Category: Academic

Today is February 2nd and that means that 2nd chance classes, including ART 114, are now active. That being said, since the early activation of the course in January, there hasn’t been a lot of activity in the course today, and I suspect that the remaining 10 or so students will fall in one at a time over the next few days.

So far I have only worked on part of the first group of assignments, and just need to take the quiz to be finished with them. The new schedule for the course seems a bit insane. The missing weeks are being made up for by doubling up on assignments in a few of the weeks. I really don’t like it, especially the weeks during which we have to write papers. There are 4 fewer weeks, but still 3 full length papers to write. I guess it’s good that I like art and I like writing, otherwise this course would be an absolute bitch.

Now… to finish up my reading on “Art Before History”.

Every semester many optimistic students sign up for courses, but how many actually stay in them, and of those, how many participate? Every semester when an instructor assigns weekly discussion board activities for online or hybrid courses, it surprises me how many people begin falling away from the course. In one of my psychology courses we began with a quite optimistic enrollment of 25 students, and now, 4 weeks into the course, we are down to 18 students still enrolled. During the first week we had 22 people to participate in the discussion board, the second week we lost a few and went to 18 (end of drop/add period, likely full class participation), then in the 3rd week we had 16 students to participate and then this week, only 13 students participated. I do not understand how students can let themselves fall out of a course like this. It is online, and they have all week to participate, but yet many choose to not participate in the course. For in-person courses I can understand, I have been the one to flake out of a course once or twice, but this is online, anytime stuff and it requires to academic skill at all, just talking to people, like any other discussion board, with a few guidelines. What concerns me more is the fact that if this few people are participating in the discussion boards, how many are participating in the tests each week? I probably do not want to know the answer to that question.

In most circumstanced I do not drop courses or abandon an online course, especially not this early in the semester. Why do others do it? I feel that students leaving a course weakens the overall strength of the course, especially when the number of students drops below 20. Schools that pride themselves on small class sizes do not really make sense to me. What is advantageous to having a class of 10 or 12 students? That is only 10 people to get ideas from or to see a different point of view from. Although, on the other side, I do hate courses that have more than about 50 students as well. Is 25 – 50 a good range for a class, or is this too much of a personal preference thing for myself?

I am not quite as worried about my psychology courses as I was before. I just finished my quiz in Theories of Personality on Freud and I got a perfect score. I am beginning to feel a little better about these courses. I believe my lack of performance in the courses may be related to the fact that I am taking courses at a new institution and I am not quite familiar with the teaching atmosphere yet and I try to dive in just like they are any other course I have taken.
I have taken a variety of courses online, but none in psychology, these are my first online psychology courses, and I am finding things to be different from my in person psyc courses from a few years ago.
I want to do well in the psychology courses, since I believe I can be sucessful with psychology and develop a career from it.

When it comes to digital photography assignments lately I am finding myself in one of two categories, and no where in between. Those categories are having pretty much no clue fora subject for the assignment, or having an overabundance of inspiration. My current project is macro, so I am very comfortable already with doing it, and I have more subject ideas than I could ever turn in. Now I just have to narrow it down and focus on one that I want to perfect.
This being said about the assignment, maco requires me putting the D60 on its tripod, which I am starting to not like doing. The D60 and I are devoping a hands-on relationship. Lately the D60’s tripod has been mostly a storage stand for the camera.

This week I have a fair number of things going on academically.

• Digital Photography Studio – I have to get my second project done by Tuesday at 3PM. I have to do a motion blur, which should be easy, given that my instructor accused my first assignment of being a motion blur and not a stop motion. The challenge assignment for the week is to make 2 things blur in opposite directions. I think I would like to try doing the regular and challenge assignments seperately and see what I come up with. I will probably go in for the critique on Tuesday if I am awake in time.
• Personality (PSYC 310) – I have to read and be preared to discuss Freud. There is a quiz at the end of the week, but a discussion on Wednesday. This should not be too hard, but my quiz scores have not been what I like lately, so I will put more effort into this week’s reading and preparing.
• C# (CSC 253) – First assignments this week. I have to sit down with the Microsoft IT Academy software and do the equivillent of 6 hours of lecture training. I feel like I’m going to need someone to tie me to my chair for that. After the training there is a quiz on the concepts of the labs as well as the first three chapters of reading.
• Nutrition (BIO 155) – I have to prepare for a test on 5 chapters of material that I have not even glanced at yet. This course has taken a back burner to all of my psychology stuff. The material is mostly a refresher from my Health and Wellness course, so this week shouldn’t be too bad.
• Cognitive Psychology (PSYC 421) – This week is a continuation of sensation and perception from last week in Cog. Schedule suggests there might be a discussion topic this week, but that is never certain until the instructor activates one. I’m getting the hang of things in this course, so probably will just need to worry about the reading mostly. I also need to start working on the “Research Paper Preview” assignment, which is basically listing potential sources and providing an abstract.
• Art History 1 (ART 114) – Now this course I am familiar with.. this is my late starting course for the semester. It is the prequel to the course I had last semester. All I need to do this week is get the first chapter started and then take a quiz on it. No pain here, just the exact same as I got comfortable with last semester.

Overall it isn’t a horrible week, but it will keep me busy. Feels like 18 credit hours now, everything falling on my head at once. 🙂 I love academics.

I am beginning to worry about the courses I am taking this semester. I am not doing horribly in Cognitive Psychology or Theories of Personality, but I am not doing as well as I would like. I feel like I am putting more effort into the courses than I usually would. These courses are also occupying a lot more of my time than the other courses I have this semester. I don’t know that I have ever had online courses as demanding as these. I plan to stick with these courses and do what I can to work towards an A in both of them. The biggest things bothering me in both courses at the moment are the discussion boards, which I am having a hard time dealing with as well as the quizes on book material. The problem with the quizes is perhaps the most troubling so far. They are open book, but yet I am not able to locate the information in the text like I feel I should be able to, usually costing me a question or two. I am only 2 weeks into these courses so I am no where near giving up yet, but in my quest for academic perfection, they are starting to get in the way.

