I heart my IT guy

So we use Moodle for our course software. It gives us password protected sites for each class. Students turn in assignments, participate in discussion forums, print off handouts, stuff like that. In my upper-division classes I have a new forum for every week. The students have to turn in summaries of their research progress every other week. On opposite weeks they turn in short response papers.

On one hand, I probably make them too many small assignments. Certainly it is difficult for me to keep up with the grading. On the other hand, I have found over the years that this level of engagement with the material produces good results.

So the IT guy was able to take my previous courses, back up all the assignments and then stick them into the new courses. That's cool and all, but all the due dates are for last year. It also came out disorganized. I spent a couple of hours today working on one of the courses. I was just about ready to go home when I realized that when I updated the due dates I had forgot in half the cases to change the YEAR, so everything was still due sometime in 2008. I sighed, went through them all and fixed them.

Then I called IT-guy and asked if there was anyway he could copy all that work into the other upper division class. I explained about how the classes had been coming out disorganized. He said he could take care of that.

And he did. Woo hoo! The other class site is all pretty and organized and I didn't have to spend any time on it at all.

Now I just have to work on the lower division course.

Sigh.