My comments while I was tired and frustated
I read your comment (Glen’s) about what is expected from this course, and I understand your expectations, but sometimes I find it overwhelming. I find, that it is very time consuming if I have to write every single day to my classmates plus start working on the assignments. Right now that I have learned a few tools, I want to concentrate in the assignments I need to complete for this course. So when I log in and check everybody’s blog and reply to some, I see that I have spent 1.5 to 3 hours doing that. So when I finally have time to work on the assignment, I’m already a little bit exhausted.
So, some of the strategies I’m applying to get some of the assignments done, are:
- Ignore for a while the blog entries and concentrate on my assignments. Then if I want to take a break, I take some time to look at the blogs and see if I can get additional ideas. At this time of exploration, I just read blogs and explore around with some tools and I don’t write anything. Then a few minutes later I get back to my assignments.
- One Saturday, I found myself spending 8 hours replying back to messages and when I looked back at the assignments sheet, I hadn’t done anything yet. So, my priority now, is to start working on the final papers (time is ticking) and as I take a break, look at my classmates’ pages to find an additional inspiration to finish my assignments. I don’t know if this is OK with you (Glen).
My comments after 1 hr. rest
I agree with Michael. As a teacher I need to monitor what students are doing. But also if I’m a online teacher, I need to understand that students take an online course for convenience (any time, any where). Some students won’t be able to log in every day, but I would need them to get into a routine of checking the course at least 3 times per week. This will help the students pace the course. If students log in just once per week, they could get overwhelmed and they will tend to give up. We have all found how it works when we don’t log in for a few days.
Right now I’m very emotional because I’m trying to do well in all my courses and also finish all the assignments for all the courses. Sorry, if my messages are too emotional!