Session 3
I work on campus and I really enjoy learning about all the technology that is available to me. In using Talk shoe to listen to Dr. Jim Monaghan and hear Dr Newberry talk and see all the questions that were being asked, I was almost at sensor overload. I did settle in and learned quite a bit about campus and the support that the campus offers.
Blackboard is one of the main tools that the campus supports. Dr. Monaghan talked about a lot of features that Blackboard has available to professors. I have not use even half of the tools available to campus while using blackboard. I wish as a student that professors would use blackboard more. It really helps a student to use one particular tool and maybe the professors would use different tools than another one, so growth will still happen. I find it difficult when each professor have different web page they use for us to post our work, more passwords for us to learn and keep straight. This is even more challenging when I am learning a difficult topic and on top of that a different on-line system.
There was some talk about on-line learning and the drop out rate of classes with on-line vs. physically attending classes. On-line learning appears to be easier to drop out of than attending a class. Dr Newberry talked about the fact that if you are old school you want to go on line at the schedule time to finish your work. They were also talking about the flexibility of e learning. I am off work right now and doing homework, I prefer the flexibility of being able to do my homework whenever I can fit it in my busy schedule. Dr Monaghan brought up the cost of e learning, I thought it would be very cheap but he stated it is more expensive and not the moneymaker that Universities thought it would be.
In retrospect as an 18-year-old freshman, attending school may be the way for success. In the same tone a mother that is staying at home with daycare issues maybe more successful with on line classes, I would also assume any adult that wants to come back to school would benefit with on line.
One of the items that surprised me was the job opportunity…Dr. Monaghan stated there were a lot of opportunities for technology-based majors. I was under the impression that with staff being better skilled there was less need for tech personal. I was please that jobs are out there in this field.
