by Jack Serapiglia

Created on: February 03, 2009   Last Updated: February 17, 2009

Dear Diary,

Why can't all education be as accessible as my on-line classes are? Talk about convenient. I was just "at class" in nothing more then my pajamas. Yesterday I started a lesson in the morning during breakfast, continued it during my lunch break at work, and finished it off last night as I ate my supper.

Of course, I am not sure if I ever will get used to the virtual classroom aspect of my on-line education. I mean, this is so different then what I am used to. Classes no longer have rooms. Classmates live thousands of miles away. Books don't even have pages anymore.

But the more I think about it, the more this is really like how I learned before. Class lessons use to involve me listening to a professor speak. Now I simply have to read what he or she writes. I am still assigned homework, still have weekly assignments and papers do on the big topics of the class. Participation is still required, though now it involves posting messages rather then answering in front of the class (something always use to embarrass me anyway).

In many ways, this environment is more constructive to the learning process. Assignments posted on the message board are available to everyone to see and more importantly, comment on. You see, this type of student involvement is encouraged, because more often then not it leads to more insightful discussions on the topic. Students hash out the deeper meanings to the answers they give, and are encouraged to relate personal experiences into the daily curriculum.

I will not lie, the workload can be rather intense. This week alone I had to read several articles as well as three chapters from my virtual book, make my minimum amount of postings to receive my participation and attendance credit for the week (at least 6 postings for the week spread out over a minimum of three days), answer my three homework questions AND work on my term paper, due next week. I also had several "meetings" with my team (where through message boards we hashed out job duties for our collective paper, due at the end of the semester).

Still, I wouldn't change a thing. Given my job requirements I simply cannot allot two to three days per week to attend classes in the regular sense. That is why this is the only system that works for me, since I choose when I go to class. If only my job was as accommodating.

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