Random Thoughts

[Sycophant]

Note to self: Never take an online class again. The amount of work compared to a regular lecture is tripled.

For me, doing my college algebra class and my bullshit computer information systems class for my generals online has been a godsend. I can't imagine sitting through those classes for three to four hours a week.

[Mara]

It has to be heavily sourced. So basically this means going through my sources and pulling out relevant information.

Yeah, that's not unreasonable. By my senior year I was starting major papers two months in advance... and I didn't have a full-time job. Or kids.

[DavidSeven]

Note to self: Never take an online class again. The amount of work compared to a regular lecture is tripled.

I found online classes to be incredibly easy but wasteful in the end. I hardly retained any of it. I hardly had any work on it actually.

Assuming you actually pay your unreasonably high tuition to learn things in the dynamic environment that only a college classroom can provide and not just to earn a degree by the easiest means possible (a huge assumption, I know), I can't see justifying an internet course. I mean, I can learn things on the interwebs ...for free.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Yeah, that's not unreasonable. By my senior year I was starting major papers two months in advance... and I didn't have a full-time job. Or kids.

Yeah, I've already perused most of them to formulate my thesis, but now I need to actually pull some details and quotes and start putting together an outline.

[soitgoes...]

No more White Stripes? Fuuuuuuuuck. :sad:

Sadder for Meg White than anybody. Her music career effectively ended today.

[Mara]

By my last semester, I was bribing the women in the inter-library loan office with baked goods. I finally sent them flowers.

And I think I went through about twenty of these.

[Mara]

I kind of miss working on something with that much focus.

[MadMan]

I took an online class, and I learned nothing aside from the fact that it was easy to pass without having to do any really hard work. I don't mind taking a regular class with online work or quizzes online, but I'd rather go to class in person and possibly learn something.

[Dukefrukem]

I took an online class, and I learned nothing aside from the fact that it was easy to pass without having to do any really hard work. I don't mind taking a regular class with online work or quizzes online, but I'd rather go to class in person and possibly learn something.

Online classes are pointless IMO (unless it's a coding class). All this talk today about online degrees is laughable. You'd be lucky to get 5% of out of what you would in a classroom setting.

But people keep giving money to Phoenix.

[Ivan Drago]

No more White Stripes? Fuuuuuuuuck. :sad:

NO.

[Spinal]

NO.

Thanks, I needed that.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I've done two online classes. Heavy emphasis on workshopping. Good idea in concept, but when half of your group wouldn't participate in half of the projects, and half the grade was tied to responding to texts that did not exist and commenting on feedback you did not receive, well, it was a grand waste of time and about as educational as it sounds.

[Ezee E]

Assuming you actually pay your unreasonably high tuition to learn things in the dynamic environment that only a college classroom can provide and not just to earn a degree by the easiest means possible (a huge assumption, I know), I can't see justifying an internet course. I mean, I can learn things on the interwebs ...for free.

Yep. Heavy regrets here. But I had fulltime work, and had two different campuses (typically) to go to, so it was very tough at the time. Luckily it was classes that were like Music Appreciation and other bizarre electives. But still.

[Dukefrukem]

[Adam]

I've taken a lot of hybrid classes at my school and I prefer them to regular meet-3-times-a-week deals. With programs like Blackboard and whatnot, that's probably where most universities are headed in the future

I've done two online classes. Heavy emphasis on workshopping. Good idea in concept, but when half of your group wouldn't participate in half of the projects, and half the grade was tied to responding to texts that did not exist and commenting on feedback you did not receive, well, it was a grand waste of time and about as educational as it sounds.

I had that once, but my professor let me swap groups early on and it wound up working out

[D_Davis]

[Mara]

I've done two online classes. Heavy emphasis on workshopping. Good idea in concept, but when half of your group wouldn't participate in half of the projects, and half the grade was tied to responding to texts that did not exist and commenting on feedback you did not receive, well, it was a grand waste of time and about as educational as it sounds.

The one technical writing class I took in college was a disaster, because it was the worst group experience of my life. Of the five of us, one dropped the class, one showed up only for presentations and didn't return e-mails, and only the other two and I held it together. We were graded completely as a group. The girl who only showed up for the presentation completely derailed it (it was a formal presentation, worth 60% of our grade, including dressing in business suits and having a Power Point presentation) by not knowing her own lines or what we were doing, and then going off on a crazy metaphor that our professor had made us cut out of a previous paper because it didn't make any sense.

The professor was so mad that he interrupted the presentation and dressed us down, calling us "idiots" for including something he'd told us to cut out, and asking why he bothered to give feedback in the first place if we were just going to ignore it.

I got a C on that presentation. This was probably almost a decade ago, and if I ran into that girl tomorrow I'd still want to beat her up.






That said, the group project (including nearly failing because of the actions of another person) was some of the best preparation I've ever had for real-world group work projects. I learned not to trust anyone I work with to get their part done.

[Wryan]

My process for preparing papers was not nearly as rigorous, possibly because I kept a lot in my head rather than write down my plan of attack or outline or such. I combed sources and typed out the exact quotes of what I wanted from each book in a separate wordpad doc, so I could have a handy reference for paraphrasing or using exact quotes. Mostly, I just didn't outline--ever I think. I knew my arcing thesis and arguments beforehand and just generated the paper as I went along. I also never proofread once I had finished, with the one exception of my honor's thesis.

[number8]

Great news, Canadians. Apparently your government has reasonable people.

[number8]

Conversation next to my cube.

"...What, 14, 13 year old?"
"My mind is in the gutter now."
"I meant drinking."
"I know, I know --"
"My taste is a little older than yours, I think."
"I bet."
"Anything under 40, I don't touch."
"Hahaha! Good luck with that!"

ಠ_ಠ

[DavidSeven]

Yep. Heavy regrets here. But I had fulltime work, and had two different campuses (typically) to go to, so it was very tough at the time. Luckily it was classes that were like Music Appreciation and other bizarre electives. But still.

Yeah, I wasn't judging you specifically. I was just taking the opportunity to go off on my own tangent. I took a undergrad course nearly ten years ago with a heavy online/group component. I think it was one of the school's first experiments with the "online course" format. It was the easiest A of my life, but I still don't know squat about "Environmental Science."

[number8]

This wrestling move is just TOO AWESOME to be contained in the YouTube thread.

[youtube]DU4TDGlbTz8[/youtube]

[DavidSeven]

My process for preparing papers was not nearly as rigorous, possibly because I kept a lot in my head rather than write down my plan of attack or outline or such. I combed sources and typed out the exact quotes of what I wanted from each book in a separate wordpad doc, so I could have a handy reference for paraphrasing or using exact quotes. Mostly, I just didn't outline--ever I think. I knew my arcing thesis and arguments beforehand and just generated the paper as I went along. I also never proofread once I had finished, with the one exception of my honor's thesis.

Wow. This is exactly how I would approach a paper. I never outlined unless I was forced to. I would accumulate sources and then extract passages and quotes from those sources, type them in a separate Word doc or the same one I was going to work on, and sort of map the whole thing out in my head (but I would already have a mental vision of the paper before this point). I took care of most of the proofreading as I went a long -- reading each section of the paper repeatedly as I finished them and making sure they were strong before moving on. My proofread of the final paper was usually brief and was mostly a final scan for typos and clarity issues.

[Scar]

:|

[number8]

:|

Yeah, it's totally illegal.