Part1.

This was quite an experience. I never took a class with asynchronous scheduling. In fact, I did not know the meaning of the word. The meaning became evident as the course progressed. I am not sure if I prefer online asynchronous learning. I am old fashioned in many regards. I do like technology and all that comes with it, but writing is one of those skills that is best done in person. It is a definite skill set to be creative or express yourself succinctly while being grammatically correct. There are also the clever constructions and wordings that some writers create so impressively. Through all the assignments I kept two things in mind. First was the structure of how I was to present what I was trying to say. Second how I was going to say it. Keeping in mind that this is a composition course, so I best use the right words while paying attention to punctuation and grammar. Unfortunately, my courses this year turned out to be writing intensive, so it became a bit intense at times. Without being verbose at this point I did learn plenty from this course and a lot about myself as a writer. I identified some strengths and weaknesses. I know I should have a much better vocabulary and structure my compositions better. On the positive side I improved in my research abilities, and learned much more about economics in general. I found AMA style informative and have since ordered a book on it to improve further. I recognize that for me this is a skill best practiced to maintain proficiency.

Yes I reiterate, this was a writing intensive semester for me. The frustration of prioritizing the constantly assigned work, work that seemed to not allow me to fully invest my time to improve what I had done to maintain deadlines. Made me feel if I didn’t have to do that, I can work on this and vise versa. I found there was a resulting benefit though. Although this asynchronous, my other courses were synchronous so at times they intersected. On those occasions I benefited and received a better grade as I applied the skills learned in one class to another. I believed the other professors observed some skill being displayed and credited me for that even if my content was a bit technically lacking in some regard.

   

Part 2.

My feelings on the assignments are somewhat middle of the road with a range left and right. I did not feel I knocked anything out of the park. Except that I had grasped the concept but struggled with the content, particularly unit two. I kept it relevant and current, wrestling with issues in an anything but normal world at this time. I understood the lesson and wanted to make a deep dive into my subject matter. What I wound up doing was going too deep for two long, coming back to the surface for air, somewhat apprehensive to continue another decent. The more expert theories I found were written by scholars who have some specific lexicon and vocabulary. I found myself reading a paragraph over and over to grasp the concept and how that would help me reach a conclusion. My unit two subject matter is a science as it deals with numbers and is well studied with documented theory. I could not spend enough time to understand them all. So, I asked myself on what basis can I comment on whether this is a right course of action, when I have no real technical expertise. I drew my conclusions from a historical perspective. It was really my only option but it was a means to an end. Not really that conclusive as there were many human factors that would inject themselves in determining success or failure outside the numbers. Positions are polarized and realizing that the economy is one of the major subjects of current debate, I did find myself mired in the politics of it all while researching. Overall, I would say unit two was one of my better assignments. I would want it in my portfolio. Unit three I would say is not one of my better assignments. What is interesting I noted about myself between these two assignments is that I dreaded unit two, but I was excited to begin unit three. The final outcome was the antithesis of what I had expected. Again, I tried to dual purpose the assignment and intended to become a guru of PowerPoint. I know that it can be much more creative than what I had built. For instance, the program Microsoft Access is one of the most amazing programs if a person is knowledgeable in its use. Without the skills, Access is just another version of Excell.

Since both unit two and three were connected, I was somewhat canalized in my subject. I made up for this restriction by assuming I had latitude in my creativity. This did not work to my advantage and it became a bit confusing at times. I have prepared several good PowerPoints before. Not getting much recognition for the prettiness of the presentation but for the content. I diverged from my normal use of the program and attempted a new creation. By the time I had second thoughts I had too much time invested. I believe I learned more about PowerPoint than multimodal presentations. Another aspect that caused some conflict was the desire to be non-confrontational or insulting. Much to my dismay there is a severe polarizing in the direction of the country at this time. The concern for the direction going forward can incite passions within a broad spectrum. In unit three the only comfort I gained is that web pages have been listed as multimodal, and what I did in my work was very similar to some of my first attempts at a web page. And it does in a sense pay homage to the early bumbling novices of HTML. I might just try to figure out a way to get it all on my YouTube channel.