This winter, I am in enrolled in two online courses: Introduction to Nutrition and Technical Writing. I had never previously taken an online course, and I didn’t really want to for reasons of time and expense. However, I needed to complete my general education goals this winter in order to graduate this spring, so I took the classes anyway. I was nervous about the concept of online learning: How would I possibly learn as well without frequent communication with a professor? (I have been spoiled by the low student to faculty ratio at Bloomsburg.) How would I be able to manage my time while also working full time hours and participating in the holidays? These were challenges that I certainly faced, but with the help of my professors and my practices in time management, I have found online learning to be a successful way to study a general education topic and learn to manage time.
I have always preferred sprinting to long-distance running. In high school I was on the track team and I abhorred running the longer-distance events (basically anything more than half of a mile), but I excelled at the short-distance sprints (my favorite race was the 4 x 100m relay). I have seen in a parallel to my running preference in my learning preference this winter term. I truly enjoyed studying two topics in depth over a short period of time. I feel that it helped to maintain my focus on the material. During a normal semester, I tend to shift my focus between classes and give the most attention to the class with the nearest deadlines. This causes me to lose focus on my other classes for a while and then I have to catch myself up when I return my focus to them. I think that causes me to retain less of the information I have learned and prevents me from achieving full mastery of the material.
Learning online in a fast paced, five-week course prevents these issues from occurring. I did not have a choice but to maintain focus on both courses for the entire semester. This way, I have been able to better retain information that I am learning and therefore apply that knowledge to all assignments. I have not felt that I needed to do “catch up” work; that may be a function of both the short length of the term and the frequent assignment due dates.
A fortunate accident that I have experienced this winter term is that both of my classes have significant overlap, though I did not expect they would. Since the main project in my Technical Writing class was to develop recipes, I was able to use my knowledge from my Nutrition class to enhance the nutrition of the recipes I created. In my nutrition class, the final project is to create a “tip sheet” for nutrition, and I am using many skills that I have learned in Technical Writing to complete that assignment.
I do acknowledge the challenges of online learning as well. I learn well with others, so having decreased personal communication with others in the class nor with the professor makes me feel a bit distanced from the learning process. Another challenge was balancing my personal schedule with my academic schedule. I have always used winter break as a time to work many hours at my part-time job to save up for the spring semester. I was not willing to sacrifice that while taking my winter classes, especially since they added an expense, so I had to balance my work schedule with keeping up on class work. This was very manageable, especially because all the assignments were available from the beginning of the term.
Though I had reservations about online winter classes, I am glad that I enrolled and I feel that I have received a great education this term. Despite the challenges, I would definitely recommend winter classes to other students.