Finals Week: The Final Blog

The last blog I ever write for this class... what a trip. It was a joy and this has been, without a doubt, one of the most "21st century" classes I've ever taken. Dr. Haas has designed a fully online class which takes full advantage of the "online" part. It's been fun, easy, and enlightening using all sorts of online resources to achieve our learning goals. Speaking of learning, in this blog, we're asked to describe two moments of "transformative learning," defined as a time during the course of this class where we experienced a significant change in the way we view learning and the world around us.

The first time I experienced this was when I realized just how fun an online class can be when it's structured around the internet, not as a mimicry of an in-person class. What I usually expect from an online class is to sit down, watch a pre-recorded lecture, answer a brief quiz about it to prove I watched it, rinse and repeat until the exams come. However, this class was completely and utterly different, in the best ways possible. There were no lectures, no quizzes, and yet I was more interested in the learning objectives than I ever have been in an online curriculum.

The second time I experienced a transformative learning moment was during the course of writing the Scicomm article. Throughout that process, I realized that I was doing the same sort of work of writers that I admired when I was a kid. I'd skim through magazines and books looking for interesting scientific tid-bits which were made all the more interesting by the way they were presented. When I realized that style of presentation was scicomm, I was taken back to my childhood and to a time when I still felt wonder and awe at scientific marvels.

In this blog, we are also asked to describe two problems we had in this class. For me, the biggest problem was punctuality. Given that there are no Zoom meets, we are wholly responsible for managing our time, something that I struggle with heavily. As such, I unfortunately found myself turning in several assignments late. Another thing that I struggled with throughout this course was reading instructions thoroughly. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I often found it difficult reading the fine print in each and every assignment and would sometimes go through them feeling a little lost. Working on managing my time and becoming more detail oriented are things that I'm going to focus on moving forward.

So that was WRIT 60 and I'm glad to have been a part of it. Bye!