Preparing For A New Academic Year

I know some of you have already started teaching or at least started being in a never ending calendar of start-up meetings, and simultaneously trying to squeeze in that last minute semester prep in between those commitments. Maybe you are also trying to squeeze in that, I promised myself (my colleague/my research team) that I would have this section of the article/book ready by September writing. Because the summer went by too quickly yet again, and the list set in May with such hope, is now realistically no where near being checked off. 

And as someone who has been in academic spaces for more than 20 years now, I can honestly say this semester is a semester where I have heard more than I ever have before, about how folk simply do not feel ready for what is upon us. And instead of spending this last weekend scrambling and last minuting, folk are actually just going into the semester with whatever they have, living the adage about just staying a week or two ahead of the course. 

It has been incredibly interesting to see this shift happen in real time. Where before folk would scramble and take the long weekend to exhaust themselves even more than they already are, now folk are realizing deeply that the pressures that Higher Ed has put on everyone mean that no one can keep up and even if you plan everything down to the last minute or second, something is inevitably going to appear this semester to change everything, and make that planning and organizing feel wasted.

In the last 4 years we have learned that planning is great, but that the unknown is increasingly a reality of post-secondary and the world we live in. And post-secondary doesn't deal well with unknown, and supporting folk through unknowns. I mean how can you in a system where folk were usually asked for their reading lists 2 semesters ahead of time (when sessionals/adjuncts usually only find out a week or so before what they are actually going to be teaching). This basically makes a great case for open educational resources that have more flexibility in a timing crunch, but I digress. The systems are slower to change, so the folk within the systems have now adopted a "just-in-timeness" to planning. From a health and wellness point of view this definitely has pros and cons. It is good to not push oneself beyond capacity and to take the rest needed, and I am so glad seeing folk prioritizing their health and rest. Yet as we know, if something does happen the more information, modules, or activities that are pre-planned, the easier it is to move with change.

I am hearing more and more folk bringing in student voices and student perspectives in the course design process, and I love that push of making the course meaningful to them. It is a much more trauma-informed approach to design. And it is more than a constructivist pedagogy where learners bring ideas or resources into the class that may relate to concepts or modules, but rather now students are being given empowered choice and autonomy to talk through learning outcome needs, meaningful assessments and activities, and ultimately how learning happens in community and as community. I have had conversations with folk about how choice models can sometimes be a barrier in disciplines where there's third-party accreditation process that makes learning outcome unknowns impossible. But we are definitely seeing, in big and even very small ways, the need for more co-design opportunities in different aspects of learning. 

Okay so everyone seems to be tired, no one is ready, new eduspace realities are on the horizon and I haven't even mentioned those AI words yet- Awareness and Inclusion (lol, if you thought this was going to be another GenAI post you are wrong). I want to of course give you some points to take away this week, something to think about you know instead of scrambling to finish course prep, or tweaking your learning management system shell.  You know things to think about when you are doing a check-in on your bodymind readiness in a real way. 

So here are 3 new academic year considerations that I have determined from reading articles, having conversations, and listening to what those in eduspace are saying will probably be high-impact things to consider this fall.

1. How accessible are the tools you want to use in your courses?

We are going to have a lot of new tools in our class spaces this term, whether you are teaching on-campus, online, or in a hybrid or blended model. Ed tech companies ramped up marketing and promo over the summer and there will be a series of specialized tools for each discipline and for different assessment use cases. So my question is, have you thought about the accessibility of those tools before asking the learners to use them? Have you had a conversation with your ed tech/IT/ teaching and learning centre about them? Have you made assumptions about who your learners are and how they engage when you decided to bring them in to the course design? Try to give options when you can, but also please do some research on the accessibility or bring someone in who can so that you are not creating barriers to learners.

2. Have you designed in reflection?

We talk a lot about reflection and metacognition. However I honestly feel we do not build in enough time for it to actually happen in our classes. The main argument is that there's no time to reflect because there is too much content to get through, however, if there is no time to reflect, learners will not know how to apply, use, or critique the content they encounter. Designing in reflection is a meaningful choice, both for the learners and for you as the instructor or facilitator. And support learners on what reflection is, because one of the assumptions that are made is that learners know how to reflect or what a reflection is, but often learners don't know what we mean by this, and in fact it can mean different things in different disciplines. 

3. Are you ready to have difficult conversations?

And finally, are you ready to have difficult conversations? No really, are you? Because you will have to have hard conversations this term, I promise you, about a whole bunch of different things. It does not matter where you are in this geo-political sphere, things are happening, things that folk will want to discuss, things that folk will want to ostrich about, and you will have to support space for inclusive discussion and support your teaching team in facilitating that discussion as well. You cannot spend this term pretending the world is not on fire, because if you do, it is going to come up in your class, and you need to think about what you will do when it does. 

I am also not ready for the fall in that I haven't really recorded new episodes of the podcast, or updated my website, but I will. Just not right at this moment, or at least not right this weekend. You can expect a new episode next Sunday (September 8th) and it will be on accessible syllabi. I will go back to my one week blog, one week podcast schedule from there for the remainder of the term. Or at least until something comes up where maybe more flex will be needed. 

Be kind to yourselves, be kind to your peers. Give yourself the kind of grace you really deserve. You are doing the best you can with what you have been given- we all are. And with that, I wish you a good academic year. You are not alone and I appreciate you.