I don't mind reading a lot of text, or writing say a 10 page paper for a weekly class. Plus a discussion board. To me that is helping me learn the material.

However, I do get ... I suppose "worried" is the word ... when a class has a ton of different things I have to juggle and remember about. In my current psychology class we have:

* a chapter to read
* an additional paper to read
* a talking presentation to sit and watch and hear - which also has "hidden notes" so you have to manually stop on each slide to view those notes.
* a regular discussion board with questions to answer
* a secondary blog to post entries on
* a tertiary VOICE blog to post vocal answers on
* a written assignment
* a multiple question test

I am really worried that one of these times I'm going to forget to do one of these many things. I have my checklist that I go through, but even so, I am worried about having *three* different blog / forum areas that all have to be juggled. I wonder why we can't have all of our responses done in a single forum where we can check it daily and keep it updated.

Um. That sounds redonk to me. some teachers assume you have nothing else going on.

Even if this was my only class, I'm not sure I'd want to have three different blog areas to talk about one class in. I'm not sure I see the value of posting about the same class with the same small group of people in three different systems.

Wow! I can see some value in providing different learning modalities, but that just seems out of control!

I would recommend timing how long it takes you to do your schoolwork for a couple weeks (not counting extra time you put in to achieve perfection - ie write a post and edit it once.) Then report to your professor how long it takes and how well it does/doesn't work.

Julie

I totally understand. It gets confusing. My one class, Ancient Greece, is a little like this.

-Read Chapters 5 and 6 (50-80 pages each)
-Read Part III (30 pages)
-By Friday night post minimum 250 word Discussion board question response along with citations and end notes
-Read supplemental material and watch videos
-By Wednesday night of following week (in the midst of next week's work), reply to professors comments on your discussion board question with a 200 word minimum and citations along with posting to a minimum of 4 other students' comments with at least 150 words with citations.
-Be working on short paper which is due in two weeks.

I'm scared about forgetting something, too. I'm trying to map it out on a calendar and post when I need to begin and not just the due date. If I focus on due date, I might not do it until the last minute.

I had an education class that said almost the exact same thing on the syllabus for our weekly work.
Oddly, we never had all of those things due in any one week. I think the professor couldn't keep up with all of the assignments.
I would be surprised if your instructor does the same - but I am curious, how do they plant to grade all of this???
I wonder if some of the distance ed teachers try to overcompensate for lack of class time by going overboard with technology now.

My books are free at my school.... except all the research paper ones that I cannot get though the library. Those I have to buy. I'm still having to space out my purchases so that I can afford them and still meet deadlines.

Rebecca, Are you trying the e-library through APU? I've found tons of stuff with the Ashford ebrary for my papers (and some on the subjects you've mentioned in your posts LOL). I haven't looked at the APU ebrary yet, other than to see it's there.