Day 2

For the same reasons I have a difficult time assigning discussions to groups in my courses, I once again experienced the irritation I have in my own studies of lack of participation in an online course. I'm going back over the posts from the previous day - they are scattered, incomplete or extremely sparse except for a couple of group members. This is exactly what I observed in the online courses where I was a student. Because my grade depended on the success of the group, I constantly had to put up with folks waiting until 11:45 PM on the day an assignment was due to even post their first response which resulted in a lower grade - this is unfair and unreasonable.

What is even more frustrating in this situation is that these issues are exactly what were are studying! I have never had a really good experience in any course I have taken where discussion and group projects in an online environment are the key assessment methods. I believe that in a normal set of coursework you would not allow different groups or teams to peek in on the other group work, but perhaps see only the daily summary. Seeing that my particular group had only 4 or 5 postings by my normal bed time, to look in the next day and see someone had posted one of those "last minute" posts and that nobody from our group had posted a summary is beyond irritating. Other groups had 30 some odd posts before lunch yesterday. Why can't I be in that group. Perhaps I shouldn't feel this way - but why would I put my students through this when I have had nothing but the exact same experience?

Today I am supposed to be one of the observers that writes a summary of the day's activity. If yesterday was any sort of indicator of the quality that I can expect out of my group, I believe the summary will be a rant about the group if I have nothing to write about!