Redesigning Intro Bio Part 4: Perfection
My dining room table in the midst of course design re-alignment
Earlier this week, I coached my 5-year old through the process of drawing a connect-the-dots piece of art for a thank you card for his grandmother. He wanted to create the connect-the-dots art, so she could do the connect-the-dots activity. To help him with this, I drew an outline of a cat and placed it underneath his piece of paper, then I coached him on how to draw dots all along the outside of the (faintly-visible) cat. He hasn’t figured out how to hold a marker steadily yet, so the marker often came down outside the lines, or make a little streak instead of a dot. For him, these imperfections were devastating, and brought him to tears multiple times. I had to repeatedly tell him, “Noni will love anything you make, it’s ok. It’s perfect just the way it is.” It’s heartbreaking to see perfectionism cripple my 5 year old.
As I re-design my Introductory Biology course from scratch, I too have to tell myself that it will be ok for it to not be perfect. In Redesigning Intro Bio Part 3: Alignment, I had a freak-out moment where I realized my learning objectives, assessments, and course materials were not in perfect alignment. It’s easy to let that risk of imperfection cripple me.
I started procrastinating. I started fantasizing about quitting my job and becoming a professional weaver (or farmer, or hiker). (Is “professional hiker” even a thing?)
Today, I sat down and tried to re-align my course. I wrote all my big-picture learning objectives on paper (see photo above) and mapped them to each other, and to the major course materials I would use during my course. I tweaked a few things — changed a couple exam questions, added and removed a couple sub-learning-objectives, rearranged the schedule a little bit — but my original plan wasn’t bad. I still believe the changes I’m making are good changes.
I’m also acutely aware of the ways I’m deviating from the traditional Introductory biology curriculum. I don’t plan to explicitly teach how enzymes work, why the structure of water molecules makes water polar, or the difference between covalent and hydrogen bonds. WILL IT BE OK??
The fear that my course won’t be perfect is lurking at every turn. It’s hard to ignore. Actually, I suppose I should not ignore it.
HEY, FEAR OF IMPERFECTION! I SEE YOU! YOU’RE RIGHT HERE.
SO HERE’S THE DEAL: MY COURSE WON’T BE PERFECT.
EVER.
THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT WON’T BE GOOD.
GO AWAY.
(I wish it were that easy.)
Back to work. Thanks for reading. I promise, my next post will be about Grading. In the meantime, my cat knows exactly when it’s time to take a break.
