Class Ending...Thoughts

This course was a bit difficult for me to keep up with and the financial aspect of the course content was fairly hard for me to follow. Although it has been tough, I understand the purpose. I’m aware that I will need to understand the costs of various aspects of education and perhaps, at some point, be able to calculate these costs, create a budget, and follow the budget, so this information has been extremely helpful.

 It’s also been very helpful for me to understand the real costs of certain distance education items. This was my first major exposure to realistic costs of certain items, such as content development and learning management systems.

As far as the assignments, I really appreciated this reflective journal assignment because, at times, the number of topics in the weekly classroom discussions has been overwhelming. Also, I found myself struggling to write a substantial post in the somewhat scattered threads. This journal has been a “quiet space” for me to reflect on the course topics, discussions, and assignments.

I enjoyed the live Wimba session with Tony Bates and I wish that these types of sessions were present in every course in the OMDE program. This was, by far, my favorite course activity and it was great to not only have the opportunity to ask Tony a question and to hear his thoughts on various topics, but to also hear from my other classmates.

The most interesting topic to me this semester was Human Capital Theory.  Although I identified several weaknesses of the theory in my paper, the few strengths outweighed the weaknesses. I think that the strengths versus the weaknesses are what made the topic so interesting to me. I didn’t find it difficult to identify the weaknesses of this theory, but while writing the paper, I didn’t think that I would come to the conclusion that the few strengths I identified outweighed my long list of weaknesses.  That was a bit surprising, yet enlightening.

Overall, this course definitely pulled me out of my comfort zone (with all of the financial aspects) and I learned a great deal.