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Last day of class! Looking back and looking forward

Work to have done:

  • Identify something said, read, or made in this course that you want to remember beyond this semester.
  • Consider what earlier reflections, feedback, commit messages, etc you’ll want to include in the final portfolio to support your introductory letter
  • Otherwise proceed on your plans toward consolidating and integrating what you’e learned

Plan for the day:

  1. Gifts and Remembrances (optional)
  2. Notes before studio
    • Final portfolio FAQ
    • OMETs, if you haven’t yet (due Sat 11:59pm)
  3. Studio
    • Set an intention
    • Exit note
  4. The ends of a term

Gifts and Remembrances (optional)

A handful of people had voted last class in favor of sharing something awesome they made and are proud of, or something awesome they appreciated from someone else in the class, for the purposes of celebrating our collective accomplishments. I heartily support this volunteerism!

Let’s take 2-3 minutes for each share, up to a total of 20 minutes (to preserve working time for everyone who voted to work).

Notes before Studio

We’ll spend just about the rest of class working on your individual and group projects / final reflections.

Final portfolio FAQ

Some people have historically asked questions that maybe you have floating around in your head, too.

What do you mean by “linked thumbnail”?

All I mean by thumbnail is a small picture; all I mean by linked is that it should be clickable, a hyperlink.

As you know from previous reflections, you can upload an image into your post on the Issue Queue just by dragging and dropping the file, which will generate some markup like this:

![name-of-file.png](https://somecrazylongURLthatGitHubauto-generates)

If you want the image to link directly to your repository for that project, you would add another layer of markup, using the structure [anchor](URL). So in this case, because the anchor is that whole long thing GitHub generated after the drag-and-drop, you’d link like this:

[![name-of-file.png](https://somecrazylongURLthatGitHubauto-generates)](https://github.com/username/repo)

Note the double closing in the middle: close-parenthesis, close-bracket.

If that’s too annoying, you can also just paste the regular link underneath the image, like this:

**Soundscape thumbnail:**

![name-of-file.png](https://somecrazylongURLthatGitHubauto-generates]

[Link to soundscape file](https://github.com/username/repo/blob/master/name-of-playable-file.mp3)
[Link to soundscape repository](https://github.com/username/repo)
When you say, "link to a specific point in the revision history..."

When I ask you to link to a specific point in the revision history, i.e. for an earlier draft, you can follow the same setup as above. That is, you can use the structure [anchor](URL).

But instead of getting the URL of the repo as a whole, click through to the commit history, like you did for workshop, and grab the URL of the commit that represents that past moment you want to compare to the present.

Hope that clarifies things!

Anything else you’re wondering?

About OMETs

OMETs are a pretty important way of getting your voices heard; they can also have some pretty outsized effects on your teachers’ lives.

Expand to read more. I know some of you have already turned in your surveys for the Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching (yep, that's what OMET stands for). If so, you can feel free to work on your own projects, though I hope what I'm about to say is still useful information. Actually, I hope you all know this stuff already, but my experience has been otherwise, so I try to say it in every class:
These evaluations of teaching serve multiple purposes, and go to multiple audiences:
  • They'll go to my program director, to help determine if I should keep teaching this course;
  • they'll become part of my portfolio application for tenure, read by other faculty inside and outside my department;
  • and, after grades are turned in, they'll go to me, so I can use them to revise and update the course. For that purpose, I especially value the free responses. (I also added a few Likert questions that are particular to this section of the course.)
The same is true for all your professors. For adjunct professors, OMET reviews may make the difference in whether they get renewed again at all. So the OMETs are, as I said above, a pretty important way of getting your voices heard, which is a good thing; on the other hand, they can also powerfully affect hiring, especially for women, immigrants, and people of color.
If you haven't yet filled out your survey, please do so now. You should have a link to the survey on Canvas, or in your Pitt email.

But in brief: please do fill these out, but please do your best to be fair, to be thoughtful, and to be considerate of how things like race, gender, and linguistic difference might color your responses. (Implicit biases can often be countered by bringing them to consciousness.)

EXT 1: I know some of you may already have filled out the end-of-semester version of the Tech Comfort Survey, but if you haven’t, I hope you’ll consider doing so now.

EXT 2: If you’ve done the Survey and the OMET to your satisfaction and you’re waiting for your classmates to finish, you can use this time for solo work on your portfolio / revisions or your final reflection.

Set an intention

As usual, please…

  1. Write your goals in the google doc
  2. Expect to leave an exit note to report on progress and re-set goals for moving forward.
  3. Save an extra couple of minutes at the end of class, to bring us back together, for closure.

I’ll once again make breakout rooms for maximum flexibility, and otherwise hang out in the main room unless people need one-on-one time (when we can go to an extra room set aside for that purpose).

Exit note

When we’re getting toward those last few minutes, please head back to the google doc to write an update: What have you achieved today? What are your goals for the weekend? For the final portfolio?

The ends of a term

  • The final portfolio will be due during our final exam slot, which is Tuesday, April 27th from 12-1:50pm.
  • The reflection is the main thing, so if you do make revisions to earlier projects, please be sure to talk about them in the reflection. Or even if you don’t have time to make revisions, but want to talk about what you would revise, if you had more time, you can talk about that in the reflection, too. I’m interested in what you’ve learned this semester, and what will help you keep learning after it ends.
  • I have office hours on Friday, 1:30-2:30, but not after that – though you can always email me with questions! For Friday, either let me know if you’re coming at benmiller314.youcanbook.me, or just drop by.
I like to end with poetry.