Overall, my research has been going pretty good. My topic is Online Education Practices and the main problem I had while researching was trying to find articles on the disadvantages of online learning. Most articles that I could find were on how earning a degree online is a great opportunity for older people who want to go back to college. I have had a lot of success with using the Ebscohost Academic Search Premier feature on the Southern Miss Library website. I had to specifically type in "online education" because if I added the word practices, it would say that no results were found. I also have had success looking up scholarly articles on Google's website. At first, I was pretty apprehensive on whether these articles were good sources, but they were all studies done on people who have taken online courses with a credible bibliography page at the end.
Another problem I had with researching for the proposal argument were telling the difference between whether a source was credible or not. I learned to not use the sites where people would just state their opinion because they were not actual facts, just the way someone felt at that time. I found everything that I was looking for for this essay assignment, so I am not having any problems researching more information
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Blog #6 - Reading Responses
Reading Response #1
Proper MLA Citation:
This source is classified as an Article. The proper citation is (sorry I can't figure out how to indent the second line!!):
Haugen, Dr. Susan, Dr. James LaBarre, Dr. John Melrose. “Online Course Delivery: Issues and Challenges.” Issues in Information Systems (2001): 127-31.
The website is http://www.iis-online.org/iis/2001_iis/pdf%20files/Haugen127.PDF
Summary:
This article mainly talked about the advantages and disadvantages of taking online courses for the students and the teachers. It says that many universities have started to allow their students to take classes online so people could work at their own pace and be flexible on when and where they have to get their school work accomplished. Some problems that have arose from online education practices include technical problems, it does not provide the social environment of a traditional classroom setting, academic fraud is highly possible, and it puts more work on both the teacher and student. Instructors have to make sure their lessons can be taught efficiently online and if any of these problems arise, which is highly likely, the online education course will not serve its duty of being more practical than a normal class in a school environment.
Importance:
This work is extremely important because they put an issue of online education practices for their readers to see to warn them about what could go wrong when taking a course on the internet. Many people might go into online courses thinking they are easier and can work at their own pace, but could actually fall behind because they are not learning as much as they should or are having to find outside help to get their work finished. Some significant ideas I gathered from this work are that the faculty has to do a lot of strenuous work to make sure the course goes as planned and that there could be numerous technical problems that could go wrong with online courses that may not be able to be taken care of for quite some time.
Connections:
This article is similar to my College Algebra class that I took last semester because our homework was entirely online. Sometimes there were a lot of technical problems that often would happen the day of the due date for the homework and our teacher would have to push back our homework because no one could complete their assignment. It is also somewhat makes the student fall behind if they do not keep up with their work because if you do not understand something, it is much easier to just guess on the multiple choice rather than figuring the problem out by hand.
Supporting Source:
This article could be used as support for my own argument because it gives not online the negative aspects of online education practices, but the positive aspects as well. It gives a list of the reasons for each and elaborates on why those reasons are valid. This article will be great to present the facts to support my argument of the problems of online education courses. It will also be a good supporting source because it gives a background of when people could start taking classes and why there are so many issues and challenges that come along with it.
Argumentative Source:
If I had to take this author’s argument to task, I would say that they should add specific examples of when the advantages and disadvantages of online courses really happened. By doing this, they could prove that these facts are actually some positive and negative outcomes of taking online educational courses. I would also critique the beginning of the article where they say that online education courses are mainly used at this period of time for graduate students and adult undergraduate students. A lot of high schools now offer online courses for their ninth to twelfth grade students to prepare them for college or if a certain class they want to take at that high school is not offered in their curriculum.
Reading Response #2
Proper MLA Citation:
This source is classified as an Article. The proper citation is (sorry I can not figure out how to indent the lines following the first!!):
Stodel, Emma J., Terrie Lynn Thompson, and Colla J. MacDonald. “Learners’ Perspectives on What is Missing from Online Learning: Interpretations through the Community of Inquiry Framework.” International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (7.3) (2006): 1-24.
The website is http://irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/325/744
Summary:
This article was a research study done on ten students who, at the end of their online course took a survey, and said they missed face to face interaction in a normal classroom. Twenty-three students took this course, and eleven said they disliked the online educational environment, and ten agreed to the study. They were of a variety of ages and all agreed they thought some things were missing from their online learning experience, including robustness of online dialogue, spontaneity and improvisation, perceiving and being perceived by the other, getting to know others, and learning to be an online learner. They missed learning things from people asking questions in class and felt if you had a question, you got an immediate answer and did not have to wait for someone in your class to respond to your online post. They also felt they did not know if they were completing their course the right way and were always scared of missing deadlines.
Importance:
This work is important because it is direct feedback of people who have taken online education courses. It was done by professors of different universities, so it was definitely a valid study with real responses. Some significant ideas I gathered from this work were that about half of that single class missed face to face interaction and that when you take an online class, you often miss out on the conversations and lessons from the professor that are off subject, but are important lessons you should know.
Connections:
This article is not really similar to work I have done in my academic career because I have never taken an online course. I did, however, do math homework online for my math class last semester and it was very frustrating when you had a question about the homework. You would have to email the professor and wait sometimes a day or two for her to respond. This would force you to put off doing your homework and make you sometimes lose points if you had to complete the assignment anyway because it was due before the professor even responded to your email.
Supporting Source:
This article could be used as a great supporting source for my argument because it will be good evidence to back up the points in my essay. There were ten people who participated in the survey who all had their own opinion. There are great quotations from the students in this article and are explained very thoroughly. It is not centered on just one problem, but a few that are very different from one another. This will surely give me enough evidence to expand into a multiple page essay without any difficulties.
