We are less than a month out from the start of the semester and our third iteration of the OFF Lab. I’ve started modifying the syllabus, which has been interesting as I was reminded of ALL the things we did in Fall 2020 when we were partially remote. I have decided to go back to the beginning for the most part and plan to run the course similar to Fall 2018, with some changes that worked well in Fall 2020, such as progress reports. Due to time and classroom technology, as we are now also in a new/different building, I am not planning on Scientist Spotlights. Those were great, especially during the pandemic. But, I want to just run the course to see where we are.
In addition to updating the syllabus, we’ve been going through and checking equipment. These things are never as easy as I hope, cameras need updating, computers need updating, making sure we can get videos and track them, etc. Plus, the research lab has moved to 3D filming and we will be focusing on 2D in the class, so reminding myself about 2D filming. We’ve also moved to track using a combination of DeepLabCut and DLTdv8, but for simplicity we plan to use Tracker for the course. Small, but important things to get in order.
So, we are getting there. Most of the cameras seem to be up and running. The syllabus seems to be mostly finalized. We’re hoping to get some animals in for practice and there are some other decisions to make about field collecting, but we are on our way.
