APerez_NYU

aaaargh!

That, my dear friends, is the sound of utter frustration.

Before leaving the country (I was gone for a week) I thought I had left all of my ducks lined up. Apparently I didn't. I seem to have forgotten an assignment.

Back home we had a saying that stated that it was never too late when happiness showed up at your door - I'm hoping the same (or at least a derivative thereof) holds true for this class.

As part of this ongoing attempt to become more knowledgeable (one I'm not so sure of, but that's a whole other post), I had to do an assignment and comment on somebody else's post. I was expected to show some thought and reflection.

Here we go...

It's no secret that one of the people I look up to in this class is Linda. It amazes me that she's so fluent when it comes to speaking about education and the real life applications within a classroom (if this is going to ruffle feathers - rest assured, there is something I admire in all of you). Therefore, I have a tendency to follow her blogging posts. Sometimes I have something to say, other times I just go .... huh... and continue on in my daily life.

She recently posted something that fits the bill for this blogging thingeemajig I'm supposed to do. The central idea (or at least what I considered the central idea) had to do with the degree of personal investment students put into their class. She blogged about the time her remedial English class had to do their journaling and how some students did and others failed to do so.

The statement that struck me was "I think that's my biggest challenge as a course designer: how can I get my students invested -- in the class, in the module, in the assignment? " (by now you're bound to be curious, if you want to read the entire blog entry, please click here) .

I wish my crystal ball would give us an answer, I too struggle with a similar question. With so many things vying for attention, how do you get the student to become engaged? I think I know what the theoretical answer should be - I am just not sure I know how to apply it yet. Should this worry me? Is this something I should know by now?

That's where I think my biggest struggles are - I know what to do in a F2F environment - but how would I deal with someone like me in an online environment? I find myself feeling like sometimes I just put a check in the box (as Linda had mentioned: 1 assignment down, three to go), other times the fact that I have the attention span of a gnat makes online sessions hard. If I can't stay engaged all the time... how can I keep my students engaged?

posted by ap @ 2:45 PM