One challenge that we as students run into at the beginning of every class is learning the expectations of the professor. Here are some examples:
For most of my several years in school, all papers had to be written in APA format. Now that I’m in grad school, the professors pay a lot less attention to that kind of stuff.
The last couple of professors I had wanted our written assignments to reach a minimum word count, but not go more than 10% over the limit. This presented a very good challenge since the coursework was very in-depth. This time around, our professor states, “I do not like long posting or long papers, but I do like quality. So there is no expected length on your work.” This in itself presents a challenge.
In brief and concise postings and written assignments, we have to make sure we have understood the theory behind the assignment, incorporate the theory of previous weeks, show that we have done our own research and incorporated valuable information, and show that our theory has been analyzed and that we can discriminate what is relevant and important.
For example, if we are talking about cultural differences, and the information we posted or wrote about is about examples of cultural differences between Americans and Japanese, the analysis must be based on that information.
Our work must contain a good synthesis, introduction, subtitles, and a conclusion. I get this part. Nobody wants to read some long diatribe. I enjoy being direct and to the point when I am explaining my ideas and theories. I am going to assume that bullet points will be abundant in this class.
Either way, this is yet another challenge. Learn what your professor expects from you. Just because you have done something one way for several years means little to another professor who expects something different.
One more thing that I noticed was that in the last class (Operations Management), the professor let us turn in things late all the time. He knew that the workload was huge and he was VERY lenient on deadlines. I think I actually got one assignment turned in on time. This professor will not be that lenient. Being on time is a requirement.
Moving forward.
With almost six consecutive years dedicated to distance education, Scott has the experience to answer any questions you may have about the topic. Please feel free to contact Scott about anything having to do with online education. You can also check out his photo blog or his LinkedIn profile.