Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Hybrid Courses

As I searched the web for other hybrid courses in higher education, I came across lots of schools that implement hybrid courses. Among those schools were UW Milwaukee and UC San Diego. The hybrid courses offered at UWM seemed interesting just by looking at the names of the courses and descriptions. At UCSD, there are 29 hybrid courses being offered now, they typically split face-to-face interaction and online interaction quite evenly. The hybrid style of classes at UCSD relates most to our class in the sense that the time we also split our class time quite evenly between face-to-face interaction and our online presence.
My experience with LIS 201 has been interesting because this has been the first course I take that greatly puts an emphasis on online communities while still having valuable face-to-face conversations. I think the material we learned in class went hand in hand with what we were to do online. Our discussion section also went hand in hand with he online component of our class. We would discuss whatever we did online in discussion and even went in deeper at times. However, I think I was a more effective student in the virtual world. I voiced my opinions and thoughts more online than I did in class. I think this occurred because the space online is infinite and there is no time limits, so I was able to really talk about things in depth. I think we would enjoy our courses more if professors here incorporated online components to their courses.
The material that we learned in this course brought a whole new perspective in both my online experiences and my personal life. I feel that now, I am more aware of what goes on in our information society. I tend to think about people's interaction with technology more and how a lot of them don't realize the process and impact their devices have on our society. Even while looking at a website I analyze the workings of it and end up relating it to information that we learned in this course.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I agree with your point about how you analyze websites now more because of our understanding of how they work. I have taken a few of these courses before, so I differ in opinions on whether or not more classes should expand. Sometimes it just seems like extra work to me! Overall, I think you made some great points and really explained how the virtual world allows you to explore and expand on topics without restrictions.