write a letter

Roger Rathburn

ENG_162_WA

Mr. Hricik

July 15, 2011

Dear WCCC Online Student:

Welcome to the world of WCCC online education. You will take all of your online classes through a Web site named Blackboard.com. My name is Roger Rathburn. I am also an online student here at WCCC. I have taken seven online courses. Overall, most of them were good or very good. Only one was pretty bad. I will have more comments on my evaluations in the Listing Drawbacks of Online Courses section.

In this letter, I will try to guide you through how to use Blackboard.com, and how to get the most out of an online course. I will be covering the following topics:

1. Accessing and Logging in to Blackboard

2. Using Blackboard’s Features

3. Taking Responsibility for Your Own Success

4. Listing Benefits of Online Courses

5. Listing Drawbacks of Online Courses

6. Interacting with Your Instructor and Your Classmates

1. Accessing and Logging on to Blackboard

You can access the WCCC area of Blackboard in one of two ways:

· You can go directly to Blackboard.com at https://wccc.blackboard.com/

· You can access Blackboard by clicking on the Access Blackboard link after logging in to your student account at https://my.wccc.edu/

To login to either Blackboard or your student account, you must enter your student username and password. Your student username is usually your last name plus your first initial and is entered in all lowercase letters. (For example, my username is rathburnr). Your password is the last six digits of your social security number.

Once you have decided which of the two methods for accessing Blackboard that you prefer, add the address to your favorites so you can access it with one click. I have found that this saves a lot of time and effort.

2. Using Blackboard’s Features

Blackboard has a large number of features available. Many of them I have never used. A few of them I use frequently. The features that I have found most helpful are:

· Help - The help icon is located at the top of your Blackboard home page. Click on Help and a new window will open with buttons that lead to areas with further information on Blackboard. The most useful area for me has been the How Do I? area which discusses Blackboard features and tools, but all of the areas provide useful information.

· Discussion Board – The Discussion Board is a place where students may interact with each other discussing topics chosen by the instructor. Like the Assignments feature, it can be accessed through a link on the left side of the main page for a given course. It is another feature that each instructor sets up for his or her own course. Usually the instructor will pick a topic for discussion, specify some guidelines, and open the topic to discussion by the students in that class. I have found that using the Discussion Board gives me some of the feel of the give-and-take of classroom discussions. It lets you get to know your fellow students and gives you some idea of the overall makeup of the class.

· My Grades – My Grades is the main feature for tracking your progress in a course. It is accessed by first clicking on the Tools link on the left side of the course main page, then clicking on the My Grades icon. By accessing My Grades, you can see if and when you submitted an assignment through the Digital Drop Box, and the grade that you received for the assignment. I consider it to be one of the most valuable Blackboard features.

· Email – The Blackboard email feature is called Send Email. It is accessed by first clicking on the Tools link on the left side of the course main page, then clicking on the Send Email icon. This method of access to email provides one major advantage over that of just logging in to your campus email account. I will discuss this further in the Interacting with Your Instructor and Your Classmates section.

3. Taking Responsibility for Your Own Success

Your own level of organization, degree of effort, and attitude will determine whether you will succeed or fail in your online courses. Yes. This is true of classroom courses also, but in an online course you are in complete charge.

Your instructor will post a syllabus that lays out the course, and will give you scheduled readings, assignments and tests, along with the required dates for completion of the items. It is up to you to read and understand all of the information that your instructor posts and do the work correctly and on time.

When you are taking four or five online courses at a time, you must be organized to be able to keep track of all of the various work and deadlines among the various courses. No one is going to remind you if you are late with something, you will usually just get a zero.

Most of the instructors that I have had have been clear in their postings and more that willing to answer any questions that I had about any items that I did not completely understand. However, all of them have been very strict about enforcing deadlines and getting assignments and tests done correctly the first time. Sometimes it is difficult to keep working hard for a sustained period of time, but you must be put out that sustained effort or you will be less than successful.

