Spring is coming, we are saying goodbye to winter. If the weather doesn't remind us of this, there are plenty of other hints: In the supermarket, there are bottles of all-purpose cleaner and buckets in fresh colours side by side for sale. In many places, pruning waste lies by the roadside, ready to be picked up by the green services. It is clear; we are all embarking a spring cleaning.
The education block ended as well. At least, for students. For the teachers among us, it mainly means that the work has piled up. Writing products and the (digital) exam are ready to be assessed. This is something I always dread, but at the same time it is a very nice way to see what my teaching has achieved and how it landed with students. While grading the final products, I always get a tiny bit nostalgic. I think back to drafting the course information, designing the lectures, sometimes extremely last-minute (read: 15 minutes before the start of the lecture) because we wanted to do something with current affairs or because we saw certain things happening in the formative assessment that we wanted to discuss. Of course we take into account the learning objectives of the course, but that sometimes means that you have to do things last minute to achieve the learning objectives. That requires a certain degree of agility, and that leads to some last-minute work. From that in particular, sometimes the best lectures, talks and exam questions emerge.
I assess the products, but at the same time I also assess my own role and our teaching. What did we do during the meetings to stimulate students to think, to read, to write? What could we do more or less of? I write down these ideas, reflections and comments. Because in six months' time, when we prepare this course again, I won't have a clearer idea of what I'm thinking about now and what we ran into. Then I am sure I can find it back, not in my memory but somewhere in a document.
In last year's document, I see what our plans were for this year. I see where I had set my own learning goals in this course last year, where I myself wanted to put more emphasis. These are not just course goals, but also, for example, the goal of integrating teacher perspectives more. As far as I am concerned, I succeeded. I am curious to see if the students say different things about this in this year's evaluations than they did last year.
In conclusion, I am conducting a spring cleaning by reflecting on the past block. That cleans up, with that, I end a hectic but fun block in which students have learned to look at their field in a different way through the assignments.
But such spring cleaning is also the time to plant new seeds and allow new things to blossom. To stick with the metaphor: weeding is important to give space, light and air to the things that really matter. Some things are no longer needed because they no longer contribute to the learning objectives or because it simply doesn't fit into the lectures. But there are plenty of new things we want to pick up. From other work formats and assignments to adding new literature or other ways of testing.
I must say, it cleans up nicely. To quietly look ahead to next year without immediately having to make concrete plans for the whole course. To make sure I don't remember things too selectively, I make a little document. My all-purpose bucket for this course. I'm very curious about others' cleaning strategies. What do you do with the course completion reflections? Do you already adjust the entire course manual after your course completion? Do you also create such a document? Or do you just leave everything 'as it is' until the new round arrives?
Whatever your approach, I wish everyone a very happy spring cleaning resulting in a lot of great new ideas and ultimately a very nice flowering period.