For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm taking classes at the local community college so I can switch careers and get into a more stable profession. I love doing interior design, but I have been laid off from two separate employers within a 2 year span. I just can't handle worrying about getting laid off from a third. So I'm getting a degree in Phlebotomy, which is a pretty in-demand profession right now and it's in the medical field, which we all know is about as stable as professions come.
Anyway, I'm taking five classes this semester. Two online and three on campus. After this it's just my short six(ish) week internship, and hopefully I'll get a nice full time position at some clinic in the area.
If it were only THAT easy...
So far this semester, two of my classes have already started: English and Psychology. And they're both online courses. My English class has been troublesome. I usually have no idea what the instructor is trying to convey in his assignment descriptions. And it's not just me. Mike has no clue either. And I know that other students aren't understanding the instructor either. I've already gotten an email from another student asking if I knew what was expected in one of the assignments. Did I mention this is actually a communications class? How can you successfully teach communications if you can't clearly communicate with your students?!? The instructor seems like an okay guy (from what our little correspondence has shown) but I think it takes a very articulate kind of person to teach an online course... you have to be able to clearly explain what you want your students to do (in writing), without confusion. The instructor did post in his welcome letter that he is constantly working on improving the clarity of the instructions. So I get the feeling that, over the years, he has become too involved in it. He needs to step back and look at the instructions for assignments from an objective point of view. As if he is a student and is looking at the instructions for the first time.
On the other hand, my psychology class that was supposed to have started on Sunday has yet to begin. Most online instructors make the course content available to students a few weeks in advance of the actual start date of the class. This give students the ability to get a jump start on the assignments. But after checking in everyday for two weeks, there was nothing. So on the start date, I emailed the instructor to ask him if maybe I was doing something wrong. (Even though I know it wasn't me.) I got a response saying that he was having technical difficulties and that he hoped to have the course available sometime this week. I get the impression he didn't start putting the course together until the eleventh hour. I mean seriously, he had weeks, if not months, to make sure his course would be working online. Why did it take until the night of the start date for him to realize it wasn't working? Instructors at any school, elementary, high school, or college always emphasize the importance of keeping up with the work and not procrastinating. So why do we as students need to just roll over and take it from the teachers when they don't heed their own advice? The only thing keeping me from going to the dean about this is the fear of getting on one of my teachers' bad sides. However, if the class isn't loaded in full by this Sunday (one week after the start date) I'm taking it up with someone.
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