Finally, if you still have that “High School” attitude of “just trying to get by” or “seeing what you can get away with”, it won’t work here. Many of the online students are working at menial fulltime jobs as well as taking classes. This is their way out. They are determined to succeed. These are the people who are setting the standards for the work being done. If you want to succeed also, you had better be determined to do so.

4. Listing Benefits of Online Courses

The major benefits of online courses relate to the flexibility and savings involved in taking them:

· Time Flexibility - Work for an online course may be done at any hour of the day and on any day of the week.

· Location Flexibility - Work for an online course may be done anywhere. Business people on trips can keep up with their work, as can students on vacation, or people in foreign countries. The only constraint is the availability of online access.

· Time Savings – There is no time lost traveling to and from classes.

· Money Savings – No transportation costs are incurred traveling to and from classes. In fact, no transportation vehicle is even required for classes.

5. Listing Drawbacks of Online Courses

The drawbacks of online courses that I have noticed are related to the lack of face-to-face communication, the possibilities for becoming easily distracted, and the time lag for communication.

· Lack of face-to-face communication – There is no face-to-face communication with your instructor. Therefore, you are entirely relying upon written communications. Depending upon the communication skills of your instructor, and your ability to interpret what was written, a course may go very smoothly, or it may go badly. Most of the instructors for my online courses have been very organized, clear and complete in the materials that they have posted for the course. Assignments and expectations were clearly defined, time deadlines were consistent and clear, and helpful and timely feedback was provided for work submitted. However, I did have one instructor in particular who often gave vague instructions for assignments, sometimes failed to specify due dates (or changed them arbitrarily), and never gave me one bit of useful feedback. Her method seemed to be that we should:

1. Read the text

2. Do the assignments and quizzes

3. Read the grades she gave us

4. Don’t ask her to clarify anything (I sent her a number of emails and never received one useful reply.)

· Possibility of becoming easily distracted – I do almost all of my online coursework at home. Unless I am fairly disciplined about my schedule and my focus, I can easily be distracted by phone calls, chores that need to be done, the needs of family members, a TV show or sporting event that I may want to see, and so on. You must set your priorities and stick to them.

· The time lag for communication – It takes a while for the online student to realize that answers to questions are not going to come immediately. If you let your work go until the last minute, and then realize that you don’t understand an assignment, or need additional information, there is a good chance that you will not meet your deadlines. You must be organized and plan ahead or you may fail.

6. Interacting With Your Instructor and Your Classmates

As I explained under the Drawbacks of Online Courses section, there usually is no face-to-face communication with either your instructor or your fellow students. Email is generally the best way to communicate with them.

I described how to access the Blackboard email feature called Send Email in the Using Blackboard’s Features section. It is accessed by first clicking on the Tools link on the left side of the course main page, then clicking on the Send Email icon.

If you try this for one of your online courses, you will see that you now have email access to just the instructor and students for that particular course. You don’t need to search for a roster, the names and email addresses are right there.

So, if you want to send an email to the entire class, choose the All Student Users option; to just your instructor, choose the All Instructor Users option; and so on.

There are admittedly two disadvantages to using the Blackboard Send Email feature:

· Your email must be entered into an unformatted Message box

· You cannot receive replies there. To see any replies, you must go an log into your regular campus email account.

Having said that email is the best way to communicate, here are several cautions to keep in mind:

· Use the email only when it is necessary – Your instructor and the other students will quickly become annoyed with you if you start “spamming” them through the Blackboard email system.

· Remember that responses take time – Don’t wait until the last minute to ask a question and then expect a fast response. Everyone else is busy too. Plan ahead.

· Make your email clear, concise, courteous, and to the point – Don’t waste someone else’s time with muddled or extraneous content.

Conclusion

I hope that I have given you a clear and useful overview of what it is like to participate in online courses at WCCC. I have found them to be some of the most rewarding classes that I have taken, and some of the most challenging as well.

I will again say that if you are well organized, focus on your goal, and work toward it consistently, you will succeed. The opportunities are there before you.

Best wishes for your success.

Sincerely,

Roger Rathburn

Programming for the Enterprise Major