you know how they give you those surveys in a class toward the end?
well after i filled in all the little bubbles, there was a box that asked my opinion on the class i WENT IN here's what i wrote: This class is terrible. I blame the curriculum because I recognize it as being impractical. I view the teacher as being very disorganized. To explain why I believe the curriculum is flawed I have to bring attention to the fact that this is an online class. We learned in communication in organizations (comm 4020) that there are certain mediums that are conducive to certain types of communication and some that aren’t. For example, breaking up with someone via text message is seen as an inadequate form of communication for that particular message. Herein lies the main problem with this class being available online. I’m sure the whole “group campaign” aspect of the class is written into the curriculum itself. The issue however is, with the class being online, the form of communication is inadequate for the actual correspondence needed. Having to do this class project (which is 50% of my grade) with people I’ve never met before, via the Internet- unnecessarily adds frustration to an already long, arduous, taxing, and drawn-out project. When I was a kid I once did a carnival game. The guy at the carnival said “If you can make a basket, I’ll give you this prize.” I agreed and then when he passed me the ball, he said “…but you have to throw the ball over this bar.” Once he added that second part after taking my $5, I realized I had been tricked and my endeavor was going to be a lot harder than it would’ve been under normal circumstances. That is what this class is like. I have no qualms with working hard and concentrating and figuring things out and creating a high quality piece of work. However this class handicaps each and every student with the particular way in which it is setup. When you get on your class website and you see that you have 25 messages that you essentially have to read, process, and react to- things become extremely overwhelming very quickly. To get back to my scholastic explanation I will say this, (paraphrased from the comm 4020- communications in organizations textbook): “Any content with potential for being misunderstood is ambiguous and therefore should be expressed face to face. All unambiguous content can be expressed via CMC.” (cmc is computer mediated communication) Wouldn’t a shared 2 to 3 month long group project count as something that can become ambiguous at times? Again, the project is 50% of my grade in the class and 20% of that grade will be determined by peer assessment. Corresponding via the Internet for such an endeavor is very frustrating. This class has made all of the students into victims. We are victims of using the wrong communication medium for the content we wish to express to one another. Computers only have “data-carrying-capacity” and it is difficult to extract all meaning from the written word because of the lack of symbolic value (which face-to-face communication does have). I came up with a clear example to show how easily CMC (computer mediated communication) can break down or be inadequate. “I don’t want to see you, go away.” “I don’t want to see you go away.” The only difference between the two sentences is a comma however they have completely opposite meanings. When it comes to the teacher, I believe she is disorganized. The reason I believe this is because the class is very hard to follow. I feel like she puts very little effort into making things clear. Oftentimes I felt like I had to untie knots upon other knots just to figure out the next step within a process. I found myself spending a lot of time trying to figure out what to do as opposed to actually doing anything. In this professor’s class you say to yourself “ok, I’m going to start on step one.” Once you say that to yourself you try to reach step one but the instructions are like “before you do step one remember to…” “after that then read…” “there are 10 steps to step 1..” “the research for step 3 of step 1 can be found at..” “primary and secondary research are vital to the first bullet point of…” I challenge anyone reading this to read the class campaign packet that was handed out and try to really understand where to start. I also challenge you to think about the dynamic of having this confusing process made into an outright absurdity when the requirement of working with 5 to 8 complete strangers over the Internet comes into play. This has been one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in a class, and that’s saying a lot. Mainly I feel that the professor here should take some time to rewrite things. Try to create a clear and segmented process for students to follow. Taking this class is like one long stressful inhale with no exhale. There are no real starting or stopping points for anything. For example, I noticed this semester that this was the only class that was structured in a way to have students doing 3 or 4 things at one time. The main thing that needs to happen is, the group project should be shortened or should be done only when everything else is done. The reason I say this is because in this class- I might be working on one thing, but it seems like another thing is falling by the wayside because there isn’t enough segmentation. For example, if I spend a few days working on a book report, and my emails for the group project stack up during that time, then I will be seen as being irresponsible by my group who essentially holds the key to 10% of my overall grade. If there were clear guidelines for “start and stop” then this wouldn’t be such an issue. Here are a few more specific examples of where the teacher could improve to give an idea of what I mean. 1 There is a lot of information given on the course content page, but some of the information she gave us was via email. I once lost a document that was given to us and I looked for it on the course home and course content page for a long time until I realized it was in my email. Why isn’t all course content available on the course content page? 2 At the beginning of the semester I tried to get all of the information from the course content page so that I could access it offline. In all my other classes I was able to do it fairly quickly. In this class I ended up creating folders on top of folders to try and keep up with everything. Not only was it just set up in a weird way, but also I found myself downloading power points with one slide each. There are like 50 power points in this class and they are one slide each. Why? Why not just add all the slides for each module into one 10-page power point document? Why did I have to individually download so many one-page slides? After a while I got so tired of downloading one-page documents I just gave up and decided not to read them. 3 If you take a look at the ‘database searching pdf,’ the first page says this. To reach LexisNexis “start from the U of M database search page.” Why? What does U of M have to do with APSU? I figured out what to do eventually, but why not give us the proper link? It’s not a big deal but it’s an example of how this class can be unnecessarily confusing at times. On a personal level, I also feel like the group campaign should be worth less than 50% of our grade. The weight given to that assignment is just completely impractical for every reason. Also, the book report should be worth more. Not only do students have to buy a book, they also have to commit to sitting and reading it, which is a significant investment of time. Then after reading it we have to report on it in a very specific way given the instructions. Overall, “scattered” is how I would describe this professor’s class. It just needs serious refinement. If I could’ve afforded to drop this class, I would have. Another thing I had an issue with was the subjective nature of the class. For example, I don’t understand how the professor can say one of my responses is “not detailed enough” when there is no specified length for the given response. If a question requires a two or three page answer, why not specify that within the instructions? Whoever reads this, please don’t take offense, these are my genuine feelings on the class. I am not here to hurt anyone I was just very frustrated by the way this class was set up. It wasn’t so much the work as much as it was the setup and structure. The dynamics at play are what made this class such a displeasure to me.
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chillen in mushroom hill zone Archives
December 2013
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