What am I reading?
This article from 404 Media (one of my favorite tech publication):
A new paper from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can “result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.”
“[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise,” the researchers wrote.
Pfft, critical thinking skills. Who needs those anyway.
Anyhoo, back to the calendar.
A key way to make sure students don’t get lost in an Ultra course is to make use of the many features of the calendar. I have written a couple of posts already on the calendar.
First of all, if you teach a face-to-face class, hybrid, or VCMs, you can have your face-to-face or live session posted in the calendar. I wrote about it here. You have to scroll down a bit.
Second, you can post all your office hours at the top level calendar (the one available when you log into Blackboard, before you even open an individual course). Then, these office hours will be automatically cross-posted in all your courses. I explained how to do it here. This save you time from having to create a course item listing all these hours. Students can automatically see them in your calendar.
If you want to know more about the Ultra Base Navigation calendar option, you can check out this LT knowledge base article. I should add that we all have access to these features whether or not you have migrated to Ultra.
Lastly, any graded item you create with a deadline will also be automatically posted in the course calendar. They are identified as DUE in the calendar, to differentiate them from your regular live sessions and office hours. The different types of items also show in different colors. Students can also access all their tests, assignments, and discussions directly from the calendar. As I always tell them, when in doubt, check the calendar.
In an individual class, it looks like this:
Whereas the Ultra Base Navigation calendar (top level) looks like this:
Having everything super organized is totally my jam because I’m a control freak, but it has also pretty much extinguished any student question regarding where to find things in my courses.
And so
