Class improvements? Summary of 9-28-09 discussion

Here is a summary of my notes and thoughts on the "how is the class working for you" survey. I really appreciated your honest thoughts about the colloquium. I'm putting down my notes here so we can come back in late October and see if anything is "working" better along these lines:

People noted concerns about these issues: [and I'm putting my thoughts about each point in brackets]
a. "Websites," which seemed to be mostly about Zotero.

• it isn't entirely clear why we are using this software [I didn't think to say this last night, but I'd like you to use it to pull together all your citations and your bibliography for the final paper; my goal is to give you command of a tool you could use in many other classes and projects]
  
• we need to use it, or demonstrate its use, more in class [agreed; I'll try to do 2 or 3 more 15-minute demonstrations like the one last night]
  
• some people are having problems getting the software to function [if we sit down together, just the two of us, we can probably figure things out. A couple of folks have already helped me learn more about Zotero by asking me for help]
• [we didn't talk about Diigo or the blog, but I think we could get more out of both these tools if more people were using them. Still, I don't want to overload you with 'tech'.]
  

b. "Class discussion" issues

• vague reading targets for the 'setup day' [We agreed that 50% of the chapters will be 'due' for the 'set-up' day; I'll try to remember to announce this before each new book]
  
• the need to get more people involved in discussion [This was better for Pestana day #2 but then not as good last night, which was Inikori day #1. Inikori is challenging and discussion may flow better after you've written the paper. We'll keep doing the mix of break-out groups with specific tasks and larger discussions. It sounds like "Dr G. calls on people" should be part of the mix as well.]
  

c. papers

• a feeling that the size limit on the paper is constraining. [Easy! If you need to add another page-or-so, do it! Just be sure you edit so the writing is reasonably concise and to-the-point.]
• confusion about the grades because of the way the WebCT is set up. [I have to go in and rationalize the grade book. Coming up ....]