Argumentative Source:
If I had to take these authors and their arguments to task, I would have to critique the fact that they only interviewed the people who said they missed face to face interaction in the class. I wish they would have interviewed the people who responded the other way because they might have not missed face to face interaction, but could have had other things they did not like about online classes. If they would have interviewed everyone, they could have compared the answers of each and see how they differed as well.
Proper MLA Citation:
This source is classified as an Article. The proper citation is (sorry I can't figure out how to indent the second line!!):
Haugen, Dr. Susan, Dr. James LaBarre, Dr. John Melrose. “Online Course Delivery: Issues and Challenges.” Issues in Information Systems (2001): 127-31.
The website is http://www.iis-online.org/iis/2001_iis/pdf%20files/Haugen127.PDF
Summary:
This article mainly talked about the advantages and disadvantages of taking online courses for the students and the teachers. It says that many universities have started to allow their students to take classes online so people could work at their own pace and be flexible on when and where they have to get their school work accomplished. Some problems that have arose from online education practices include technical problems, it does not provide the social environment of a traditional classroom setting, academic fraud is highly possible, and it puts more work on both the teacher and student. Instructors have to make sure their lessons can be taught efficiently online and if any of these problems arise, which is highly likely, the online education course will not serve its duty of being more practical than a normal class in a school environment.
Importance:
This work is extremely important because they put an issue of online education practices for their readers to see to warn them about what could go wrong when taking a course on the internet. Many people might go into online courses thinking they are easier and can work at their own pace, but could actually fall behind because they are not learning as much as they should or are having to find outside help to get their work finished. Some significant ideas I gathered from this work are that the faculty has to do a lot of strenuous work to make sure the course goes as planned and that there could be numerous technical problems that could go wrong with online courses that may not be able to be taken care of for quite some time.
Connections:
This article is similar to my College Algebra class that I took last semester because our homework was entirely online. Sometimes there were a lot of technical problems that often would happen the day of the due date for the homework and our teacher would have to push back our homework because no one could complete their assignment. It is also somewhat makes the student fall behind if they do not keep up with their work because if you do not understand something, it is much easier to just guess on the multiple choice rather than figuring the problem out by hand.
Supporting Source:
This article could be used as support for my own argument because it gives not online the negative aspects of online education practices, but the positive aspects as well. It gives a list of the reasons for each and elaborates on why those reasons are valid. This article will be great to present the facts to support my argument of the problems of online education courses. It will also be a good supporting source because it gives a background of when people could start taking classes and why there are so many issues and challenges that come along with it.
Argumentative Source:
If I had to take this author’s argument to task, I would say that they should add specific examples of when the advantages and disadvantages of online courses really happened. By doing this, they could prove that these facts are actually some positive and negative outcomes of taking online educational courses. I would also critique the beginning of the article where they say that online education courses are mainly used at this period of time for graduate students and adult undergraduate students. A lot of high schools now offer online courses for their ninth to twelfth grade students to prepare them for college or if a certain class they want to take at that high school is not offered in their curriculum.
Reading Response #2
Proper MLA Citation:
This source is classified as an Article. The proper citation is (sorry I can not figure out how to indent the lines following the first!!):
Stodel, Emma J., Terrie Lynn Thompson, and Colla J. MacDonald. “Learners’ Perspectives on What is Missing from Online Learning: Interpretations through the Community of Inquiry Framework.” International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (7.3) (2006): 1-24.
The website is http://irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/325/744
Summary:
This article was a research study done on ten students who, at the end of their online course took a survey, and said they missed face to face interaction in a normal classroom. Twenty-three students took this course, and eleven said they disliked the online educational environment, and ten agreed to the study. They were of a variety of ages and all agreed they thought some things were missing from their online learning experience, including robustness of online dialogue, spontaneity and improvisation, perceiving and being perceived by the other, getting to know others, and learning to be an online learner. They missed learning things from people asking questions in class and felt if you had a question, you got an immediate answer and did not have to wait for someone in your class to respond to your online post. They also felt they did not know if they were completing their course the right way and were always scared of missing deadlines.
Importance:
This work is important because it is direct feedback of people who have taken online education courses. It was done by professors of different universities, so it was definitely a valid study with real responses. Some significant ideas I gathered from this work were that about half of that single class missed face to face interaction and that when you take an online class, you often miss out on the conversations and lessons from the professor that are off subject, but are important lessons you should know.
Connections:
This article is not really similar to work I have done in my academic career because I have never taken an online course. I did, however, do math homework online for my math class last semester and it was very frustrating when you had a question about the homework. You would have to email the professor and wait sometimes a day or two for her to respond. This would force you to put off doing your homework and make you sometimes lose points if you had to complete the assignment anyway because it was due before the professor even responded to your email.
Supporting Source:
This article could be used as a great supporting source for my argument because it will be good evidence to back up the points in my essay. There were ten people who participated in the survey who all had their own opinion. There are great quotations from the students in this article and are explained very thoroughly. It is not centered on just one problem, but a few that are very different from one another. This will surely give me enough evidence to expand into a multiple page essay without any difficulties.
Argumentative Source:
If I had to take these authors and their arguments to task, I would have to critique the fact that they only interviewed the people who said they missed face to face interaction in the class. I wish they would have interviewed the people who responded the other way because they might have not missed face to face interaction, but could have had other things they did not like about online classes. If they would have interviewed everyone, they could have compared the answers of each and see how they differed as well.
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