Online Education Review

I have taken several online courses during my four years here at OU, and the majority of them have been general education classes. One of my favorite things about online classes is being able to do everything on your own schedule. This is especially helpful if you have a job or you know that you are going to have a busy semester. It can also be a really great option for people that do not live close to campus. There are a few difficulties that come with online classes, though. One of those is communication- it can be more difficult to communicate with teachers and classmates over email than it is in person. Another thing that can be difficult is keeping up with all of the assignments and due dates. Being able to do things on your own schedule makes it much easier to procrastinate and put off everything until the last minute, and it also makes it a little harder to keep track of due dates and deadlines. Regardless, I think online classes have made some of my semesters much less stressful. One of the things that makes this class run smoothly is the consistency between each week. Every week, the same types of assignments are due on the same days. This makes it very easy to stay on top of your work, and I think all online classes could benefit from a schedule like this.

(Online vs. traditional learning. Source: Pinterest)

Gen. Ed. Review

This course is my last Gen. Ed. I am taking at OU. I have really enjoyed some of the Gen. Ed. classes I’ve taken, but I have also really disliked some of them. I think some of the requirements for general education are great and definitely beneficial to students, but some of them seem like they are not so important. For example, everyone should take writing courses like comp or expository writing as well as “American Federal Government” and an American history class, but a lot of the humanities classes that OU offers, such as “The Jane Austen Meme” and “Chinese Cinema,” are not going to benefit the majority of the students that take them. Some of the classes that I enjoyed the most are “Intro to Philosophy” and “American Federal Government”. These classes were both really interesting and taught me some things that everybody should know about the way our country runs and about philosophical concepts.

(Jane Austen meme. Source: Minimum Wage Historian)

College Writing Review

My major is chemical biosciences, so I haven’t really done much creative writing outside of this class. I took composition 1 and 2 a few years ago, but those involved a more formal style of writing. In this class, a lot of the writing assignments include blog posts and storytelling, which gives the writer much more freedom. I have done a lot of writing in other classes, but nearly all of it has been in some type of scientific format. This includes things like laboratory reports, research papers, abstracts, and things of that nature. Because I was so used to writing in a scientific format, writing for this class was a little difficult at first and it took some time for me to get used to the creative writing style. I think I have gotten much better over the course of the semester, though. This class is great for developing creative writing and storytelling skills, but not everybody will benefit from those. If I had to design one writing class for all college students to take, it would probably involve several types of writing- creative, formal, scientific, research, etc. And one of the first things that I believe should be taught is how to write an email to teachers/professors. I think that is one skill that is easy to learn and that everybody can benefit from.

(Image of student writing. Source: Pixabay)

Brothers Grimm (Hunt) - Reading Diary

For my week 14 extra reading, I chose to read part of the Brothers Grimm unit from Margaret Hunt. The first story in this unit is one that most people have heard of: the story of Hansel and Grethel. This story is about a family that is having a difficult time providing food for themselves and their children, Hansel and Grethel. The mother tells the father that they should take the children out to the middle of the forest and leave them there. The father said that he did not want to let his children die like that, but the mother was persistent about the plan until he agreed. The whole idea was that by getting rid of the children, the parents will have enough food to feed themselves. Hansel and Grethel overheard the conversation, though. Later on that night, Hansel went outside where he saw several small white pebbles being lit up by the moon. He gathered as many as he could carry and put them in his pockets. The next day, the parents did as they planned and took the children out to the forest and left them. But Hansel had planned for that. On the way out to the forest, he left a trail of the white pebbles. The two waited until the sun came out and lit up the rocks and then followed them home. The parents tried the same thing again, and this time Hansel had only made a trail of breadcrumbs, which were eaten by animals. They did not find their way home, but instead they found their way to a house in the forest. The owner of the house, who happened to be a witch, fed them a great meal. She planned on cooking the children, but she wanted to fatten them up first. Eventually, Grethel tricked the witch into getting into the oven, though, and she locked her in there. The children then gathered all of the jewels and pearls from the house and found their way back home, where they brought happiness to their father who never wanted to see them leave in the first place.  

(Drawing of Hansel and Grethel walking through the forest. Source: Wikipedia)

Brothers Grimm (Crane) - Reading Diary B

The second half of the Crane version of the Brothers Grimmstories included a short story called “The Three Spinsters”.  This story is an ironic telling of a girl who refused to spin, no matter what her mother tried to do to make her. One day, her mother was beating her for not spinning when the queen walked by and heard. The mother lied to the queen and told her that she was beating her daughter because she would not stop spinning and she was running out of flax, so the queen invited her to live at her castle where there was plenty of flax. The girl agreed to move into the castle and the queen told her that if she spun all of the flax that they had, she could marry the prince, but the girl did not know how to spin. One day, three ugly women walked by the window and the girl asked them to spin the flax for her. The women agreed as long as they were able to attend the wedding. Eventually, after all of the flax was spun by the women, the wedding was arranged. When the prince saw the woman at the wedding, he asked them about their appearances. The first said that she had such a broad, flat foot from treading, the second had such a big lip from licking the thread, and the third said her thumb had grown so large from twisting thread. The prince saw this and ordered his new bride to never spin again. I thought this story was ironic because the girl did not know how to spin and she was trying to cover that up, but in the end she was forbidden from ever touching a spinning wheel.

(Photo of three women spinning. Source: Pixabay)