First of all can I say how in the world are we here already? It felt like about a month ago we got sent home and now I am halfway through my fall semester as senior. Soon we will be at winter break. Crazy how time flies.
As I mentioned in my last big reflection I did not know much about Chinese history. Throughout the first month I learned a lot and now I learned even more in the past three weeks. What has really made this class a fun experience is the community that we have built together.
Reading my fellow classmates posts is very useful and creates a great environment for the class. I love reading and giving feedback. First I will start with receiving feedback. When I come back about a day later from my writing my post and see comments on my post, it is really cool! I have been trying to respond to more comments as of late. Knowing that people read my work is nice to know! Hearing what they have to say and hearing the constructive criticism helps out too. On the other side, I love to give feedback on my classmates posts as well. I enjoy reading about the perspectives of my fellow classmates. Usually they have a different view on something or they picked up on something that I may not have. This allows my knowledge of Chinese history to expand! This is especially true when there are two different sets of readings. One time I may select to write from set A and a classmate may choose to pick from set B. I may not have focused much on set B but, I can read my classmates post and get a more in-depth analysis from that section! The only possible addition I would make to this format would be to have everyone comment on one or two more posts.
As for the course itself, I really enjoy the layout. I have never really been a very efficient test taker. I have had my fair share of good grades but, I have also had my fair share of bad ones too. That doesn’t matter in this class because there are no tests (Thank you!). I enjoy writing blog posts on the material. I have written blogs about other things before ranging from school related topics to my own personal sports blogs. It’s something I enjoy doing. I think overall this format helps me learn better. I like being able to read the material on my own time and then using what I learned in the readings to then go and write a blog post. I do not really think this format is that unfamiliar to me. To others, it may be weird but not for me. My Media and Communications CUE course was very similar to this. I used to this type of format.
Overall, I have really enjoyed taking this course so far! This type of learning is pretty much new to all of us and I think we are all handling it pretty well. I am excited to move on to the next major task which is writing my final project!
