* being graded by a student 2 months ahead

There’s also an instructor in every cohort, so your TA (we call them TLs) is more of a first line of defense. We brought in the strongest design students to be TAs which is why they weren’t very much further in the curriculum - in fact they actually had a different curriculum. An exception to the rule caused by curriculum change.

*being taught by someone under a sheet

We brought in contractors to help teach the new curriculum, and one hadn’t adjusted the light in his room for video conferencing and couldn’t see the screen for sunlight, so... improvised. Normally there are weeks of practice lessons and training, so this also the result of a rush.

Is there no onboarding for contract instructors that guide them through setting up their environment for effective online teaching? Someone who has taught remotely would be very aware of how hard it is to get sound and light right. They'd have a pre-flight checklist and spend 10-15 minutes beforehand ensuring everything looked and sounded ok.

Someone who hasn't needs to be trained because it's not like a physical classroom at all.

And of course, teachers need to improvise every day, but if they're not used to doing it then they need coaching on that, too.

For example, whenever I teach remotely, I mail a good pair of wired, directional-mic headphones to every student. I also send them PDFs outlining how to position the light in their room.

I do that because they are unfamiliar with the subtleties of remote interaction and it's going to ruin everyone's experience if students have barriers to participation and feedback.

There usually is if we’re not scrambling to do too much too late. Again, was a huge miss.

> We brought in contractors to help teach the new curriculum, and one hadn’t adjusted the light in his room for video conferencing and couldn’t see the screen for sunlight, so... improvised. Normally there are weeks of practice lessons and training, so this also the result of a rush.

Huh? The guy under the sheet was Christijan Draper, the UX program manager who's been with Lambda School since May 2018. Why are you lying?

Wait, what? That's not what I heard. I'll ask the team and look it up, but I was almost sure it was a contract instructor.