The third week of this course offered a different perspective. We got away from the readings a little bit as we began to focus more on our research topic. I believe that this allowed us, as students to open up the disscussion board a little bit more, and pose our own questions.
Travis posted a great link to the discusion board about a topic we were not specifically assigned in class, but I thought it was rather intriguing. The article posed the question does Facebook hurt relationships. I thought this was a great side note to what we had been talking about in class. My take on the course has been how we connected technology and society. Facebook is a vital part of most of our everyday lives and I have seen the toll it can take on relationships. Jennifer added her own experiences to the discussion by informing us that her and her boyfriend have had their fights involving facebook. She says; "You have to watch what is posted on Facebook or your significant other might get mad. I know when guys from my class or something try to add me, in the most innocent way possible, just so that we can talk about homework and such he will get a little upset and say "who is this guy trying to add you?" So I guess in a way Facebook could hurt relationships" I agree with this. Facebook can have a damning effect on many relationships if the people involved are not mature enough to handle it. I commented on Jennifer's observation by saying: "I feel like if your relationship is being hurt by Facebook, then your relationship is not doing good in the first place. If you have a strong relationship with trust and honesty facebook should never be an issue." I also went on to discuss how my ex and I had a significant breach of trust in our relationship and all of a sudden Facebook became an issue. The things that never really bothered me before, because I trusted her, became a problem. This is how I percieve Facebook as a problem in relationships. If there is no foundation of trust, Facebook can become a huge issue, even to the point of ending relationships. Atleast I have seen that happen before. Overall though I thought this article that Travis posted really pressed us as students to look at different aspects of technology, and allowed us to explore areas that we were not really "forced" to study.
After reading the article on asynchronous learning online, and reading what others had to say about it, I decided to pose my own question to the class. This class has provided us with a very active discussion board, which I think promotes self learning. In other online classes I have taken there have never really been this active of a discussion board. We really just had to make a post to get points, and I was never really concerned with commenting on others posts. I feel like this takes away from the learning experience. So I posed the question; " if anyone else has taken an online class that lacks required discussion participation? Was it voluntarily and if so, did you participate? How do those types of online classes differ from this one?" Sarah commented by saying; "I felt like because of this, the class really didn't go in to depth. Especially not like this class does. So I definitely believe to have good discussions there needs to be points involved." I agree with this. This class has provided a different type of learning experience. At times it has been tough to keep up with ALL of the post in this course, but going back and reviewing what people have said and interacting with those post has provided myself with a much better learning experience. I will definitely take more away from this class in just four short weeks than many of my other classes.
Sarah also brought up the idea of metacognition or the "thing about thinking" aspect that has been presented in this class. The lab notes we have taken give us a reference to go back and review when writing these proofs of learning. This has forced us to reevaluate the information we are taking in, which in my opinion, always for better retention of the information. Like I said before, I will take more away from this class because of these aspects than many of my other classes.
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