Coursekit—my new online teaching tool

Over the last year and a half of being a full-time professor at the SAIC, I’ve searched desperately for some kind of online toolset that would let me host my various classes. I tried with the ‘Living in a Smart City’ class to use a public Tumblr blog, but there were way too many outages for my liking (plus way too many porn blogs). Then I tried to host a blog on my site (this one) for the last Samsung class, but there were tons of issues with logins and the lack of being able to host images and files (unless you were logged in as me and not just a guest editor.)

But in the last few weeks before this new semester started, I found Coursekit. Tip of the hat goes to Judd Morgenstern (friend and ex-colleague from IA Collaborative, Institute of Design grad and damn well dressed fellow).

Coursekit is basically everything I was looking for in an online tool for me as a teacher and I believe what students were looking for—a single place to find everything about the class for reference, and a place for everything relevents that’s developing.

Even though Squarespace turned out to be a rather awkward tool for my students during the Samsung class, the rate of development in the mobile device market place moves so fast that posting to the class blog was the only way for the student team and me to keep track of what’s up that day.

Classes are meant to be social, but they rarely are. We’re changing that—Coursekit

And since I like to experience things first hand rather than just read a review, I have jumped in with both feet and am hosting all three of my classes this year with Coursekit. You can find them on my ‘Classes’ page and you’ll find the syllabi for them there too. I’ll give you an update by mid-semester. 

I’m really hopeful that this will work out and that each time I refer back to it, like a really good syllabus, the investment will pay for itself forward.

More info about Coursekit here.