Being a distance student can be difficult for those students who are not aware of their learning intelligence style, because it would be hard to know how to guide themselves and focus on what and how they really need to learn. In my experience, it has been hard working in distance courses, because I like to communicate and I find it difficult to interact with my classmates and teacher in this modality. However, I have kept optimistic and just keep on trying to follow instructions carefully. Therefore, I think that it is very important to remain optimistic and try to enrole as much as possible in the course so we could maintain motivated though all the course. In the other hand, I find it easy to organize and prioritize my activities and I always stick to my time schedule to achieve all the goals I set at the beginning and throughout the whole course.
Although I am linguistic and social, I like to work autonomously and I guess here is where my interpersonal strength shows up, which sometimes I see it as a strength because I can find my way by working alone and I do not have to be pushed around to accomplish my assignments. But, when it comes to work in teams, I find it a little bit difficult to mediate the way I work and adapt to other people’s way to work and that’s when I see it as a weakness. Even though I like being autonomous, I have felt alone and in some way lost in a distance course, specially when I have doubts and the time to clear all those questions takes a little bit longer then when attending a face-to-face course. However, I have come to develop my skills on internet researches to investigate and come up with a solution to my questions and or problems.
I think that in order to succeed in a distance course, one must be organized, autonomous, but at the same time has to be willing to participate in distance group discussions to enrich and complement their cognitive skills. As future teachers, we need to find ways to help students to enrich this kind of communication exchange. Students also need to prioritize their goals and of course plan their activities, They also need to communicate effectively.
If I have to come up with two constructive solutions to contribute to help a student complete a distance course, those solutions would be:
-To take advantage of all devices they have and of course to learn how to use the internet in an effectively way. That way, students would not get discouraged when they do not understand something, they would pursue their goal by researching and constructing their own knowledge. Here I would like to mention that when I say use the internet I don’t mean wikipedia or such paces, but online libraries, ibooks, online magazines and even other online schools that provide useful information and access to lots of interesting articles.
- To keep motivated. And I think the best way of keeping motivated is creating a list at the beginning of the course with all the expectations from the course and goals they want to achieve, that way it would be easy to keep track of their own progress. Another way to keep motivated could be interacting with our classmates, and encouraging each other with good and positive feedback.
Wow, Gaby... even though it sounds quite easy, I haven´t thought in what you said at the beginning. "Being a distance student can be difficult for those students who are not aware of their learning intelligence style, because it would be hard to know how to guide themselves..." Of course it is true. Fortunately, I can work quite good without communicating with my classmates, but there are a lot of students who work/think different. However, I would say that it is -in part, the teacher´s job to make the class "pleasant" for all the students, trying to make them not to lose interenst, and trying to keep them motivated and focused in the class... Well, that´s my opinion.
ReplyDeleteDear Gabby,
ReplyDeleteI found your personal reflection most interesting. I think you did an excellent job at describing your skills. I also think that working in teams is little hard, but thanks to our interpersonal skills, we can always find a way to adapt to other people’s ideas. With this I am not saying that we fully agree on everything, instead we work collectively to fulfill a goal by, as you say, communicating effectively. Thank you for sharing; it is always a pleasure to read your posts.
Attentively,
José Luis Marín Jiménez
Being optimistic is a perfect technique, in my opinion, that helps a lot in doing the assignments in an effective way. However, a good way to do so it could be the positive feedback, as you mention, to be always motivating.
ReplyDeleteI think staying motivated, as you mentioned, is the main key in any kind of studies. Not being motivated takes us all the way down to feeling a curse is boring, eternal and useless, therefore, one must take advantage of every resource possible to make the experience a good one.
ReplyDeleteYou've touched on a very important issue when you say that one must use every available resource when in a distance course. I couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteWe would need to stress that "every resource" means "EVERY RESOURCE" available. Be it e-mail, forums, Google search and any way possible of keeping in touch with people.
I would add that progress reflections also work really well. As you have stated no matter how autonomous one might be, there is always that moment where one might feel alone. Publicly posting progress reflections, about once a week, really makes a difference. It lets others know how one is progressing and through their feedback usually one discovers that others are going through the same difficulties as one is.
Progress reflections are not necessarily part of a distance course, but they are an excellent strategy to keep motivated and to connect with other classmates who might be also at a distance.
Hi, communication is al very importa skill thet we need to develop in order to express our ideas in a more accurate way.
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