Online Education Review

While I have had friends who had bad experiences with online classes, I feel like I have been very fortunate. I've taken four classes that were completely online, and they were all fantastic.

All of my online classes have either been with Laura (Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics) or Sterlin Mosley (Intro to Women and Gender Studies and Gender Communication). Both teachers have been great online instructors and really helped and taken an interest in the student's education. The flexibility that online courses offer is so convenient. The ability to work ahead some and have multiple days to do reading and assignments (instead of like one set class period) is great, especially when I've been taking other intense, traditional classes.

While my women and gender studies online classes definitely taught me how to use the web services of the school (like D2L), one of the things I've loved the most about Laura's classes has been getting to learn about other internet tools, like blogging and website building sites. The tech tips and helped me so much! Because of Laura's classes I've learned how to set up blogs for my outside writings as well as for projects for other classes. Last August, when I began looking over our first week assignment for the Myth-Folkore class, I was kind of scared and overwhelmed with all of the new technological things I would be learning. However, Laura made it simple to learn with her guides and it's been a lot of fun to learn. I've learned so many useful technological things in the class that I will be able to use throughout college and far into my career.

Internet Tree. Pixabay.

General Education Review

I think I am one of the few people who didn't take the Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics classes for gen  ed credit (One counted for my religion minor and the other for my anthropology).

In general, I've had an okay, but very limited experience with OUs gen ed programs. I was concurrently enrolled in high school my senior year so I came in with quite a few general ed credits already earned. However, I have had a couple of great gen ed classes, and a couple not so much. Most of my gen ed classes have been good experiences, and I think that gen eds are important, especially early on in college, to help students try out new things. I changed my major three times before finally deciding on professional writing, which I hadn't known existed until my adviser had me look into the program and recommended taking the intro classes to get into Gaylord College of Journalism. I think that first year especially gen ed classes helped me see what I did, and equally important, did not want to study for the next three years.

I think my favorite gen ed class was an Intro to Astronomy class that I took freshman year. Science and math have never been my favorite subjects, but I've always been interested in astronomy, so I decided to take that class for my lab based physical science. To this day, that is one of my favorite classes. We would have regular lectures that were always interesting but then one night a week we would go to the observatory and do hands on work with the telescopes and comparing different planets and stars that we saw. It was a difficult class, but it was extremely interesting and rewarding.

I have definitely had some bad experiences with gen ed classes too, but I won't go into specific classes. The biggest problem always seemed to be when the professors didn't put much effort into the gen ed classes. Another gen ed class I had freshman, I was really excited about at first because I thought it would be interesting. But unlike the astronomy class, the professor always showed up late, never had lectures prepared, and outright told us that it didn't matter because we were all just there for gen ed credits so she wasn't going to spend time on it. That was probably my worst gen ed experience at OU.

Timeless Books by Lin Kristensen. Wikimedia

College Writing Review

I'm a professional writing major; so, writing has played a huge role in my college career thus far. However, the types of writing I do for classes has changed a lot over the past couple of years. Before, in Gen Ed classes and in my minor classes (religious studies and anthropology), analytic research papers were the only type of writing I did for classes. This all changed when I switched majors into PW. In the last year, my class writings have shifted from more academic papers to creative papers.

Every class inside my major has been extremely writing intensive, from Intro to PW, Short Story, and as I'm now beginning to prepare for the Novel class. Outside of my major, I have had some religion and anthropology classes that required a couple big research papers, but none as much writing overall as my major classes. Besides research papers, the two classes I've taken with Laura, Myth-Folklore and this Indian Epics class, have been the most writing intensive outside of my major. That is one of the things I have loved about these two classes. Having at least a story a week to write, along with reading journals and possible outside projects has helped me continue to improve my writing a lot.

The amount of feedback we get in Laura's classes, both from her and from fellow students has been a great help in making me more thoughtful observant in my own writing. Being required to edit and comment on other people's blogs and comments has given me things to pay attention to in my own writing as well. Outside of my major classes, the Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics classes have helped me more in my writing than any other. I've recommended both classes to a lot of people both inside and outside of my major. They have been some of my favorite and most rewarding classes in general, as well as helping my writing improve.

Power of Words by Antonio Litterio. Wikimedia