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Self-Reflectivity

I want you to think about what it is you are doing and how you could possibly do it better. In part, this means writing and doing your research well before the day they are due so you can let your ideas simmer in your mind. This is one way to learn from your mistakes and avoid repeating them while learning to recognize your strengths. I would also like you to consider how your behavior as a class participant impacts others in the class. Respect and courtesy are key. Self-reflection is essential to writing and research.

Failure to keep up with your responsibilities slows others down.

It is paradoxical yet true to say that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our intellectual limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening of new and greater prospects.

Not Your Traditional Course
The winners and losers in these courses will be differentiated by brainpower, resilience to withstand frustration and a willlingness to try.

On-line courses are not for the weak of heart or those simply looking to avoid class time. Experience dictates that on-line courses often require more time, more ramping-up-to-speed and a greater willingness to build knowledge independently.

Students in on-line courses must be self-motivated and willing to work with each other. It is easy to procrastinate; however, these courses are designed around the act and art of independent research and writing. They are participatory! Successfully completing each assignment will mean working carefully through all the steps of that assignment and being prepared to discuss your work and questions you have about that work when we meet on-line and in postings to the class discussion list.

The Frustrations of Learning
Learning, of whatever kind, is an adventure. A problem exists for which there is currently no ready-made solution. A challenge is posed for which the requisite skills are not yet established. A plan is disrupted by an unanticipated event. In each case the effect of what one does is uncertain. Sometimes the uncertainty is exhilarating; but sometimes the possibility of too much work or failure is threatening, frustrating or confusing. The continuing engagement which learning requires may be dangerous. The urge to withdraw and protect yourself becomes stronger - fear and/or flight. Resileince is the emotional tolerance needed to survive.

Learning can indeed be confusing and frustrating. The natural tendency of many is to bail, drop the course or withdraw into anonymity. How you deal with confusion, problems and searching for solutions is tellling. If you allow frustration or a problem to lock you up and plop you into intellectual gridlock, then you are no good to anyone and you will not survive the course. If, conversley, you are resilient, look for other ways to solve the problem, take deep clensing breaths and try again, then you are designed to survive......anything. It's all in the way you approach the course...life. I guarantee there will be confusion, frustration, and downright, kick-butt hostility. And yet, in a recent E-mail I received:

"I did it!!! I did it!!! I did it!!! I'm so excited - can you tell???

Not too fancy but they are there and I'm so relieved. Now I just need to work on the graphics and making it look a little more interesting.

But I did it - I did it - I did it!!! Hooray and Good night,"

Online Courses Often Require More Resilience
Defensiveness and resistance are often reactions to frustration. In and of themselves, they're not wrong; here, however, they simply get in the way of meaningful problem solving. Resilience, the ability to tolerate frustration, is essential. Even when learning is going well, there is always the possibility of surprise, confusion, frustration, disappointment or apprehension- as well, of course, as fascination, absorption, exhilaration, awe or relief. Learning is a gamble: often hard and protracted, confusing and frustrating, and it is necessary to be able to stick with it to recover from setbacks.

The ability to hang out in the fog, to tolerate confusion, to dare to wait in a state of incomprehension while solutions take their form, is a vital aspect of resilience. Good learners are those able to ride out the frustration, knowing that good learning involves exhilarating spurts, frustrating plateaus and upsetting regressions.

My online courses require that you be prepared to do all your work at your computer. You will post all assignments on your web page. Most students find they need to work at least 9 hours per week to be successful in these courses.

Learning Strategies

This course shifts the modality of learning from Broadcast to Interactive Learning.

Broadcast Learning
Interactive Learning
Teacher as transmitter
 Teacher as facilitator/coach
linear/ sequential
Hypermedia learning
Instruction
Construction/discovery
Teacher-centered
Learner-centered
Absorbing materials / information
Learning how to learn
Limited to school
Lifelong
One-size fits all
Customized
School as torture
School as fun

Traditional
Constructivist
    Transmitted, external to knower, objective, stable, fixed, decontextualized
    Constructed, emergent, situated in action or experience
External to the knower Product of mind
Reflects external world
    Reflects perceptions and understanding of experiences
Represents world Tools for constructing reality
    Knowledge transmission, reflecting what teacher knows, well-structured, abstract-symbolic, encoding-retention-retrieval, product-oriented
    Knowledge construction, interpreting world, constructing meaning, ill-structured, authentic-experiential, articulation-reflection, process-oriented
    Simplify knowledge, abstract rules, basics first, top-down, deductive, application of symblos, (rules, principles) lecturing, tutoring, instructor derived and controlled, individual, competitive.
    Reflecting multiple perspectives, increasing complexity, diversity, bottom-up, inductive, apprenticeship, modeling, coaching, exploration, learner-generated