Here's a brief initial overview
You are beginning the Initial Activities phase of your course, designed to be
completed in about a week of a regular 16-week session, or about half a week of
a shortened 10-week summer session.
(Forgive me if I sometimes stray and call this the Initial Information phase, or
refer to it as an Orientation. It
has aspects of all these things, and any of these terms could be applied).
You will shortly be run through some fairly mundane but necessary details about
communication in this course, and other general information, prior to being
given a tour of the website. This
will be followed by a series of exercises in which you submit work and I respond
and post it to your ‘portfolio’ or ‘access’ site (one of the first things you do
will be to give me the little bit of information I need to set this site up for
you). Then you will actually get to
do some work in your actual course, and at the end of the process you will be ready to start your
assignments.
The central feature of this course is the ongoing flow of information between
the instructor (me) and the student (you).
I spend a great deal of time reviewing and responding promptly to work
submitted by students. I always welcome
questions and have always been able to respond to all properly posed questions
from students. You will have the
opportunity to develop an ongoing dialog with your instructor centered around your work in
this course.
Hopefully we will also manage to develop a flow of information among students,
though in an asynchronous course where students are primarily focused on
completing a demanding workload this has in the past proven difficult.
Collaborative lab investigations will be introduced in this course and
will hopefully grow into broader communication, which can be supported by a
variety of tools including discussion boards, Wikis and many others.
However the primary goal is for you to complete course requirements and
master the content of the course.
Given the time demands associated with these tasks, additional imposition on
your time would not be productive.
So beyond the necessary collaboration on the lab investigations, you will not be
required to communicate with your fellow students.
You will now continue with the Initial Activities phase of the course, which will include a series of
review/learning exercises that are very typical of the sort of exercises you
will be doing throughout the course.
This will give you the opportunity to judge how you respond to this learning
style, and whether this course is a good fit for you.
I hope it will be, and I look forward to working with you.
Dave Smith