Having converted classes before, I came into this second round with some experience. However, it soon became clear that this experience would bring different joys and challenges than the first. Among the joys was another opportunity for peer collaboration. The challenges, however, were more intense as they concerned re-conceptualizing and re-working the syllabus to increase the rigor of the assignments while maintaining student engagement. While reworking the syllabus, I thought it important to balance robust learning with student-friendly course content. Vital to successful and useful student instruction is a keen awareness of the audience and a commitment to teach and provide content that aligns with the audience’s capacity for sustained learning.  Navigating the intersection of these two goals—providing robust learning and delivering student-friendly course content—while creating the best learning outcomes for students proved the greatest challenge and gained my unabated attention.

Reflecting on the task, I can attest that the experience was both useful and timely—useful, considering the surge in post-COVID online classes requiring greater synergy between student engagement and active, sustained learning; timely, as we transition to a new learning management system, Brightspace, in the Fall. Notwithstanding the time requirement, the experience, in sum, has been intensely rewarding, especially in reinforcing lessons in pedagogical best practices, which continue to inform my teaching style.