Post by jpandors27 on Oct 29, 2014 20:20:58 GMT -5
Global health and social media are two things that I was unaware go together. I had never taken an online course like this one before, and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. It was fast paced, challenging and highly informative.
I learned a lot about some great charities working to solve the problems of the world. Charity:Water is without a doubt my favorite charity. I look forward to donating my 25th birthday in February in hopes that I can raise enough money to provide those less fortunate than myself with something so basic such as reliable clean water. I am also planning to start a campaign for my unborn son who's due in May. He's going to be a philanthropist before he's even born!
Overall, the structure of this course was well thought out and fairly intuitive. With that being said, the number of questions asked on the Facebook group that were easily answerable by digging around on the website, so it's possible the website could have been organized a little bit more optimally. Though I had no particular issues. I felt that this class did a great job "mimicking" an actual in person course, considerably better than past ones I have been enrolled in. The lectures were great, and the google hangouts as well.
As for the group work, that was not such a great experience. I consider myself a leader at most opportunities, but I was unable to rally these troops. I think many people feel online courses are easy and they can kind of skate by, but that was obviously not the case for this course. We had terrible communication, but that was not for a lack of trying. The first week of class, I set up a google drive and invited the rest of the group to collaborate and add their full contact information. Come week two, almost no one had done so, so I resorted to submitting the reflection by myself. From there, I was lucky to have half the group working and collaborating consistently. The other half didn't really show up until crunch time weeks five and six. I was glad to know that the instructors were paying attention, as it was a lot of work for half the group to accomplish.
Groups are tough in college - everyone has busy schedules and finding even one mutually convenient time to get together is nearly impossible. This shouldn't have been quite so difficult, however, because we were equipped with technology such as Google Drive. Looks like it was just us though, based on everyone else's posts online.
I enjoyed that we could see what everyone else was doing. It makes it feel like a real course, and actually may make people more comfortable to voice their opinions if they are shy in person.
My vote: Great class overall, and I would definitely recommend it to other students looking for a quality course that goes a little bit outside the norm.
I learned a lot about some great charities working to solve the problems of the world. Charity:Water is without a doubt my favorite charity. I look forward to donating my 25th birthday in February in hopes that I can raise enough money to provide those less fortunate than myself with something so basic such as reliable clean water. I am also planning to start a campaign for my unborn son who's due in May. He's going to be a philanthropist before he's even born!
Overall, the structure of this course was well thought out and fairly intuitive. With that being said, the number of questions asked on the Facebook group that were easily answerable by digging around on the website, so it's possible the website could have been organized a little bit more optimally. Though I had no particular issues. I felt that this class did a great job "mimicking" an actual in person course, considerably better than past ones I have been enrolled in. The lectures were great, and the google hangouts as well.
As for the group work, that was not such a great experience. I consider myself a leader at most opportunities, but I was unable to rally these troops. I think many people feel online courses are easy and they can kind of skate by, but that was obviously not the case for this course. We had terrible communication, but that was not for a lack of trying. The first week of class, I set up a google drive and invited the rest of the group to collaborate and add their full contact information. Come week two, almost no one had done so, so I resorted to submitting the reflection by myself. From there, I was lucky to have half the group working and collaborating consistently. The other half didn't really show up until crunch time weeks five and six. I was glad to know that the instructors were paying attention, as it was a lot of work for half the group to accomplish.
Groups are tough in college - everyone has busy schedules and finding even one mutually convenient time to get together is nearly impossible. This shouldn't have been quite so difficult, however, because we were equipped with technology such as Google Drive. Looks like it was just us though, based on everyone else's posts online.
I enjoyed that we could see what everyone else was doing. It makes it feel like a real course, and actually may make people more comfortable to voice their opinions if they are shy in person.
My vote: Great class overall, and I would definitely recommend it to other students looking for a quality course that goes a little bit outside the norm.