English 111 was very interesting. It's very heavy handed on papers, and since I took an 8 week course, the papers overlapped and can become overwhelming if your class load is to heavy. When I enrolled, I assumed the class would be diagramming sentences and maybe writing a book report. We didn't do any of those things. We wrote restuarant reviews, personal reflections, and movie reviews, among other things. I appreciated the freedom to write in any tone that we chose, and the ability to choose topics and subjects that interested us. We also reviewed class mates papers before they were due, which helped us fine tune papers that were due. The class meetings are relaxed and there is a lot of open discussion.
For me, the down side was that the class was so heavy handed on computer skills, which I lack. Paul was helpful and understood my school and work schedule that would inhibit my availibility to the computer lab. There is also a lot of print outs you have to read and bring to class, which means you need to be very organized and prepared in order to discuss the readings. You also have to spend a lot of time in the library printing out the course work. For papers due, the instructions are online which needs to be printed out and brought to class as well.
What I liked most was the class mates I had. I am technically a UVA student, but am catching up on some courses that didn't transfer from my previous University. I love Community College. It is so eclectic and a wide range of life styles were represented. Since I took this as a night course, we had a few students who were recent high school graduates, but mostly working adults with jobs, families, and working on furthering their careers. It was inspiring to see so many determined people making the most of the 24 hours they have in a day in order to better their lives.
There is a lot of creative freedom in the class, and we were able to choose a topic and write a paper and do a class presentation explaining our ideas and opinions on the chosen topics. However, there are some topics that are off limits. There are a few guidelines, but mostly the student has total freedom to display their topics in a way that interest them. This was also a way to show your personality and learn more about your classmates.
Another down side is the word requirements for all the assignments. I have taken courses with this type of guidelines, but I prefer when professors give the students directions that explain the writing can be any length, as long as the information is complete, meaning that there is a beginning, middle, end, and the research is thorough. I think this allows the student to do research and write a paper without pressure of adding fillers.
I think that some of these papers or projects could be assigned as group assignments in order to lighten to course load in this 8 week courses. This also would give students the chance to interact more with each other and I think the presentation would be more lively and interesting if there were more than one person working on it. Also, I think the teacher should be responsible for providing snacks, since the class is 3 hours long. Another suggestion would be that there is a little less comic book talk. I just don't get it, I appreciate it, but don't get it.
And if you get bored, here are some cool websites and up top thats a picture I took this weekend. (it's required)
Great Review! I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteSnacks! Not on my pay. Only, maybe if I get the full-time gig.
ReplyDeleteAs for group work, that would likely require more computer time, since everyone is so busy. I have found it does not work outside the university setting where students are more often only students and not employees and moms and dads, etc. It's something to think about though.
As for word count, sadly too many students would write one page and consider it effective.