This semester I have to produce two new syllabi. One for a class I’ve never taught before — mythology — and the other for a class I’ve taught several times but am completely overhauling — composition 1.
I spent much of today working on the latter one, which is generally going well. The only snag I’m trying to work on now is getting the class ported over onto Blackboard, the Citadel’s online class service. This is no knock against the school, mind you, as I don’t know what feasible choice they have, but I’m finding Blackboard ridiculously clunky and antiquated. Tasks that should be simple — like automatically running papers that are submitted online through the system’s plagiarism checker — are either unavailable or very complicated. Quite annoying.
Why can’t everything be simple? You know, like the iPhone on which I’m typing this post?