by Judy

It’s amazing the way that little adjustments can change things. As soon as I printed off this week’s reading assignments, I breathed easier. The tactile experience of reading and hi-lighting on real paper reminded me that schoolwork does not have to be as hard as I am letting it become in my mind. Even though I am taking a class online, in a set up totally new to me, that doesn’t mean that I can’t do it. I just have to tweak my studying habits so they work for me.

I was complaining to one of my co-workers who has taken some online classes about my anxiety and asked for some advice. One of the things that she told me was to write all of my assignments in a word document and then copy and paste them onto the discussion board. From her own experience, this enables her to write more seriously, because all too often it is easy for the tone of your writing to sound like a blog. This is because online classrooms are built around threads on discussion boards. She said that many students seem to forget that they are still in a classroom and then the quality of their work can slide. Having tried out her advice this morning, I think that it is pretty sound. It is also easier to keep track of my word count, which is important since in this format lengths are judged by the number of words, not pages. Too bad, we students can’t write really big to quickly fill up a page!

As for the content of the class itself, I am already learning a lot. We focused on learning the different parts of a grant proposal and then took more of an in-depth look at the “needs” statement. Because the class, like all University of Phoenix classes, is only five weeks long, I had wondered if it would be enough time to really absorb all of the necessary information. After we kicked off our first day with introductions about ourselves, we got right into the subject matter. For a class that has a specific subject, like this one does, I think that five weeks is an appropriate amount of time. There is a lot of work to be done, as we have 300 word assignments due every two to three days, but for me at least, that is not too bad.

However, I do not know if I would want to take something like a World History class in this timeframe. The University I attended had semesters that were 14 to 15 weeks long. Some Universities have quarters or trimesters, which are shorter, usually 8 to 10 weeks, and I’m not sure a World History class (or similar) has time to be really substantial in that time frame, either.

Not that I have ever taken a World History class, come to think of it. But hopefully you take my point.