End of Semester Improvements Blog

Change Review Weeks to Planning Weeks Idea:

I really like this idea and I hope that this does get implemented into future classes. We have a saying in the Marine Corps that goes like this, "Piss poor planning equals piss poor performance." Excuse my language! The saying just doesn't come across the way that it's supposed to without everything being explicit. If this change is implemented into the class and obviously the assignments would be graded, then students would be academically encouraged to develop good plans for both the class and their personal schedules. I wish more courses, online and physical, had this built into their schedules!




Expand the Story Planning Option Idea:

I used this option once or twice this semester and I really enjoyed this option. I think that my story turned out a lot better than when I read Monday and Tuesday and then wrote my story on Wednesday. I think this was because I did look up more details relating to my story and plus I spent the rest of the week thinking about how I was going to write my story. In the end, I believe that my story turned out more complete and thought out.

The resources that helped me personally were the side notes and suggestions provided by the professor. For instance, when I was at a loss in trying to decide how to go about researching more details of my story sources, the professor had already anticipated the questions that I had. Some helpful suggestions were to research the cultural background, rituals, ceremonies, etc. that my stories were based on. I also found this helpful when working on my storybook. Now, if the planning option was made available in future classes then that would be awesome! An idea that I had was to make an assignment in which the student has the option to research how their subject is portrayed in different cultures. For example, Hephaestus is the Greek form of the smith god, but Vulcan is the Roman form. I did not do an extensive amount of background research on Vulcan, but if I would have, then I might have developed a different storybook project.




Create Writing Tutorial Videos Idea:

I had a great time developing my writing skills in this class! I especially loved learning how to use quoted speech throughout my stories but that's also where I had the most friction. The online resources and personal feedback helped tremendously and I love the idea of having tutorial videos that I could watch and learn from. Shoot, half the stuff I learn nowadays is from YouTube, so learning through a tutorial video would be like second nature. One other thing that I noticed that other students did was to integrate music into their storybooks. Maybe a tutorial video on the best way to do this would be helpful?