Delving Deeper - Week Two

As Blackboard seems to be hung up, this is a perfect time for me to reflect on week two of the course.

Seems I've found myself here again on Sunday evening working on catching up on my week. Monday comes and I remind myself to stay on top of the coursework, and then I do some of it and whooosh its the weekend already. I'm reminded of the difficulty of time management in online courses. I vow to do better next week, but realistically I am in the middle of an apartment move... not exactly the best timing to start back to school.

Last week I was frustrated with the discussion forums. The activity "Threads Threads Threads" help acclimate me to the BB environment much more and I learned a lot, never taking the time to notice all of the extra links and buttons on each page of the discussion board area. Fancy features which help the online learner, indeed, but I am still not a supporter of the Blackboard CMS. Stubborn, I know!

Through the thread activity I found how to search for all of my posts in a certain discussion forum, which is exactly what I needed to do last week. Perhaps it would be a good idea to do that activity week 1 to save the frustration.

This whole experience is definitely helping me keep things in perspective from my students point of view. I think every online instructor should at least have one online learning experience, but actually I recommend more than one because of all of the different formats and concepts of what online learning is all about.

I've enjoyed the weekly readings thus far. They are relevant to our material but I get concerned as some seem to be from 2002-2003. It concerns me as a librarian due to the currency of the material. Granted we are still in the beginning of the e-Learning concept and foundations are important, but for instance, the article on careers in e-Learning bothered me because it discusses the job outlook and the economy. From a librarian point of view resources from 2002 that discuss job outlooks should be discarded and replaced with more current material. Just some feedback there!

Perhaps the problem I am having with Blackboard hanging is customary on Sundays. It is frustrating because I am finishing up my mini-project and cannot upload it as of yet. Technical problems can be a huge factor in a student's overall online learning experience.