BellaOnline Forums Education Distance Learning Online Classes - Week 1

I have now officially been in my full-time online degree program for one week! I have 3 classes running - the fourth starts up in a few weeks. Here are my thoughts so far.

English -
I knew I would love the English class. I love writing. It's a "how to write smoothly" class, not a "research The Scarlet Letter" type of class. So it's about a topic I love. The first few days were very busy as everyone posted their intros in the forums, responded to everyone else's intros, and I read the 2 chapters of the book and the supplemental instructor material.

Our assignment for the week was to write a 5 paragraph narrative. I wrote about a trip I took to Ukraine. This was to be just a "draft" for people to comment on, but I love writing so I tweaked and tweaked it all week. So that took time, but it was fun time for me, not "work time".

In my Organizational Behavior class, in essence the week's assignment was all about forum postings. So I read the chapters in the book, read the associated instructor notes, and then began posting. There were tons of threads in the Intro area as everyone described their work situations. The main question, about whether a company should focus on profits or ethics, was easy for me. I run BellaOnline as a charity site and we "sacrifice" a ton of profits to do this. So that was a fun topic to discuss. Since the whole of my mandate for the week was to post, post, and post some more, this was great fun.

My Organizational Communication class also involved a lot of posting. We had two questions in the forums. One was to talk about our largest company we've worked at and what they did well. The second was to choose from a list of communication issues and to discuss one that was affecting us. For the second, I chose the "deluges of email" issue, because it's something that I deal with daily. It was fascinating to hear from other students, their ideas for solutions, and the issues they were facing. So the forum discussions - including the many introductions - was quite fun.

In addition we did have some "submit content" assignments. They were fairly straightforward. Submit a little survey describing where you work in your working career. Answer a series of questions about what was important to you in terms of communication. Read a series of situations, like "your colleague at the company you just joined talks about how they take advantage of management" - and talk about what you'd do. So they were all fun, interesting things to write about.

In each case I worked on the assignment during the week and submitted it *early* on the day it was due. So for example my English paper was due today, Sunday. I didn't submit it before today because I was still tweaking it as I went. But today I submitted it mid-afternoon. That way I didn't wait until the last minute and risk disaster. I am calm and comfortable knowing it is in and all set.

A block of time this week was spent learning how to use the discussion boards, how to use the "submit an assignment" area, how to use the email interface and so on. Another block of time was spent in the high-volume flurry of everyone saying hello, responding to everybody else's introductory posts, and so on. So I think all of that time was a one-time-only thing that is now set for the 12 weeks. The remaining time really wasn't that bad. Read a chapter or two - I read quickly so that is easy. Read the instructor's notes. Again, fairly easy. Make some forum posts. I love posting in forums so to me that's great fun. The writing was also enjoyable.

I am feeling comfortable that this pace will integrate easily with my current work and personal obligations. We'll see how week 2 goes, when it is solely about "maintenance" work and all the intro material is set!

Let me know if you have any questions!

I'm happy to hear that you are comfortable with your workload Lisa. It is always difficult to anticipate what might happen in a new and important undertaking in your life. That's especially true when you want to do your best because it is important to you. So it is really nice to put some of your worries to rest.

I'm just curious whether you have an outline that lets you know when major assignments are due and what those assignments consist of. We used to have an outline of the course that included what exactly was required in all of the assignments - helpful to me because then I could think about what an interesting topic for an assignment would be while I was reading and studying for each week's discussion questions or whatever the assignment was.

Yes each class has a posted syllabus which lists all the stages of the class week by week. So that's an overview.

In addition, every single week there's a full set of pages about that week. It lists exactly what chapters to read, links to the related PDFs with lecture notes, describes exactly what you have to do in the forums, and then there are multiple pages about the week's assignments. So there is a lot of detail in there about exactly what to do every week. They even list the due dates in exact hour and minute format.

I do have to say though that despite this wealth of excruciating detail, some students are still not getting it right. In my English class she was very clear about the format of submissions - double spaced, indented paragraphs, first page has title information (laid out in detail) etc. The majority of submissions of that paper, which are posted in the forum so we can all review each others' drafts, were NOT in her required format. They were just blobs of text. I was surprised that so many students did not even make the time to follow her instructions. It was a little disconcerting.

It might seem weird, but lot of people need to learn HOW to learn. Following directions incorrectly (or not at all) is extremely common. It just doesn't occur to people unless they are of a certain temperament to read directions thoroughly. I think most people skim or ignore directions.

So these classes will help them learn to learn better. You already know how to learn! :-)

I am very interested in your Organizational Behavior class, esp on the topic of forum postings and the organizational psychology behind that. I would love to hear whatever you'd like to share on that.

I could see people having direction issues as a freshman in high school, but I would really hope after four years of high school that basic instructions like "you are absolutely required to have a title page with these items" would be followed. It's just surprising to me that they ignored the command - it wasn't hidden at all. It was right there. A high school graduate should be able to handle that level of basic statement, and it's disappointing to me that they cannot.

It's about cause and effect. If someone has not been censured for not paying attention to directions, they can't be blamed. I give the benefit for the doubt.

I appreciate your point of view on this!

Also, high schools really vary. Several of my friends graduated from a well thought of local public high school and had not written anything longer than 3 pages. A security guard's incident report is longer than that (based on another friend who was a security guard.) It's pretty sad if a high school diploma doesn't prepare you to be a security guard!

Julie

Julie - that was pretty much my thought - how are these people going to apply for *any* job if they cannot follow straightforward written directions? Even McDonalds and Burger King are going to require that. It makes me wonder about the challenges companies are going to have, finding competent workers to fill their jobs.

We need to be better, as a society, in teaching people how to learn. I did not learn how to learn until I went to a private, very alternative college.

Until then i had always been able to skate by with A grades and didn't know I was capable of anything actually great, until i was challenged to learn how to learn.

I realized how valuable learning to learn was after that. But no where in any public school or public college was learning with attention even a concept.

I was just lucky I could get A grades without paying any attention to what I was doing at all. I barely even did homework and skipped classes whenever I felt like it. Because my test grades where so good, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. These were public schools in New York and public colleges in San Diego and Colorado.

So if people 'get by' (on whatever level) all their lives without paying much attention to things, it's just how their lives are conducted. Not saying this is a good thing. Just that no one has really introduced them to mindfulness. IMO.