Tales from Real Life

I was teaching an undergraduate course in the School of Business, and I had prepared a fabulous activity where students would practice paraphrasing---a student learning outcome---with each other through electronic mail.

But I never anticipated all of the glitches in my seemingly well-planned activity.

Some students refused to answer their partners' E-mail messages. Some couldn't get a university E-mail account. Others didn't seem to care about getting a university account.

Some accounts were external to the university and couldn't talk with the university student accounts. Some students dropped the course and didn't tell anyone. Others did not even have phone lines in their home to hook up to a modem.

I felt like my well-laid plans had been derailed. An enormous amount of my energy went to administrative minutiae. I felt extremely frustrated.

Ellen West,
School of Business,
Portland State University