Anyone taking online classes?

I started going to school about a month ago (at the same time taking American Sign Language classes and starting a new job!!!) and there is one aspect that I find confounding. We are supposed to post twice a day and the "Post uses course concepts by referring to textbooks or resources and applying the information to an example. "New information or question introduced." The issue is, there's nothing to freaking post about! The instructor isn't posting much of anything. My other instructor at least posts at least one new topic a day, this keeps conversations going. There are 5 posts, and two of them are mine because I'm searching for something, anything to post about. I don't know what I'm supposed to do to get two "meaningful" posts a day out. I've thought about telling all my classmates they should buy a miata or the woes of owning a GM car but wasn't sure if that would count for a literature course?

I feel your pain. Some of my classes are only available online and sometimes it is impossible to get good dialog going with the teachers and other students on subjects. Just keep trying as hard as you can and put the effort out there and get the work done.

In several of my classes we would have weekly questions to answer and I would normally write several pages worth of material on subjects that easily could fill a book. Others in the class would answer with a single paragraph and then wonder why they got crappy grades and I was doing great. Its called effort people!

Our class you could see the averages for the class and I remember in one the class average was a D and I had an A in the class.

I honestly trolled GRM for anything I could remotely make stick in the course content. The GM and ChryCo bankruptcies were great for economics, the Toyota recall disaster was great for some business classes, and most of Wally's news stories could be used in some way for Sociology or Psychology.

What are you reading for the course? I'd say scribble notes in the margins of the books - anything that strikes you as interesting as you are reading - and then post about those notes.

Currently I'm reading "Night", a horrendous story about a teenage boy surviving the Holocaust. I'm afraid of posting too much about the book since most of our current assignment are about specifics about the book. I almost posted something about it being difficult to post but I don't want to step on anyones toes, like the instructor. I wonder if she is supposed to be making topics for discussion like our other instructor.

DrBoost wrote: Currently I'm reading "Night", a horrendous story about a teenage boy surviving the Holocaust.

Jot down notes about how you would feel in that situation, blah, blah.....In your message board posts, just regurgiate those notes. Liberal arts majors eat that stuff up.

Yeah, I would just start post-whoring it up. You'll either jump-start some discussion or get an A for being the only one participating. At any rate, if you start posting frequently you'll at least draw attention to the fact that that's what is supposed to be going on, and force people into making a decision.

If you're worried about posting anything too specific about the assignment in question, you can always preface it with "SPOILER ALERT!"

And make sure when your instructor does post something you follow it up quickly with "FIRST!!!1!1!!!1!1" Guaranteed A+, there.

jg

Slight worse IMO is when people reply, but with something like , "I agree with your post". How am I supposed to discuss that? I would ask questions of my own. Like I would take whatever the topic was and ask people what they thought of certain angles on it.

For my online course, we get to listen to recorded lectures from last year's classroom sessions. Including the videos that we don't get to see, and the explanations of diagrams that she is drawing on the overhead, that we don't get to see. Essentially, I'm paying the same amount of money for a lesser experience. Needless to say, I won't be taking another online class at this school.

which school? I'm curious because our school's pushing online classes in a big way, too.....

Baker. I don't have anything to compare it to but it seems ok. The only thing that's hard so far is the participation aspect of it.

Baker University (bakeru.edu) or Baker College (baker.edu)?

I think online classes are just a way to generate another revenue stream for the colleges. The profs understand that. Pay your money. Meet the requirements. Neither you nor the prof has to spend much effort. The school gets a small pile of money - a little of which they have to share with the prof and the IT department. My wife took some classes like you describe where there is supposed to be online posting and discussion- she had the same experience as you are having with your 'bad' class.

I figured it was either some sort of adjunct professor who has a real job and is only doing the gig for some money on the side or it is a regular professor with a regular teaching load who had this online class dumped on them with the promise that it's not any extra work.

Joey, Baker.edu. TJ, I think you hit the nail on the head. This Prof is just not concerned with this class. I think either one of your two scenarios (or both) are correct sir.