My Instructor's Teaching Methods

My instructors have engaged me in their courses by offering a variety of learning tools. Most of my classes at Marylhurst have been online-all except one. For my online classes, not just having to read a typed lesson but rather watching video clips, having online discussion forums, reading smaller chunks of information, and asking us questions, has been a tremendously fun way to learn. It is a lot less mundane and boring when they shake things up by offering us various learning tools such as videos, blogs, audio clips, photographs or art. My one class on campus was a fantastic class. We were up and out of our seats a lot and moving around the classroom which really fun and again, broke up the class time of just sitting and listening to a lecture. My in-classroom instructor offered games, lectures, videos, audio clips, art work, experiments, small groups, projects, working with others, and fun brain-teasers. Technology was used both in my online classes as well as my on campus class. The technology worked great! There were no problems. My one face to face class was amazing because my instructor did utilize dynamic learning strategies. I have had a couple really tough online instructors who were just interested in us doing the reading and answering the questions asked. However, most of my online instructors were really good about creating multiple activities to present the material needing to be learned that week, and I really feel that they helped guide student learning. They didn’t just have us read and spit back the answers at them, but rather expected us to find the answers through a variety of methods. Those are the classes that students really learn something-when we have to seek out the answer-and not when it is right there on paper in something we just had to read and then write the answers based on what we read. The methods that work best for me both in face to face and online classes are variety. Variety is the key. A bit of reading, a discussion forum asking us what do we think, questions to answer where we have to do a bit of digging to find the answers, small groups, art work, videos, brain teasers, and an overall atmosphere of calmness and laid back attitudes, are all methods that I have appreciated the most, and learned the most from.

My Interpretation

To take the Computer Technology Survey class at Marylhurst, one must be open to learn new things. When I first signed up for this class, I thought, oh no, not another computer class! I signed up for this class because it is a requirement at Marylhurst. I thought I knew everything there was to know and that I had already learned it all. What a pleasant surprise! Only the first two weeks did I know most of the stuff. Ever since, it has been a challenge. The title of the class is just that- it is a survey of all the computer technology out there. I believe it means that we will cover what the internet has to offer as well as the latest software, hardware, and digital media applications available. This class is designed to inform us students what is out there and how to utilize what we have learned in our everyday life- both personally and professionally. By the end of the class, we should be able to demonstrate and use these applications learned.