9 days late, a semester begins

I don't blog much about my courses, but the semester did finally begin for me this past week, with the first meeting of my computers and writing graduate course. I took Alex's advice from a couple of posts ago, and reoriented my approach to it. Rather than thinking about it in terms of what the students should know about what it is that I do, I'm trying to design the course with an eye towards what they'll be able to do with it once we're through.

And so the focus is much more on various tools and approaches than it is an introduction to the sub-discipline. The syllabus only exists in wiki form right now, and it's password-protected, so I'll try and share parts of it here in upcoming weeks.

First night seemed to go pretty well. I've always been a believer that it's better to have too much to get to than not enough, and along those lines, we will definitely be starting next week with leftovers. I've set myself a pretty ambitious course plan, though, one that's going to be tough to work ahead on. We'll see how that goes.