Let’s CYBER...

Learn that is.

Yesterday’s presentation was very interesting and valuable. Our presenters were Howard Griffith and Donald Girouard. Who says that only young people can be tech-savvy? These older (and very much wiser) men put on a very informative presentation that gave me hope for myself. If they started off with punch cards and programming on very obsolete systems and are still able to learn how to utilize (and PROGRAM) tools on the web, then I know that as overwhelmed as I feel sometimes, there is hope that if I keep at it and don’t give up, then I too will learn how to be tech savvy.

Anyhoo. The topic of today’s presentation is Online Courses. Having never taking any online or distance education courses myself, I thought it was quite interesting and wonder if I would have stayed in my French class in high school had we had the Internet and resources to do this. As it was, I quit taking the class because it was just me in the class (enrichment) and it was quite lonely and boring.

I did agree when they said that a combined approach to the different styles of Online Courses would be the best way to deliver them. And it’s like this in any classroom. In order for students to succeed, they need a variety of strategies and activities to keep them motivated and engaged.
One of the biggest pros that I can think of is that online courses provide flexibility and convenience.  When I got pregnant in my last year of high school, I had to take two months off (One month to go to Winnipeg for confinement, and another month to recover – my mom’s an old fashion sort). It would have been so nice to be able to communicate with my teachers while I was away. As it was, I had work, but I needed help to be able to do them. So what ended up happening is I came back to school in the middle of May and had two months of work to catch up on. It was hard, but I did it and was able to graduate the same year. But I look back now and think that I probably would have had higher grades if I had the Internet to help me out.

One of the biggest cons that I see for taking Online Courses is that the student needs to be very highly motivated and had great self-discipline. As you can see, I would probably be the worst student in an online course because I am a big procrastinator. You would think that I would have weaned myself of this habit since this is my 6th year of University, but nope. I’m awful that way. I need the interaction of the teacher and my classmates in order to be truly excited and engaged in a subject or a class.

So to sum up my blog post, I think that taking only exclusively online courses may be right for some people, they are not right for me. However, I believe a combination would be the most effective approach to teaching a successful course.

(PS. I wrote this blog entry on Google Docs the same week as the presentation,  and I thought I had posted it up. I guess I did not)