Archiving the Class

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.” - Zadie Smith (a novelist, essayist, and short story writer - no I’m not well-read enough to have known about her, I looked up quotes about the future on Goodreads)

 

So your class has ended, what value can you provide now? Aside from the obvious future point from here (either you or another individual may become burdened with the task of carrying out this SLC again at Olin), having a solid record of your course can help your students refer back to the material. It can also aid students who are thinking about constructing their own SLC, by being a past example.

 

Having some public-facing course content will be helpful (not locked behind Google Drive permissions, Github security, or the wasteland that is Canvas). But archiving involves more than just compiling course material. You want to include (anonymized) feedback surveys, a gradebook (also anonymized), references and resources you’ve used, documents you had to submit to some higher authority for the class, reflections, etc. Keeping as organized as possible will allow future people to easily navigate through the course documentation and get to where they want to, even if you may have archived too much.

 

In order to help future iterations run, you should include (or more likely, start/write-up) documentation about your design decisions, your sessions with your content and pedagogical advisor, suggestions for improvements on the course, or any details or interactions that struck you as novel during the course of your SLC. So far continuation SLCs have run successfully if run in succession (having an instructor repeat or having a former student teach it) - but we can alleviate that necessity through better documentation strategies.