Who knew

Vidya, a previous postdoc in our lab, asked me to guest lecture for 4 classes of a Cell Bio course she is teaching through UC Extension. I agreed and am glad to have the opportunity to see what it is like to design curriculum, create the ppts, lecture and give an exam, but this is a little more than I had bargained for. For starters, we not talking about 3 normal lectures, this is a night class offerred in the summer, which means that they are packing a 15 week course into just 6 weeks! It's Monday and Thursday nights from 6:30-9:30--3 hours!! It's going to be a marathon of a lecture for student and teacher alike!

I've about got the first lecture, for this Thursday, completed. Because Vidya didn't assign a textbook, I had to make really detailed handouts based on textbooks that are available online. I also have made a website to post these handouts as well as my ppts so they can print them out before class and links to animations and other resources on the web. I'm trying to get the website up under www.katharris.com, but for now, it's being hosted on Chris' site: www.kat.jchrisharris.com. You can check it out if you like. The ppt presentation for the first lecture is about 45 slides. I'm hoping that's enough to fill 3 hours, if not I guess no one will complain if we get out a little early. I went to a lot of effort to find little movies and flash animations to spice up the powerpoint, I'm hoping that will help to keep them interested.

My goal is to get Monday's lecture done by the end of the week and have a good start on Thursday's over the weekend. I would like to be able to post the handouts a few days before the lecture so that the students can read over them prior to the lecture. They probably won't, but I'd like to think they might.