Teaching an online course

Today is a sad and troubling day because Michele and I heard from my mom that my sister-in-law, Linda, is very sick again and hospitalized for intense pain in her stomach region. She spent two weeks in hospital about four months ago for similar pain and had an operation to clear up intestinal adhesions. Now we wonder if that really is the problem or not. She is in surgery as I write this and we are praying for her and my brother Tim, as well as their children. Fortunately Linda’s parents are over here from Great Britain and staying with them right now. I’m regressing into feeling worse again with this cold or whatever it is, and it looks like Tristan has come down with it, too, judging by his runny nose and general crabbiness. Today I accepted an offer to teach a course this fall as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science in their distance education curriculum, known as LEEP. It’ll be a great experience but it scares me to death as I’ve never done something like this before. Just the thought of developing a syllabus is awfully intimidating!