I think the textbook is alright at best. There is a lot of information that is covered in the textbook which can be a bit stressful. I like how there is read out loud option, which helped me a bit, but again, a lot of information. I do wish there was an option to invert the colors because bright screens can make it difficult to focus.

I was not a fan of the mindtap textbook. I was hoping for my teaching coming from my professor rather than paying an extra fee for a online textbook. This could have been video lectures, essays or quizzes through moodle, etc.

I'm good

Th text was rather difficult to read. I feel like much of the wording in the book was unnecessarily difficult to understand when simpler terms were applicable. for example I found myself looking up several words per week to fully understand the text, generally these words were not necessary to the text, but instead made the text confusing. I think if the terminology is not crucial to the material there is really no reason to make the text unnecessarily difficult to read.   

I like how the textbook itself was written, and liked the amount of detail, but would rather have a physical textbook, especially because of how expensive it was.

I enjoyed the flexibility the online textbook provided. You can read it like a normal book or have it read the book aloud. I also thought the highlights and note taking was easy to use and helpful. 

 As a student with very little online learning experience, I found MindTap easy to navigate and straightforward in its format. I tended to use pen and paper for notes and flashcards since I tend to retain information better that way. The readability was fine, with plenty of information in each chapter.

I think midweek deadline option might be good as a way to remind students to get started or finish the chapter exercises.

As a student with a busy schedule and only taking online courses this would make my life a lot harder. The midweek deadlines would only fill up my weekly schedule causing me to cram and perform worse.

midweek is alright

As a working student, I have to complete my homework/tests in the time that I have blocked out to do such things. As the weekend is one of the only times that I have to myself, I used much of my Saturday/Sunday to complete homework. This is less about procrastinating but more about filing my schedule. If I am doing the work, and learning the material, does it really matter when I did it? I am responsible for my own learning, and thus need to incorporate the school work into my life. Mid week deadlines would only act as an obstacle for me. 

While I did try to set aside time to work on the assignments each day, they ended up getting pushed to the end of the week a lot, which caused me to rush through the assignments more quickly than I would have otherwise. I think multiple due dates could help to make people spread the work out more and gain a better understanding of the material.

I’m pretty neutral on the idea as I think it would work well to increase engagement throughout the week but it could also take away time from students who are taking a lot of classes or who have obligations other than school. I did most of my work on mondays and tuesdays because it’s worked best for my schedule. I think giving students the most flexibility, especially in an online class would be best.

I hear what you are saying, and to be honest, I was one of those students. Though it varied from week to week, which two days I would use to quickly go through a chapter, the problem I found with this was that though I was able to complete a chapter in about four hours, my retention of the material was diminished. You could also add, say, one written assignment along with the varied due dates to guide students into a deeper participation in the course.

I think there should always be opportunities for extra credit because a student could have one mess up and have their entire letter grade dropped. This will allow them to fix their grade. Some students may not need it because they are satisfied with their grade.

extra credit is good

Not many of my classes offered extra credit. That being said for a class that relies heavily on test scores, having a few extra credit opportunities would certainly make life easier, and less stressful.  

I haven't had many other classes offer extra credit, and I don't care that much about extra credit.

I think one or two extra credit assignments are helpful to push a grade up a little bit. An entire letter grade may be bit excessive but somewhere around 5% would entice myself to do it. With this class in particular I found that the online course work did not allow for many errors. If I missed just two answers a week on mind tap I may end up with a low 90% on that weeks assignment. A few extra credit assignments would help balance it out.

The only class I took that offered extra credit was Ethnic Studies. You had the choice of completing a total of three assignments worth ten points each. Though I did not do any of the extra credit assignments since I was maintaining 100% in the course, I do think some form of extra credit should be available in any class.

I think minimal options for zoom is good if we want to get help from you face-to face, that way it might be faster to be faster to communicate or if we'd prefer it that way.

Have a once a week meeting to help guide the students of the weekly assignments of the present week and go over the previous weeks assignments. This time can also be used for answering any questions.

zoom is bad

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I haven't had any classes use zoom, but do like the idea of it to allow the students and instructor to communicate face-to-face and have class discussions.

I enjoyed having the option to meet with my instructor via zoom if I needed this term. If there was an optional weekly meet up with class mates to discuss the course material I might have joined a few times but most likely I would have skipped most of them.

In all three of my classes, zoom was only offered as an option to speak with the instructor, which, as I indicated in my answer, would be my preferred choice. I will admit, though, that I have rarely used Zoom and am not comfortable with its technical aspects. Although they do cover Zoom in the How to Use Moodle non-credit course, I believe if I was required to participate in a one-time instructional session as a new online student as well as one Zoom meeting with each of my professors at the beginning of the term as a sort of meet and greet this would be greatly beneficial and alleviate some of the apprehension I had in regards to using it.

I think doing something like a study guide that tells us what we should review or an optional mini review quiz would've helped instead of filling in definitions. Sometimes the terms can be confusing.

Not that I know of.

#1

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I can't think of any.

None that I can think of.

As someone who has never engaged in social media and has very little knowledge of such tools, I have no valuable input for this question.

The only issue I have with this proctored testing environment was the amount of material needed to study for the midterm and final. Something my other instructor did was split the midterm into two parts, 3 chapters for each midterm and 2 for the final, which eased the amount of material needed to study for each exam.

I like the online courses because it fits my schedule, the midterm and final made it difficult for me to prepare for because I was forced to take them in the middle of work hours during the week.

I'm good

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I prefer classroom courses because it allows you to talk to your fellow students and instructor face-to-face, but I think this can be replicated pretty well by zoom meetings.

Since enrolling at LCC last year I’ve taken a mixture of online and in person classes. I think the flexibility online classes give students is great. I feel like I learn just as much as I do in person but I wouldn’t want to just take online classes. The social aspect is lacking in most online classes and I’m not sure there’s a good way to replicate it in an online setting.

I would have loved to been able to take at least some portion of my classes on campus, simply because I believe that interactions between students and teachers create a deeper college experience and allow for more discussion and debates which should be a core attribute of any college or university. I had no other choice due to where I live and my work requirements as a self-employed fishing guide with a varying schedule. I think a hybrid option with one day a week in class and the remainder online would produce a healthy balance.

Besides what was stated on 29, maybe at least 2 extra credit assingments (optional).

I would suggest changing the midterm and final. If you want it to be in-person proctored then maybe make it less questions. Being forced to study for over 100 terms for a hundred level online course is a little absurd.

I'm good

I would have appreciated if there were a few more questions in the MindTap exercises. On almost all activities there were only 3 questions, so if you missed one question you essentially got a D+ on that portion of the exercise. This is especially bad for poorly worded questions, or the image analysis as often it seemed that there could be more than one right answer. 

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Potentially the addition of a few assignments in moodle to go along with the mindtap work.