View Thread > Development and the Internet > Rotisserie Feedback > Need More Time To Digest Material

The Rotisserie discussions were great.  I enjoyed participating in them.  I would have liked more time to really digest and think about each area before being rushed to respond.  Since I have participated in other discussion forums, I really didn't find this one much different.  But I did like the fact that we were assigned a specific question to respond to.  This made me feel more a part of the discussion rather than just responding to everything.  I still found the discussion responses to be disconnected, however, like many of the discussion threads that I have seen.  In this discussion thread for example, only a few people really discussed or engaged in someone else's discussion.  People would end up establishing their own agendas and not really engaging the other respondent's idea or thought.  I found this rather disappointing.  

Some people are also still very judgmental, so instead of attempting to converse with another, they would make judgmental statements, such as, " I find this vague," etc.  The reason that we are taking these online courses is to first learn new information and then to be challenged by the course through our thinking and responses to questions posed to us.

I would have spent the same amount of time (and more) for any discussion forum.  I would have preferred to have had 2 weeks for each module to really learn and absorb the information well.  I conscientiously spent a  considerable number of hours reading the materials, taking notes and thinking about the questions.  Sometimes, because of my schedule, I would not have enough time to thoroughly think about questions and to respond.  In these instances, I felt rushed to answer with the time limit imposed on us.  In some modules, I did not get an opportunity to respond and had to move on to the next module.  For example, I had a very busy week during the module on Policy.  I felt shortchanged, because I wasn't able to get to the module until the weekend, and the deadline had passed for my posting.  Further, I had to move on to the next module, in order to stay on track with the course.  Having two weeks for each module with the  timed questions paced evenly and reasonably over the two weeks would be great.  Course developers forget to take into consideration, that many of us taking this course are working professionals on regular jobs and also trying to read the vast amount of material you give us to cover in a very short time period.  A full time student could handle this very easily, but those of us who have very rigorous work schedules had to make great sacrifices to keep up.

I liked a lot of the questions posed to us for discussion and wanted to really have enough time to conceptualize my theoretical analysis of the scenario or the model. Some questions, however, were pretty broad and vague, such as the first policy question.

All in all, this was a great online course.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt good about the fact that this time around I was able to participate in the discussions.  In past courses, my time constraints did not allow me much time for participation after spending hours reading the materials and visiting the assigned links.

I do hope that these courses continue because I am learning much and my knowledge and expertise in intellectual property and Internet issues and development is growing tremendously.  Thank you for providing us with these opportunities.

I agree with the comments in the above post. This post caused me to think once more about the qualities of our online discussions.  I again want to say that my greatest frustration was with not being able to clarify or to answer questions about my post posed by my responder.

I think it would be useful if, in addition to having a second week for readings, it would be useful to use this week to have the module instructor actually look a some of the prior week's discussions and comment on key areas of agreement/disagreement, possibly correct or clarify any points via our module page and then 'rotisserie' out a few new questions based on the discussions. I think that this would deepen the thinking and improve the course quite a bit without too great an effort.

I too hope these courses continue—it was a wonderful opportunity!

I like this idea, though I know from experience that the larger the class size, the more difficult it becomes to respond to everyone.  Perhaps, the instructor could post a reflective piece after reading everyone's comments and then address particular responses in this one posting.  This would not interfere too terribly on the instructor's time.  It takes an awful lot of time to be interactive in these on-line discussions.  A wonderful experience, though when time permits!