This assignment was connected to unit 2 assignment 1, in which we read professor Gernsbacher’s article and then posted on the discussion board about the principle of online education that we resonated with most. For this assignment, we were required to read all the posts written by students in our section, and then review the course syllabus section about how to best respond to others’ posts. Following this, we had to respond to 2 other students’ posts, including one person who resonated with the same principle as myself, and one who picked a different principle.
As a reminder, the principle I chose was that internet-based education can optimize performance. A fellow classmate named Weiyan also chose the same principle, so I decided to respond to her. She talked about not being an early bird, so she is not able to do well in early lectures, and does not want to waste her time. She talked about how online courses can fix this because she can work when she is feeling good, and so her performance will improve.
In response to Weiyan, I essentially agreed with everything she said. I am also not a morning person, so early morning in-person lectures are settings I do not thrive in. I thought she brought up some great points about how online courses can fix this problem!
I also responded to a classmate with a different principle, a girl named Subin, who chose that internet-based education can lead to better mastery. She wrote about how the material online is always available and that more frequent encounters with it will facilitate distributed learning. Following this point, distributed learning leads to mastery and better long term retention.
In response to Subin, I agreed that online learning certainly fosters distributed learning, and that distributed learning is definitely more successful than massed learning. I did bring up the fact that massed learning can still occur, if people do a bunch of assignments way in advance or way last minute. However, overall, I agreed with all of her points, and this principle would have been my second choice.
Reflecting on this assignment, I enjoyed getting the chance to read about the opinions about all of the other students in my section. This is another example of getting to know my classmates better through their posts on the discussion board, as people have very different opinions from one another and it is interesting to read about.
Not only did the assignment allow me to get to know the students better, but it actually allows me to practice one of the principles from the article, internet-based education improves writing skills. Reading and writing posts and comments in assignments such as this has given me a lot of practice with my writing, more than I usually get to experience in an in-person lecture. For example, in lectures, I write down information, but it is all just transcribed from the professor. In this assignment, it allowed me to think and formulate my own writing, which always helps improve my skills.
Additionally, reading all of the posts essentially allowed me to review all of the information from the article without having to go back and read it again. This is an example of distributed learning, as having frequent interactions with that material has allowed me to have better retention of it, rather than just studying it once!
These principles are all intertwined, and completing this assignment allowed me to learn more about each one through reading and responding to the posts of others!
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