Janice and I went for a walk this morning, along Twelve Mile Coulee and down to the local golf course, before stopping at the local pub for lunch on the patio. Almost felt normal. Ish. Weird. And, hey! look at this! things are normal enough that I’m using the headings in the reflection post template again…
⚙️ Work
Meetings. lots of meetings. and we’re going to be planning a slower/broader engagement process to figure out what to do about online exam proctoring. also, looking to create D2L courses for W2021 semester as early as sometime in July, which would be great to give instructors more time to develop those courses.
The university has been hit with some pretty severe cuts. 25% of our IT staff are gone. deep cuts across the entire university. And the province follows up by… hiring an expensive oil-and-gas consultancy to find opportunities more places to cut. Awesome. I hate this government so much right now.
🤔 PhD
Still progressing on the thesis proposal. It’s shaping up nicely. I’m feeling pretty stoked about the topic - adapting video game research methods to the formal analysis of classroom activities - I think I’m going to find some really interesting stuff and can’t wait to get past candidacy so I can start collecting data.
We’re setting up a new “game lab” to house several projects related to video games on campus - including my work on video game research methods. It’s going to be amazing - I’m fortunate to have been included with an incredible group of researchers. No pressure.
📚 Reading
I’ve been slowly reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Moon. Slowly, because I’m also reading a metric tonne of stuff for PhD and work lives and following that by reading a bunch for fun is probably not the best thing I can do for my eyes… (after this, I’m going to re-read the Expanse series to prep for season 5 and book 9 coming soon)
🧺 Other
More slow-motion family crises. Aging parents and an aunt stuck in small-town saskatchewan. Planning on a road trip to do fun things like installing railings and bathtub bench and other fun stuff.
I finally got search working how I wanted it on my blog. Super fast, relevant searching that I’ve already been using several times per day. Nice.
🗓️ Focus for next week
- TI weekly planning meeting
- Tracking issues from early creation of F2020 courses in D2L - if it goes smoothly, we’ll look at creating W2021 courses as early as July.
- Virtual Simulation Working Group - how to do experiential learning online. Lots of interesting projects already under way across campus.
- Demo from Top Hat to learn about their new features that would be included in our campus license, and possibly add-ons.
- CARL library / copyright videos planning
- Game Lab
- COVID testing
- Learning Technologies Advisory Committee meeting
- My annual performance review. That I still (still!) haven’t prepped for.
- Leganto library reserve reading integration into D2L
- TI Manager’s meeting
- Online Exam Proctoring project
- D2L CSM and TAM calls
- Zoom CSM and steering committee
- PhD Friday™ to hopefully finish the thesis proposal and move to prepping for the candidacy exams.
And that’s missing a bunch of smaller stuff and the emails and consultations. Good lord.