Reflective Post for Week of 2/26

Now that our online week is coming to a close, it's a good time to look back and reflect on this experience. All in all, I think it was a really good way to learn about electronic communication. Everything we've been doing in class up until this point, like using the message boards and blogs, have been very beneficial to our understanding of electronic communication, but actually having class online for an entire week is really a good way to experience many different things that we've been talking about by putting them into practice.

When we did our research about different online universities, I had trouble comprehending how you could actually take an entire class online, but after experiencing a week of it, I understand much more. While it might seem like less work, there is actually more you need to do online, because since there is no teacher-student interaction other than online, you kind of have to teach yourself. For instance, Mr. Corso could have explained in class what wikis are in about 2 minutes, but due to the online format this week, we had to read about them on our own, which took considerably longer. I didn't know anything about them before this week, but thanks to the research we had to do, I now know what they are and what they can be used for.

Probably the most difficult part of the week's assignments were the group discussions we had to have. I think most people were a little nervous about starting the discussion, because they didn't want to seem like they were dominating, so it took us awhile to get started, but after that, we were good. In class, group work is much simpler, because no one is really afraid to start the conversation since we're all right there. However, I think online group work is a good thing, since it's harder to get distracted.

Also, the final reason that the online week was such a good experience for me was because yesterday, I flew down to New Orleans to visit with relatives for spring break. I was going to miss the last class before break, but because my relatives have internet access, I can still participate in the week's activities without having to go to other students and get notes and all that hassle. I just think it's kind of cool that even though I'm 1200 miles away, I'm not misisng anything as far as this class is concerned :-)