Online Education Review

Online Education Review

I really like online classes. This was only my second one to take, but I wish I could have taken more. The best part about online classes is the freedom to fit it into your schedule. In person classes often times have a conflict or at terrible times. I think that many university's will eventually not have class in person. A quality recording of the professor's lecture has many advantages than in person, however, it makes asking questions more difficult. That is why office hours exist though. I just like how you can do online classes from anywhere you want with internet. 

(Mel Gibson in Braveheart)

Gen. Ed. Review

Gen. Ed. Experience

Overall, I would say that I have had a positive experience with my gen. ed. courses. I think they have been an important part of my education because they have exposed me to many different areas and broadened my thinking. My math and science general education has been extremely important because it laid the foundation for my future courses. Humanities have been a great experience and have taught me a lot of cool things. Just being exposed to different cultures has made me a more well rounded student and person in general. The humanities courses I have taken, along with others have stimulated a lot of thought about various subjects. I actually took an upper division Political Science course called Immigration Politics because I thought it covered the requirement that I am taking this class for. Even though it did not count for anything gen. ed. requirement wise, it was one of my favorite courses throughout college and gave me the opportunity to take this class, which is another one of my favorites. The discourse in that class was great and exposed me to many other beliefs, of which I am very thankful for. My least favorite part about gen. ed. courses was probably the math. I will absolutely not miss having to teach myself an entire course. Some teachers do not speak very clear and it makes it difficult to learn. Some may just not be good teachers in general. They may be good researchers and be experts on the subject, but that does not mean that they can effectively teach it to others. Of course this is not limited to just math courses. Also, the fact that people can have different difficulty of the same class based on the teacher you have bothers me immensely. The reason this bothers me so much is that students are evaluated based on grade point average when trying to get an internship or enter the workforce. Course material, exams, teachers, grade distributions, etc. all vary from teacher to teacher and from year to year, so it is kind of like comparing apples to oranges when comparing two students based on g.p.a. At the same time I understand that there really are not many other options, in terms of evaluating students. I  a think good way could be to standardize all assignments, exams, and curricula for a specific class, regardless of professor. The professors could get together and decide on what to do specifically. They could teach it however they wanted, but every student taking that class would be examined the same, independent on professor. On the other hand, I have had many wonderful teachers throughout my general education. The number of awesome professors that I have had far outnumber the poor ones. My favorite part about my Gen. Ed. education have been the awesome professors that I have had.

(Yoda Meme)

College Writing Review

College Writing Review

My major is Industrial and Systems Engineering, so there has not been a ton of writing. The majority of writing has come in the form of lab reports, research projects, and other projects in general. Many of my exams have had free response questions, but those are sometimes answered with bullet points. Inside my major, the most writing intensive classes that I can think of have been Applied Research Methods and Ergonomics. The writing in those classes were lab reports, free response exam questions, and research papers. Outside of my major, the English Composition courses were the most writing intensive classes and were more of literary analysis type of writing. All in all, the courses I have taken have broadened the scope of my writing and have helped me break complex things down into something that is easily understood. 

The most helpful part of this class was giving me the freedom to write about whatever I wanted. Usually there is some structure to what I have to write and I have not had that freedom in a school setting since sixth grade English class, where we had daily journal entries about whatever we wanted. There has not been any part of this course that has not had a positive impact on my writing. I think a class that allows people to tell stories, similar to this course, would be awesome because it brings back some imagination that might have been lost.

(Zits)