Online College Course Forum

I've got a tutorial on campus this weekend - the first in the main body of my online program. Actually I'm really looking forward to it. I've got to know several members of the program online, but meeting them face to face will be really interesting. And some members of the faculty will be there as well, so I'll be able to put a face to the names on my email.

I like working in my own space and time, and I really wouldn't run this program any other way, but I know that actually meeting people face to face puts a whole different complexion on relationships. It will take me at least four years to complete this online program, so these relationships are important in my study life, and I welcome the opportunity to make them deeper and closer.

Another day in the education factory. Well, that's a really unfair statement, as actually education has very little in common with factory life, however much one may sometimes wish that it could be so patterned and organized.

My job is about people. I actually do no teaching at all, but I find I know most of the faculty students, and obviously the staff. I increasingly know the online students as well. Interestingly we are finding that the relationships we make with the online students are as vivid and immediate as those with our on campus students. In fact, many of our online courses are a part of blended learning programs, so we do know many of our students face to face as well.

And people mean unpredictability. Yesterday I dealt with a member of staff who had forgotten to report back on a six month project, a student who had a gambling problem, a case of racial discrimination, and a student who had come back to study after she had had a family only to find that she is pregnant again. That's before I started on the academic matters.

But it makes life vital, being a part of an educational establishment is fun, interesting, and I know that education is the key to a successful and happy life with choices, so I really enjoy what I do.

One of my online studies support people just visited my office and told me an interesting fact that one of the online program students told him. Apparently 49% of all quoted statistics are made up on the spot. I must remember that for future programs!!

Actually I was going to look up a whole lot of statistics for this blog today, but life passed me by, and although I've started to do this they will have to wait for a future blog. Statistics are so interesting, and yet I'm not sure that they tell us anything that we don't already know. However, they can be so convincing that we use them to give credibility to much that we say.

So in order to boost my credibility I'm going to tell you lots of things about the people who study online, and the good results that can be gained. It is of course true, but actually I wish I could get you to meet some of the people who have studied online in my unit, so that they could tell you their stories - you wouldn't need statistics to believe what a positive result online studies can have.

Second day of the weekend paper for my online degree, and I'm afraid inspiration is running low at the moment, which is why I'm writing this. Maybe thinking about this from another perspective will give me a boost - I've tried coffee, television and making the beds, but this is the next part of my strategy.

Even intervention from the cats isn't working at the moment. However, I'm not really worried in the larger scheme of things, as these times occur in everyone's study life. It could carry on all day, but I have a feeling that having written about it, it will be easier to make a push forward.

In some ways I find these times useful, as I often think that they are times when I'm making a change in direction of my thinking, and when I settle down again I will be persuing a different train of thought. I can usually advance my arguments after such a break, making my paper that much more complete.

Online study does however emphasis this kind of break in concentration, and it can be useful to recognise that these things happen to everyone. You can then work through strategies to bring yourself through them and carry on working.