Getting My Feet Wet in Class

First Day of Class Recap

Yep, it's finally here.  I felt like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning; I was so excited to get started.  Spent a lot of time at work yesterday looking at the clock, waiting for the day to end so I could start focusing on the class.

Okay, okay...  I cheated a little on my lunch break and did one of my reading assignments.  I just couldn't help myself - sue me.

One would think that the first day of an online class would be a little boring.  Consider me surprised that in fact, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on.  It was nice to finally get my feet wet in this experience.

What Was So Interesting?

For starters, getting a chance to actually use Canvas to navigate the course modules and assignments was great.  I learned a lot about how I'm going to experience the course through the rest of the semester.  While the online platform looks daunting at first, it's very intuitive and easy to navigate and use.

Logging the completion time for my reading assignments in this class is a breeze.  Students take a quick quiz to verify they read the required material.  The word 'quiz' here is a bit of a misnomer.  There are two questions that simply ask if you read the material, and if you completed the reading ahead of the due date.  Yep, it's honor-system reporting and it's awfully refreshing to be trusted to be personally accountable.

I think the coolest part about completing the reading assignments is that the assignment points are immediately credited.  While these points make up a tiny fraction of my overall grade, it's awesome to get off on the right foot and to start racking up points.  I tend to be motivated when I can see progress so this is great.

Next, I focused on my interaction assignment.  As I mentioned in BE101 - Ready, Steady, Go, I began putting my work together a few days ago so there wasn't much to finish.  The assignment asked for a 'short' essay.  I suppose the most difficult part was trying to discern what 'short' means.  In the end, I played it safe and pegged it around 500 words.  I started out at about 800 words but got a little nervous so I paired it down.  Once I was happy I turned it in.  But this was only the first part of the assignment...

After submitting my work, my fellow student's work became visible to me.  For the second part of the assignment, I need to review and comment on my peer's submissions.  This is really interesting and it forces us to get familiar with each other real quick - duh, that's kind of the point.  There are 15 other students in my group so it will take some time to respond to all of them but I have until the end of the week.  This is a graded assignment so I'll need to wait until at least next week for the grade.

Finally, the course professor posted a short video to the online students to say hello and welcome us to the class.  I thought this was encouraging and a nice touch.  Overall, I had a very good first day online!

What's Next?

So I seem to be on track with my plan for this week.  Tomorrow I'll view one or two chapel sermons, continue responding to the discussion posts, and begin my reading for module 1.

At the end of the week, I'll report my progress and share my time accounts.  I want to keep an eye on how much time I'm spending on the materials which will help me plan ahead once I get further into the semester.  Plus, I'm just a data geek and I like making charts!