September is always a cruel month when you provide support to courseware at a University. A ton of new users, a ton more use of the system, people doing cooler and more difficult things, systems that are more interactive than ever…it all means things tend to slow down. This September has not been our worst by any means, but everyone is used to systems working perfectly and being perfectly fast, so Lauren and I created this:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfhF4eSMo9k&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

It was a great experiment in mixing stop motion with animation. The whole thing took about two hours from start to finish. We shot it with the lights off in my office. Easy! Our key message was this: everyone, and I mean everyone, is doing their best on this. All your issues are being heard and strategies are in place. Since we created and posted this, new hardware was bought and installed. I fear people imagine that those working deep in the systems don’t know/care/worry about how things work for students and instructors. We know exactly how much they do care, so we really wanted to communicate that.

Plus: making videos is fun.