I have pretty much decided that Drivel is a bit too trivial of a blog utility for how spoiled I have become from Windows Live Writer, so I am going to give BloGTK a try and see how it performs. It has some pretty cools features if they all work the way they are supposed to (insert images, advanced editing, tagging, keywords, etc). This thing can even delete entries remotely for me (such as the test entry I just destroyed). It’s still not quite Live Writer, but its a nice tool, although, I find myself still liking Drivel for short, simple posts… it is just so clean, but yet I still don’t have to write my entries in the MT web interface 🙂

The point of Distance Education is to be able to take a course anywhere in the world, but I think I added a false assumption to this definition. I believe I added to it that there would always be something to do in a distance education course. Presently my courses are very quiet, there are not even any discussion board posts to respond to.
I am sitting in RCH 107 and am completely and entirely bored at the moment because my instructor who was supposed to show up at 3PM still hasn’t, even though it is 3:20. Either he was not told when the course is, or he is exercising his art-instructor right to be eccentric (actually, his eccentricity is most likely to be attributed to being a professional photographer). Presently I am assuming there is something much more interesting going on in world than this course and he is there photographing it, and I will perhaps see it tomorrow in the Gaston Gazette. It now occurs to me that there is a good and bad side to taking a course from someone who is as good at what he does as Mr. Hensdill is. First, he is among the best, so the things I learn will likely be very beneficial to my work, but the down side is that he is among the best, so he will often have other tasks to attend to other than teaching, he is, after all, part time.
It would appear that the 15 minute rule does not apply on the first day of class or to an art instructor. It’s quite funny, if I left now, no one would probably care. The people around me are all ART-264 students, they have an obligation to the registrar to be here, but I am in ART-288DH, which is not officially scheduled. Showing up for this class meeting is something I have done because it is the way that studio courses work, first meeting is with the instructor’s closest matching section, then everything is arranged and a course protocol is established for the studio.

As promised in my previous blog entry, I am going to comment on my academic life in this entry.
First of all, I am a lifetime learning student. Degrees are not my primary means of organizing academics. I am not in it for the credit hours, I am in it for the experience of different fields. If I one day get bored I may surrender academics, but I do not presently feel close to that at all.
Next, I have been continually enrolled in an institution of higher learning since August 2003, and have attended with at least half time standing in every semester with the exception of Summer 2006. I regret letting that semester get away. Summer is the best semester for leisure learning.
Finally, Once I have a full time job, I will move academics to the back burner and have it as only a hobby (half time status most likely). I enjoy learning and want to keep at it. My logic and reasoning skills are quite sharp as a result of being so active academically.
What is going on now in my academic life is quite exciting. Without being entirely conscious of it, I have applied and been accepted at Fayetteville State University. It was originally my intention to attend only as a visiting student, but since my acceptance I have declared my major as Psychology, and I intend to pursue that degree until its completion. If I like the content of the courses as much as I think I will, I may continue to finish off the next higher degrees until I have obtained a PhD in Clinical Psychology. That is some time off at this point, but it is a goal I have for myself. It was a mistake to have ever changed my major away from Psychology. Mental process and the human mind have always interested me. Had I stayed with my original program ideas for the spring semester I would be taking a lot of art classes, but I do not feel ready for those yet because I feel I need to understand the function of the mind better first. I always find links between my courses and for Spring I am hoping to find links between Cognitive Psychology and Digital Photography Studio.
I have a habit of taking courses in ironic ways without noticing it. I am taking Art History Survey 1, as very old and standard course, as an online course, but I am taking Digital Photo Studio as an in-person course.
At present my long-term career goal is to become an academic instructor. As much as people have tried to discourage me from it, it seems right to me.
Here is a psychological mystery for today… it is 2am… why am I still awake?

Dear Southern Association of Colleges and Schools:

     As you may be aware, you are the primary accrediting authority of all schools below the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi. A fact I do not know if you are aware of is all schools in your division teach common sets of courses, but all with different names and course identifiers. I challenge you to take all of these catalogs and discover the commonalities, then assign each of the sets of identical courses a serial number. Schools will take your serial number and use them for transfer, and not an arbitrary “equivalency chart” that holds no real value. Many transfer evaluations are handled by department chairs that may have a desire to lure students in by issuing them a lot of transfer credits, even if they have not truly earned them. Other department chairs have pride issues and will withhold credit where credit is due in an attempt to force students to take their version of a course. Some departments have set policies based on having a highly structured industry affiliation, for example, all psychology courses are essentially defined by the American Psychological Association, with each institution simply applying their focus (research, clinical, historical, etc) to them.

     There are so many courses at institutions that are equivalent, but there is no common course library to define them as being the same. Registrars, admissions directors and counselors do not have the capability to know how to evaluate every course, and even if they did, it would cause so much administrative overhead that other areas of their duties would suffer.

   I believe that it is within the scope of responsibility of SACS to create a universal course library to ensure the integrity of a student’s course portfolio, even when it is transferred between institutions. I would recommend the Common Course Library of the North Carolina Community College System for the departments that are part of the Comprehensive Articulation Agreement of the University of North Carolina System as an example of how such a catalog might operate.

Sincerely,

Curtis M. Kularski

Student, Gaston College

Student, Central Piedmont CC

Student, UNC-Charlotte

Student, UNC-Chapel Hill

Student, Fayetteville State University