The second half of my first quarter has me in two new classes, and the method these lectures are being done is different from the first class.  If you don’t remember, my previous and first class was done in PowerPoint presentation with live text chat discussing what was on the PowerPoint presentation. This is my second and third classes.

This half of the quarter, one class is done entirely in live chat with the professor and classmates, discussing psychology topics presented by the professor and using our life experiences to understand those topics.

The other class is a digital art class that involves the teacher broadcasting his computer’s desktop to us as he demonstrates techniques in the digital art software (this one is Photoshop CS3).  A student or two, volunteers each class, to type what the teacher said during the demonstration. When he stops demonstrating to lecture, discuss and answer questions with students, he switches to a dictation program, which surprisingly works very well 99% of the time.  If the program screws up a sentence or a vital word, the he types it over or the volunteer student supplies the correction.

The Learning Modules are still in video with subtitling and text transcriptions for those who prefer to read instead of watching the subtitled videos.  Tests are done online via a self-conducted test that is actually timed by the program itself. The test’s clock begins ticking the second you click on “Begin Test” and you have a certain amount of time to take it.  If you run out of time, the test closes itself and posts your score.

Three classes, three different teaching styles, but all have the lectures recorded in text one way or another.  The audio part is for listening students’ benefit if they choose to, but sometimes it drops out due to the connection for some reason.  I learned from my ADA counselor that some classes have the entire lecture transcribed by a staff and posted in the lecture archives. The classes are always recorded and stored in each student’s Virtual Classroom Archives for latter peruse.

My online school (International Academy of Design and Technology, Tampa) uses a strict rule of 3-5-7, which means by the third day of the week course, your original posts should be made to the classroom discussion board. On the fifth day, your first 2 comments to your fellow classmates’ posts should be made.  On the seventh day, all assignments are due and your final comments to your fellow classmates’ posts should be made, before the next course begins.  This 3-5-7 method ensures that all students participate and have full discussion on each week’s unit topics.

I learned quickly that you do get marked down if you don’t use the MLA format on the discussion boards where you are supposed to post your “papers” on a topic the teacher has assigned your class.  MLA format is required for our posts, whether it’s posted on the class’ discussion board or submitted to the teacher.

Just because the school is on an online environment doesn’t mean that you don’t have to follow the rules that you would use in an actual mortar-and-brick school environment, or treat it like a chat room or forum.  There is also a strict rule on plagiarism, and the virtual classroom environment actually has software that automatically looks over your submitted assignments and posts for similarities across the Internet.  Every time I submit my assignments, I’m interested in the similarity score the program posts for me.  If the program finds something similar in your writing to another source elsewhere on the Internet, be it Wiki, blog, forum, some web site, it will show the links to those in a special column next to your writing.  This helps to ensure that plagiarism doesn’t happen and the student demonstrates an understanding of the topic.  If a similarity score of less than 20% appears on your posted writing, and you have cited those sources, you won’t get marked for plagiarism.

Even though the first quarter is about to finish, I’m still excited and enjoying school even though the homework load has been insane this second half.  Brings me back to the college nights of reading textbooks, typing up papers, finishing artworks and crawling into bed at 1 or 2 in the morning.