Where's the cheese?

Oh, there's the cheese....

Sometimes my job feels a little like bait and switch. In 2010-2011 academic year, I taught only 1/2 the courses I was told that I would be teaching when I was hired. The other half were swapped (often last minute) because it's easy to find people to teach intro courses and harder to find people to teach upper level courses.

This meant that each semester I taught a course via something called Wisline Web. I am at my computer in my office on a conference call and with Microsoft Livemeeting open on my computer - the students are in classrooms all over the state on the same conference call (though their ends are muted) and a computer screen projecting my computer screen. I cannot see them, they cannot see me. For me, it's like talking to a wall for 75 minutes - for them I imagine it was a great time to check facebook and write papers for their comp classes. While I was kindof game when this dropped into my lab during the fall semester.... I was considerably less excited when it dropped into my lab for the spring semester too.

Additionally, I was supposed to have been given a course release to develop a new class, which was postponed, but I had to develop part of it anyway for fall (a little uncompensated contribution to the greater good, I suppose). Add another class I wasn't supposed to teach.

Armed with the assumption that no one else is going to advocate on my behalf, about mid-spring I appealed to my department chair and official mentor to please keep me out of distance ed (wisline web) because it's not a good fit. I did NOT mention that (oh by the way) I'm actually contracted to teach online, not dist ed (and yes, they're different).

So, with immense upheaval at UW Central wrt to the online program, I requested that if an online class gets canceled that I be assigned another online class - even though this means bumping an adjunct instructor (oh the power of tenure-track). Low and behold, the belated development release was put off for another year and I am left with a hole in my fall schedule.

Fortunately, I've been granted the online course I requested. (If another gets dropped, then I don't know what I'll do...). While I worried at the time that my request would sound whiny or complainy - it got the intended results. I don't think that it actually WAS whiny or complainy, but sometimes there is a fine line between when you should be a team player and when you should be a little bit selfish. We know we cannot always get our way, but we can't be doormats all the time either.

BTW - my release is now slated for fall 2012, so I hope my cheese ages well.