Online Education Review

My experience with online education at OU has been solely through this class and one other last semester. They work particularly well for me because I'm pretty involved outside of class, so not having a specific class time allows me to get work done without having to plan around anything. It's clearly been a positive experience for me because I'm actually taking another online class next semester (Online Programming). While it can sometimes be frustrating to have something due every single day, I think having items due at the least on a weekly basis helps keep students accountable and prevents us from falling too far behind. I know that I would have done better had all assignments lasted through the end of the week, because I get a lot of my homework done on the weekends. I wouldn't say this is a weakness because it kept me even more on top of my game, but maybe something to consider. It definitely depends when the subject is for me when considering an online class. I could never take a math-intensive course online because I have to work through the problems with someone, but for history or literature courses I think they work quite well.

Glad this wasn't me this semester

Gen. Ed. Review

I have had a generally good experience with Gen Eds at OU. I came into college with quite a bit of AP credit, so I was able to avoid the very lowest level of Gen Eds. However, the math classes I was forced to take actually led to me taking an additional 12 hours that weren't required in mathematics that will ultimately improve my chances of getting into graduate school. With the Gen Ed. Humanities specifically, last semester I took an online Native Authors of Oklahoma course as well that I think really helped to augment that very math and economics intensive course load I've been dealing with. That expanded my understanding of Oklahoma as a state, while this course has allowed me work with my creativity in a way that I'm not often able to. I really like the structure of the class, especially the way in which students don't have to do every single assignment and can instead pick and choose what works best for them. The reading opportunities are very diverse while still forcing students to get a sampling of literature from a variety of areas. I honestly don't have any suggestions. The only struggles I had this semester were tied to my own laziness, not any problems with class structure or content.

My feelings about the biological science with a lab class I'll have to take next semester

College Writing Review

I'm an economics major, and as such haven't had a ton of experience with writing in college. I came in with all of my English requirements covered by high school classes, so the real only classes I've had that have involved much writing have been through the Honors College. I took Politics of U.S. Economic Policy with Dean Ray and believe it helped me tremendously. We really focused on the purpose of our writing, making sure that the details we included were necessary to expand on the point we were making. This has lent itself well to the occasional research papers I have to write for economics. I've also worked with both the Oklahoma Group and Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth, and have that each of those has helped with my writing. The research we do and presentations we create really emphasize intentional use of language, which has translated directly to my writing. I would say the best part of my writing for this class has been the opportunity to be as creative or non-creative as a chose to be. On a personal level, I didn't particularly enjoy the weekly storytelling because I prefer to really dedicate a lot of time to my writing, and it was difficult to do that every single week on top of the Storybooks. That's definitely a personal preference though, and the extra credit made it so that I didn't have to write those blogs to still be successful.

Finals week feelings