To be perfectly honest, I appreciated the importance of writing this blog only until the end of the semester. Not that I don't like to write or not that I'm not a big fan of social networks, but the assignment was so challenging, that I couldn't tell from the very beginning if I was going to like it.
In general a course ends in the classroom and you hardly ever critically evaluate the information that you received. this is very common for the majority of liberal arts courses. Unlike them, science, math, finance, accaunting requires a lot of extra work. You go over the problems and you finally understand what it's all about. In a similar way my management class required a lot of brain stretching, problem-solving skills, thinking outside of the box. Having a blog was useful, because I actually had to sit and rethink what I've done, how I could do better and therefore, improve my future performance.
Another feature of this blog assignment that I truly enjoyed is ability to find out more about your classmates. If you think about social life in public schools as it is, students just meet for classes and then go to work. There's not a lot of interactions and, therefore, less possibilities to network or exchange ideas. Blogging is a way of speaking with your classmates in a less formal setting. It gave me an exposure to what other people think and how they think and I found it very useful.
However, despite the fact that we had to respond to three classmates' blogs, I felt sometimes that it was just part of everyone's routine. I didn't really notice bloggers responding to the comments, as well as I myself never responded to other people's comments on my own page. Involving into a conversation could result into new ideas, findings and discussions. And this is how I see the way to improve this blog assignment. Have less blog topics (I think that 5 is enough - I would get rid of culture shock and may be smth else), but have students collect more than 7 responses to their blog entries. It will definitely foster each student's creativity and change the way of delivering information. It should also improve virtual interactions among classmates.
Finally, meeting deadlines, I think was also a good part of this blogging exersise. In order to get a full credit we had to be consistent and organized during the entire semester. We didn't have an option to write 5 papers at a time over the weekend, which I'm actually very good at. However, motivation to receive full 20 points for this assignment was so strong that I never missed a deadline. I knew that class was not going to be easy and having some room for a grade would never heart. Again, having my grade under control allowed me to improve my time-managment skills in allocating time to different classes.
Finally, being ESL student who lived in this country for 3 years and learned english basically from the scratch allowed me better memorize terminology and concepts. Not having english classes in my curriculum anymore hurts, because I can't really practice my writting and observe how effective I am in delivering my ideas to the public. I do appreciate everyone's feedback and comments left to my blog! I read them all.
Thank you everyone, for you cooperation and for the wonderful semester!
I think that we all got some pleasure out of the blogs. I know this was a different experience for me. I though I was a very social person until I came to Baruch last semester. I found it hard to make a connection with people when all they did was run away at the end of the class. I guess these blogs kind of gave us access to classmates.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the blog was an efficient tool to reach out to fellow classmates and see what other people had on their mind regarding the course and it's material. Baruch can be hard to meet and speak to people since it's not much of a social campus but every little effort helps.
ReplyDeleteYour right this blog has it's advantages and disadvantages. The good thing about it is you can interact with students in your class that you normally wouldent, being that college life in Baruch moves at a fast pace. It also has the benefit of exchanging ideas and pinpointing the rights and wrongs between each class activity or even the class materail sometimes. If your into social networking this blog is a good way to help each other with whatever is unclear in the class. The bad thing on the other hand is that you have to keep track of when the assignments are due, and you have to be clear and precise in each blog to get the point across. Sometimes I say things that have a different meaning to what I am trying to say. But overall I think this blog has helped alot of us break our everyday routine and be more creative.
ReplyDeleteI didn't really respond to people's comments either but it wasn't because I didn't care, maybe Prof. K should require students to respond to the comments on their blogs? It's great that blogging helped you with your English and hopefully it helped the rest of our international students because that is the only way to learn, by practicing.
ReplyDelete