I’ll remember for the next time. I intend to keep better track for this course.

Finally, I always start each semester reminding myself to be present for my students. I can’t let research or committees or other parts of my work follow me into the classroom. The tires that need to be replaced or the roofer that has to be called will still be there in an hour. If they’re working in groups on something, I will do anything except check email while waiting to start walking around and talking to them.

Personal Memories of the 2010s

By AMH

Wrapping these series of posts up about the past decade, I looked through my various calendars and journals and thought about the major events and accomplishments of the past ten years.

Professionally, this decade will be hard to top. I received tenure and then was promoted to the rank of Professor. I ramped up my rate of publishing and received an NSF grant. I developed new courses in game design, eye tracking methods, gender and technology, and artificial intelligence. I supervised student research projects in nine different areas, including sentiment analysis, biometric identification, the accuracy of fitness tracking devices, and eye tracking to understand cross-racial face perception. I co-edited a book with amazing colleagues and contributors. And I got to lead curriculum revision projects at both the department and college-wide level.

This decade, I tried to push myself outside my comfort zone and say yes to opportunities. I joined the Pittsburgh Knit the Bridge group and helped create the world’s biggest yarn bombing. I got more involved in the SIGCSE community. I joined a gym and learned to do proper push-ups. I ran a Game Jam and coached a programming competition team.

This decade, I accepted my age. I started watching my diet. I got bifocals. I decided that however much grey hair starts coming in, I’m not going to dye it. I still stay up too late playing video games sometimes.

This decade, I helped my grandmother celebrate her 100th birthday. A couple of years later, I sat with her as she passed away.

This decade, I attended the defense of my first undergraduate advisee to go on to receive a PhD in computer science. I attended weddings of former students and congratulated them on their new babies. I celebrated their professional accomplishments with them.

At the opening of this decade, I found myself the only one of my siblings in the Pittsburgh area after my post-graduate school return and their subsequent departures. As the decade draws to a close, they have moved back and I find myself living near my entire immediate family for while I am endlessly thankful.

Favorite Books of the 2010s

By AMH

I’ve wandered in and out of various on-line solutions for keeping track of the books I am reading, but thankfully I’ve never fallen out of the habit of logging all of the books I read in a paper journal that dates back to the fall I started graduate school.

Flipping through what I read in the 2010s, here are some favorites and other observations…

If I had to recommend a single set of books I read, it would be Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book and then Blackout and All Clear. They’re a blend between science fiction and historical fiction, with a grounding premise that time travel is possible, is controlled by academics, and is used for research purposes.

The books in my list that most caught my eye as “oh, that was fun, I should re-read that” were Cline’s Ready Player One, Cornell’s London Falling, Stephenson’s Anathem, Weir’s The Martian. So I read some good sci fi this decade.

I read a lot of mystery novels, but the standout is probably Laurie King’s Mary Russell series. My enjoyment of that series has led me to read a pretty wide range of Sherlock Holmes spin-offs this decade. I also read my way through almost the entire collection of Agatha Christie novels.

On the non-fiction side, I spent the first half of the decade mostly on technology topics, including some classics I’m surprised I only read this recently like Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, and Margolis and Fisher’s Unlocking the Clubhouse. Of the many video game texts I read, Bogost’s How to do Things with Videogames and Koster’s A Theory of Fun are standouts. More recently I’ve been reading non-fiction about higher ed; I quite liked Roth’s Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters and Felton et al’s The Undergraduate Experience: Focusing Institutions on What Matters Most.

The most random books I read are probably Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Mueller and The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book that Everyone Uses but On One Reads by Shea.

Finally, I’m not sure how this summarizes the 2010s, but the first book I read in January 2010 was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Austen and Grahame-Smith. The last book I finished in December 2019 was Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty by Lang.

Best Cooking of the 2010s

By AMH

I keep a moderately updated Pinterest board of recipes that I’ve made or want to make. Some of my memorable cooking of the decade is there, but a fair bit isn’t.

For example, I got a smoker this decade, and now smoking our Thanksgiving turkey is an annual tradition that, if I believe what they say, my whole family looks forward to. Homemade smoked salmon, slow-smoked brisket, and even the half dozen extra chicken breasts I throw on the smoker whenever I use it and then freeze for later – this is my absolute favorite way to cook meat, though I do it less than I’d like because of the time investment.

Each summer, I now also make at least one batch of homemade salsa from the jalapenos and tomatoes that seem to be the only things my garden reliably yields (supplemented with grocery store onion and cilantro). I’ve had one yummy success with jalapeno jelly as well and have almost eaten through the whole batch, so that’s probably on the to-do list for next summer again.

And, I’ve been learning to brew beer in the 2010s. So far just from kits or recipes so I can master my technique. I’m thinking that the 2020s may be the decade where I start branching out and designing my own recipes.

For day to day meal prep, there are also some go-to recipes that I have kept coming back to. A reasonable number of them are from Smitten Kitchen – definitely my favorite recipe weblog. Looking through what’s made it into my recipe box, I’d heartily recommend the following:

Sheet Pan Meatballs with Crispy Tumeric Chickpeas

Farmer’s Market Shepherd’s Pie (vegan)

Khoresh Karafs (Persian Celery Stew)

Chiarello Chicken and White Bean Chili with Veggies

Charred and Raw Corn with Chile and Cheese

Summer Squash Gratin with Salsa Verde

Blue Cheese, Apricot, and Pecan Boule

Chocolate Toffee Cookies

Elodie’s Chocolate Cake

Chai-Spiced Brown Butter Pumpkin Walnut Loaf Cake

Favorite Places of the 2010s

By AMH

I’m not a big traveler, but I’ve found some places I’ve enjoyed spending time this past decade, some closer to home than others.

As far as exciting destinations go, I visited Hawaii for the first time this decade. This is the only place I’ve visited off the North American continent, and I expected it to be nice but not up to the raptures one hears about it. I’m now part of the rapture contingent. I spent a week and a half on Oahu, mostly on the north shore. I was shocked how easy it was to find secluded spots to enjoy just sitting with the scenery. I don’t think I’ve hiked as many miles each day as in Hawaii because I couldn’t resist going out and seeing more.

I did find my favorite National Park this decade: Joshua Tree National Park. Perhaps I was just in the right mindset for it when I visited, but I think it has the best hikes through the most interesting landscape that I’ve ever seen – I remember one great hike that starts off through fairly even desert and then winds through rockier terrain and ends with a climb down into a ravine filled with cacti and trees that was a bit more challenging than I planned on but well worth it.

Close to home, I got a bicycle in the 2010s – I did have one as a kid but I never really got the hang of riding it back then. That’s led me to explore much of the Rails to Trails paths in the Western PA region and I love both the Montour and the Panhandle trails. As much of my summers as possible are spent out on them.