| Author: |
boz |
| Dated: |
Thursday, August 31 2006 @ 11:03 PM EDT |
| Viewed: |
527 times |
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 So my first class in graduate school started today, which I'll be doing while working full time. Getting back into the groove of academia after about 6 years will be interesting. The program is in the university's distance learning program, which means that there is a physical classroom, but us distance learning people will be logged in via streaming video, along with some collaboration software with a whiteboard, text chat and audio capabilities, among others.
It is kind of interesting how this whole thing works.
In order to get into this graduate program, I had to take another course at different university (and get at least a B) to meet the program's prerequisites. This course was at one of those 100% pure-online universities. The format for that was very different than today's class at the "regular" university. There were no lectures or Powerpoint slides. The coursework there involved reading the text, turning in the corresponding assignments (via web submission), and taking a proctored final exam. You only had interaction with the professor if you emailed him questions. There wasn't much if any student interaction on the class forum. The entire course was self-paced, although they say you should be able to complete this in 8-12 weeks. I did it in 5 weeks, only because I was under extreme time constraints to get a final grade submitted.
This is all in stark contrast to the experience today. This was just like looking into the lecture hall, through a little window. The level of personal interaction is quite high, since there is actually a lecture where you can ask questions, and all of the assignments for this particular course involve group work. Being online for the lecture is not actually required since the video is recorded and the slides are posted on the course web page. I'm used to collaborating with others remotely since I do it at work. At least everyone in my group is in the same time zone...
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