I prefer to try things out rather than thinking them through in most situations. In class, often times I find myself determining the assignment and jumping in. I will research as I go along but feel the need to have something in front of me other than a bunch of garbled notes. I suppose that I feel more accomplished when I have a paragraph written rather than an outline.
Over the summer I took a Film and Literature class. I was very excited at the beginning because I knew we would be reading books and watching movies like Harry Potter, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Hamlet. I dove in and began reading my first short story before class even began. All was off to a great start. As anyone who has taken an online class at Marist knows, classes are condensed to only 10 weeks yet material is covered as though the class is 16 weeks long. Online classes can be more difficult and time consuming than on ground classes. I waited far too long to begin my midterm, an essay on only one scene from Hamlet. I had reviewed the notes on the paper, yet I really glanced over them. I learned my lesson when my grade was delivered, the worst grade I have ever received in all of my life. As an active learner, quite possibly the absence of a class discussion about the paper is one problem for me with online classes. While I had the professor at my fingertips, I thought I understood the assignment yet I grossly misunderstood the task at hand. I saw the big picture, typical as a global learner, yet passed on all of the detail. This has me watching my assignments more closely. Because of the schedule I follow with work, school and family I do struggle with managing my time still. Maybe I work best under pressure, under the ticking clock. I loved the class, I just wish I had not spent the second half of it working as hard as I did. Don’t get me wrong, I work as hard as I can in all of my classes, I had to work especially hard these last 5 weeks though just to squeak out a passing grade. I did not go back to college to ‘pass’ or ‘get by.’ I returned to college to give it my all and get back a wealth of knowledge. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain. While the class itself was not difficult, this one assignment was although the difficulty was self inflicted. It did force me to realize that I can not just glance over my assignments with only a few hours to put into such an important task.
In the spring I took Nutrition. My professor was engaging and informative. All of the information she brought to the table can be useful to any one of us. She afforded the opportunity for the class to work in groups as well as individually. I feel that she involved each of us in class discussions each week which helped me to learn well. Often times she showed films about various subjects such as anorexia, poor eating habits and one that sticks out regarding a particular treatment for cancer patients. As a visual learner when it came time to take a test and write about these subjects, I could close my eyes and remember the films to get a clear picture of the subject. What made this class a positive learning experience is that I took away information I could use every day in feeding myself as well as my family. Not all classes allow for us to use what we learn every day. It is one of the few classes I kept the book for as well as all of my notes. I look back every now and again when one of my kids are sick to see if there is an alternative method to helping them out rather than grabbing an over the counter medication. The information learned in this class will help me for years to come.
After taking a couple of learning style questionnaires I think this was probably the most accurate. I took this one http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html. The results point out that I am an active, intuitive, visual and global learner. I do not fall in the middle of any of the scales. I like to be a part of learning by doing, discover new possibilities, see the material in some way visually and I have a tendency to look at the big picture. These are very accurate in my learning style.
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