Lately I’ve been having a few issues with two of my classes.
XHTML/CSS
The first is my Intro to Scripting class. In the past, my web design classes were very small, just a handful of students. If one started getting behind, I could work individually with them while the others moved on. In such a small class it’s pretty easy to keep everyone moving forward. Interruptions are fewer and everyone is focused. This quarter I have a class of 16 (I told you my other classes were small, between 3 – 5 people!). It’s much harder to help students when they get lost. What happens is the leaders finish early and the slower learners get so far behind. I have been lucky to have very awesome students who offer to help each other if someone is having trouble (not all students are so kind). We are a week behind on what I want to cover in the class and I’m not 100% sure students feel comfortable with what they have learned. The content is pretty straight forward. I’m teaching xhtml, CSS and JavaScript coding, I’m not even sure if we’ll get to JavaScript at the rate we are going.
I feel I need to revamp my curriculum for larger classes, but how can I do it half way through the semester? Are some students so far behind they will never catch up?
Part of the problem is that I have web majors mixed in with other majors. So I want to go in-depth for that group, but does the other group really need to know the in’s and out’s of code? I can’t just split the class in half and give more work to some. Hm, I’m just not sure how to handle the situation with such a large gap. Also, there are one or two students who are web majors who are having problems too. I have offered tutoring but no one has reserved time.
Part of me wonders if perhaps instead of hand coding everything, I should have started on Dreamweaver (I normally reserve it for Intermediate Scripting). Coding by hand is tedious, but you really do learn a lot about the code. And from my other students who have gone through the class, they like that because Dreamweaver was a snap to learn since they knew what everything already meant. But like I said, with non-majors, do they really need to know it that well? Perhaps if I used a different editor (currently using TextEdit) to write code. There are some free editors that show color coding which I know would help. I could ask our IT about putting that in our mac lab. It is already week 6 (out of 11 weeks), I hope things start coming together!
Photoshop Icon
My other class, Digital Imaging I, focuses on teaching Photoshop as a design tool. I have the same problem between super technology savvy students and ones who barely know how to open a file. Problems that should be easy to solve by now, are still giving students issues (like making a gradient). How do I backtrack while still moving forward? I have the problem of bored students and the ones who get annoyed at not being able to “get it”.
This is the first quarter that I have had such a big gap. So my classes, which I thought were designed pretty okay, need a lot of revising…but I’m not sure how to keep all students learning (and happy).
Now time for one whine. How can students forget their flash drives (so often)?! Sitting in a 4 hour class and not being able to save anything…especially when doing all this code or digital editing?!
