Category: Announcements

Please take some time to explore this OpenLab course site. Use the top menu bar to explore the course information, activities, and help. Please read through the Syllabus in the drop-down menu under Info. The Schedule, also under info, gives the week to week work, and all the readings and videos are linked there. Scroll through the sidebar to find additional information about the materials shared here. As the course progresses, you will be adding your own work to the Discussion sections multiple times each week. That’s your homework for the course each week besides the three major unit projects.

Join this Course

Login to your OpenLab account and follow these instructions to join this course.

If you’re new to the OpenLab, follow these instructions to create an account and then join the course.

Questions

If you have any questions, you can post them in the questions thread of the Introduction discussion area (feel free to respond to each other and help or add to a question) reach out via email or in Office Hours. If you need help on the OpenLab, you can consult OpenLab Help or contact the OpenLab Community Team.

Day One HW: 

Being an online student, or just having an online portion to an in-person class can be intimidating, confusing, and just plain difficult! But not for long!

Here’s what you’ll do:

PLAY with the website. You can’t break it. Honestly. I’ve tried. Click around on all the tabs. See what’s there! This is an essential part of the class, as your homework is to do the reading linked on OpenLab and participate in our weekly discussions on them. This is IN ADDITION to our classwork and discussions on campus, so make yourself familiar with the room. 

READ: these three short “Tips” pieces

• • “Tips for Online Learning Success”  https://www.nhcc.edu/student-resources/online-learning-d2l/tips-for-online-learning-success

• • “Online Discussions: Tips for Students” https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/developing-assignments/blended-learning/online-discussions-tip-students

WRITE: a new post in our discussion area in the Introduction section. In addition to introducing yourself to me and your classmates, feel free to:

• Start with one word that describes how you’re feeling about this course as we get started. No need to explain, but you can if you want to. 
• Talk about your worries, concerns, reactions to the readings and/or to being an online student… whatever you want to. No censoring… except keep it kind of clean, please ;-). And
• Add a picture that means something to you, and explain why you chose it — why does it mean something to you?

Check back in and see what other people are saying, and reply  to a couple of people. It’s nice to know we’re not alone!

Day Two HW:

READ: “How to Read Like a Writer” by Mike Bunn. 

In this article, Bunn says that his students suggests that the advice they would give to future students is that they  “write yourself notes and summaries both during and after reading.” So I’d like you to do that. Please take out a piece of paper and a pen (or pencil) and have it beside you as you read.  

Using our course Perusall site (or the PDF commenting function on Google Docs) make at least 5 annotations– comments in the margins. These can be observations or questions, or simply summaries of the paragraphs. This annotation exercise is all about noticing what you notice!  

WRITE:  On the website, write a post of at least 300 words responding to all parts of my prompt that begins the discussion of this reading. (scroll down and click on “older posts” to get to the first page of the unit one discussion area.)