University Organization

I got access to Canvas (hub to email students enrolled in classes, make announcements, upload grades) and CAMS (classroom management system) very late Thursday evening. Thursday! I started pushing them for all this pretty early too, so I’m not sure what happened. In any case, that meant I only had Friday to figure out what to do with them.

So I did. I made a homepage for my CS class pretty ad-hoc, but it visually looks compelling. I think having good visuals is really important to me and having bad visuals really bother me because, well, they always have — hence why I’m a frontend developer. Anyway, I threw on there a bunch of class information and logistics that I’ll go over the first day, and I also found out that I can embed Google Sheets into the syllabus there. Pretty cool! A student emailed me saying they have issues accessing it though, so I’m not sure what that means.

I also found out another adjunct instructor is teaching another section. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work, and the head of the computer science department asked me to share my materials with that professor too. I also offered all of the computer science professors who I know to make an appearance in their class and introduce myself to their students if they want, and they said they’ll probably invite me the second week.

Lastly, I found out there’s no exam dates set yet, and it’s assigned much later. I asked the head of the computer science department three different times when my exam dates would be and he kept telling me when my lectures and labs are. I eventually asked Fisk’s GIR from last year how this works, and she clarified for me.

Quite frankly, I’m a bit worried how this semester will go with the communications between the head of the computer science department and me, although another professor has been super helpful and clear. Both have been very responsive, so I at least feel good about that. I’m wondering whether this is a virtual problem or whether it’s usually like this.