Tuesday, September 9, 2008

What was that?

I just had the weirdest experience. One of my classes I am taking is research methods. I have been dreading this one...it is supposed to be one of the hardest in the program. But I know I have to do it, and planned to just get it done and be done with it.

Here is the weird part. It is a group project. I am reliant upon 5 other people to help me get the grade. And I live here in Arkadoo, and one of my group-mates lives in Mena, 2 live in Conway, and 2 others live in Nashville, TN.

So we are working together online (finally-after taking nearly 2 weeks to pin everyone down to one time and place.) And all of our work has to be submitted electronically, individually, but must also be IDENTICAL. That really confuses me, because how in this world are all six of our papers going to be exactly the same from six hours apart.

Now, I'm sure that other groups are flying through these proximity issues by discussion boards, chats, posting, whatever, but I am not tech saavy (see my back arrow post!). These things make me feel old. When I graduated from HSU, email was still pretty tricky, but now there are whole classes that meet entirely online! You can take a test while eating popcorn in your p.j.s. Wow.

So for the past two hours we have labored online talking about font size and indentation, and wording. And this is just for our practice sheets...we haven't even started the actual paper yet.

I am so going to have to give up control of this. But I don't like it.

1 comment:

Amber said...

All that techno stuff still confuses the heck out of me, too! I had to sub in the distance learning lab today...oh my gosh...these kids are scanning their homework in to their e-teachers, taking quizzes online, and are taking notes on a computer. What? It was way over my head. I'm so sorry that you are having to figure all that crazy business out. I'd be a lost goose.