Orientation Begins

Today is the first day of my week long orientation class. I sat through two videos - one on the masters program and one on online classes in general. After that, you log in and do a practice class.

The practice class has you download some articles to read : "How Students Develop Online Learning Skills" and "What Makes a Successful Online Student." There was also a video on how to better organize your time using an excel spreadsheet which was cool. I did the same thing in undergrad, but with graph paper and colored pencils.

You read through two modules, take some quizzes and then log on to the discussion board for homework assignments.

One of the homework assignments was to take a picture of your work space and discuss if it works or what improvements you can make. Below if the photo I posted:

I'm pretty happy with it and it is ergonomic. In addition to posting it, we had to comment on other people's pictures as well.

And let's just get it out of the way..yes, that is a picture of Nathan Fillion as Capt. Hammer and an action figure of him as Capt. Mal Reynolds below my monitor. The calendar is from "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies."

The other thing we had to write about is what we think our pitfalls might be. I said time management since I haven't had to have structured time outside of work in a long time. However, I'm not really worried about that. I just needed to put something.