JUST DEAL WITH IT

or
A CHANGE OF ATTITUDE.

Of course, you can always e-mail the teacher for answers to your questions and not bother to try your fellow classmates, but inevitably, once again. Why would your teacher be checking her email at 3:00am or in the middle of Sunday afternoon (when you notice you logged in to email her 15 minutes after she just posted a reply to someone else.). Timing is everything.

Then there's the frustration of having planned and rescheduled things to be able to devote your whole weekend to do homework the just before finals week so you can be ahead going into finals. Of course, you log in Saturday morning and find that the website is down for "scheduled maintenance"--scheduled with whom, nobody is sure, since they certainly didn't seem to tell anyone. So instead of being ahead, you're behind.

Taking on-line classes can be extremely frustrating unless you're able to learn one not-always-so-simple lesson. CHILL OUT. Nothing you're doing is life and death.

All in all I learned a lot in this class. I have more confidence with the programs now and have a few ideas for things I need to use them for to make life simpler and/or more organized.

I've given a few ideas here for how to relax when your class is getting on your nerves.

Is everybody stupid but me?

All the online classes I've taken have had a "forum" where you can communicate with your fellow students, sometimes required as in the first class where we were expected to discuss topics, and sometimes just to ask questions and get/provide homework help. Let me tell you, this can be a major source of frustration.

The instructor posts an assignment list for each chapter or section. This lists, in good detail, everything that needs to be handed in and how for the next assignment. Inevitably there are the questions, "but aren't we supposed to do this too?", "Did you mean for us to do this and not that?", "Do you think she wants this or that".....there were times I was sorely wanted to say "CAN YOU READ?!?" with some names added on to the end.

here we go again

BUS E 100
Introduction to Micro Computers


Summer 2009. This course utilizes a program called MyITLab. It's actually a very useful site that makes learned to use the various Microsoft Office Programs (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint) very easy. BUT. As with any program, it has its moments.

With all of those programs, there are multiple ways to get to the same result. Sometimes the lesson will tell you that you're making a wrong move when you're actually going to get to the same result they wanted, but not the same way they wanted you to do it. Sometimes it gave you "incorrect action" when you knew you were doing it right, but by having it "show me how", and doing it over exactly as you had the first time, it would accept it. Other times, you had to exhaust your allowed attempts, performing it correctly every time & it still said you did it wrong. All in all I'd say it was still worth it because I learned much more about these programs than I'd ever learned even taking seminars on Excel and Word before.

An exercise in frustration

Spring 2009 Business Computation.
You know, I only took this class last quarter and it was so frustrating that I can't remember learning anything and I can remember extreme frustration: (Things didn't work the way they were supposed to!). I can't remember specifics, just being frustrated.

Oh well................BLOCK IT OUT, BLOCK IT OUT!

It all started when.....

Several years ago I took my first online class at Green River Community College. It sounded like a great idea as I was also working, the idea that I could work on homework whenever I could fit it into my schedule and didn't have to drive to the school was attractive. This was before GRCC offered students their own email accounts. My email account was "missbertie". I was registered in the class as Bert. We were required to work on projects with other students via the "blackboard". 1) It was extremely difficult to get other students on-line at the same time (most of them wanted to wait until about an hour before the assignment was due). 2) Assignments I'd completed kept not being in the gradebook. 3) The teacher was extremely difficult to get in touch with.

I didn't figure out until the end of the quarter when my grades were posted that the teacher was grading "missbertie" and "Bert" separately. Once he put the two grades together it was an A.