Coming into college there were many things that were
different from what I was used to in high school. One of the biggest changes
was the way work was done and submitted. In college many assignments are
required to be done online. When I got to English 101 it was the first time I was
introduced to the “ONLINE CLASS ROOM” part of college. Blogger and blogging was
all new and exciting to me in the beginning but after a while that feeling
started to change. There were many things that decreased my interest and
participation in the blogs. Most of those things we’re due to personal
situations rather than the blog its self.
One of the biggest
problems I felt involving the blog dealt with the timing and frequency. For
each blog we were given to midnight on the due date to complete it. This was a
good thing because it gives you the opportunity to finish the blogs with in a
number of days and not immediately after its posted. The problem comes in
because of the freedom and flexibility. Because the due dates are so far it
gives people the opportunity to procrastinate longer. I can testify from a
personal experience that because I knew I had a certain amount of time to
finish the blog I would find myself procrastinating waiting to the last minute
to complete it. I do not believe that there is anything you can do to solve
this solution concerning due dates with blog because it’s due to personal
problems why they aren’t completed. Honestly I believe that even though it
leaves room for procrastination by allowing you a huge window of time to
complete it, it should not be changed because the discussion to give us so much
time to complete it is beneficial to us. It is a
great and gracious choice you have given us and those who know that will take
full advantage of the opportunity and those who do not would not complete the blog anyway no matter what the
due date is. It is all about a matter of who values their education enough to get up and
complete the assignment, something you have no control over.
Another problem I had
with the blogs is that sometimes I did not understand exactly what the direction
were and what I was supposed to be doing. The directions for some of the blogs
were very extensive and a lot of times I would think that I was supposed to be
doing one thing when it was actually meant for me to do another. The original
problem of the time issue and waiting to the last minute proved to hurt me once
again because by the time I looked at the blog for the first time it left me a
little time to ask questions only enough time to get it done because I has
waited so late. That is one of the draw backs from not taking the opportunity to
get it done ahead of time you ultimately have to pay the price for it later on.
I think there was so much more participation in the beginning because the blogs
were fun and light but as the semester went on they began to require more participation
and involvement because the topics were more in depth. This is probably what
mainly caused a lack of interest in the blogs. Personally I ran into a problem with this because
I had a lot of work in my other classes including English and the blogs just
added on to that load I would often skip one or two post or comments because I
always knew I could possibly make up for it the following week. This a problem
that can not really be complained about and I must take full responsibility for
because after all this is college so having large amounts on work is expected
and required in order for you to be a successful student. There are some things that can be changed to
make improvements for next years class.
The first
suggestion of improvement concerns the service we use. I believe that we should
be able to use other devices such as moodle and facebook as a source of online
work. By usuing only the blogger website you are limited on what other services
are out there. Using the same site over and over again is predictable and can
become very boring at times. By changing sites up you enage the students more
because it gives them something new to do and look at. Ways you can go about
doing this is posting topic questions on moodle and uploading a box for the
students to sumbit and creating a facebook page for the class where we can post
things to your wall and comment on each others. These are all suggestions that
can possibly improve the future of online assignments.
Over all I must say that even though I ran into a few
problems I really enjoyed blogging with my classmates and hearing their
opinions it was a new experience and I hope I have teachers that are open to
the idea of using it in the future.
