This assignment revolved around meeting online with our chat group for the first time this semester! This was tied to Unit 3 assignment 1, so we had to start out by listing 3 college-related challenges that have affected our group members the most. For the rest of the chat, we had to design a college system that would limit these 3 challenges. Following the chat, I posted on the discussion board with a summary of our chat. My fellow group member, Weiyan, attached the chat transcript to the discussion board and posted the time, date, length, and names of those who participated in our chat.
The three issues that we decided upon were expensive textbooks, large class size, and lack of sleep. Our college system included ideas to fix all of these, or at least limit their effects. Additionally, it is important to note that high tuition was one of the highest on our lists, but we couldn’t think of a realistic way to lower tuition.
For the issue of expensive textbooks, using e-textbooks instead of textbooks was our fix. In our system, the university would cover the costs of these e-textbooks, so students would have access to all of the textbook materials online, for free. We figured that universities have enough money to cover these costs and that it would be less stressful for students.
For our second issue of large class size, we decided that for elementary level courses, we would use well-designed online courses instead of in-person courses. This way, there would be many more professors to teach the higher level courses, while the number of students stays relatively the same. In this system, the class sizes would go down, because the students could be split into many more classes than what was originally available, because of the change in the number of professors.
For the issue of sleep, our system would have classes no earlier than 11 AM each morning. This would allow all the students to get their rest, and come to class ready to learn. This could lead students to improve their health while also being able to focus more in class since they wouldn’t be as tired.
Reflecting on this assignment, first of all, it was exciting to participate in the chat for this course for the first time! It is always interesting to converse back and forth with those online, and this course is no exception. Compared to just posting on the discussion board and having people read it later on, this chat function allowed for immediate feedback which was nice!
This also was a good experience to start bonding with my fellow classmate in my discussion group. By discussing college issues as well as potential fixes, Weiyan and I were able to learn more about each other and what we want to improve in the college education system. For example, it required us to work through different ideas and find out where we agree and where we disagree, which lead to some growth in our group bond.
This also was another example of covering the same content multiple times. We interacted with these topics in unit 3 assignment 1 as well as unit 3 assignment 3, so this was our third time in which we either read about, posted about, commented on, or chatted about issues prevalent in college. I am super confident that I will be able to retain my knowledge on these issues going forward.
We are still early on in the course, with many different chats left to go. I look forward to chatting about different topics and growing closer to my chat group throughout the process!
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