September 5, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: American Lit II Online

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses.Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited aboutas well!]

One of themore unexpected ways my teaching career has evolved over the last few years hasbeen the chance to teach the same course in multiple modalities, and thus toreally experiment with variations of the syllabus, readings, assignments, andmore in those distinct spaces and time periods. This past year has been aparticularly striking case in point: in Fall 2023 I taught an online acceleratedsection (which met for only the last 8 weeks of the semester); in the Spring semesterI taught an in-person section of my American Lit II survey; in the Summersemester I taught a 5-week online version; and this Fall I’ll be teaching itonline again, but this time for the whole 15-week semester. For those keepingcount, that’s four distinct versions of the same course in about a calendaryear—a blend of in-person and online, full-semester and accelerated indifferent ways. I can’t lie, I still don’t always feel that I’ve masteredonline teaching (despite having done it for more than a decade now). But I doknow that each way I teach a course challenges me and helps keep it fresh as aresult, and for one of the classes I’ve been teaching throughout my 20-year FSUcareer, that effect is a welcome one indeed.

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?