Online Classes

I am on the fence about online classes.

I fully support continuing education and of course mostly everything online. Haven’t walked into a bank in years, love that Safeway delivers and me and the iphone have an almost unhealthy relationship … almost.

I took my very first online class this semester. I usually take classes at least once a year, anything from fused glass fun, Indesign, Linux and of course Thai cooking. (yum!). This time I took a javascript class.

For the most part it was a disappointment. And it has nothing to do with the online aspects. The interface is clean: the enrollment, grades, tests, options to talk to fellow students all very easy and  good usability.

The problem I had was with the instructor.   I got the impression he wrote up this class several years ago and it just goings through the motions. His lessons plans were covered with typos.  Assigments and examples that were appropriate for Netscape 4 just wont work on modern browsers. And really why do I want to edit the status bar?  Hello 1995!  

As I wrote to him, I think he just needs to fresh up his online course.  He is very attentive and responds quickly to questions. But he needs to gauge how his students are doing, often his possible solutions were far more advanced than the class.

So even though the class helped, the idea of online classes was a bit discouraging.  I asked a few coworkers who were taking other online classes and they were having a blast and they learned a lot.  This was encouraging, so I signed up for another online class Spring semester.