Final Impressions - Journal Entry No. 10

What are your final impressions of the Colloquium?

Mostly, I am glad this class is over. There was an overwhelming amount of work and time spent on this course. This was a difficult course when you work fulltime and are taking additional classes as well. I still feel like this course is a bit paternalistic of the university system in that the school thinks it is best for me to know something and therefore, requires me to take this course, which is not directly related to my major or career field. I do feel like the course improved my critical thinking skills. I do feel that this course helped to revive my appreciation for the beauty and wonder of nature. I do feel like this course made me more aware of my personal responsibility and civic duty help preserve the environment. This course brought up a lot of problems that currently exist in the environment; but not very many solutions. It felt like the main purpose of this course was to make students aware of the current problems and then try to inspire them to want to work for change.

What changes would you make to the course?

I would not have assignments that require students to learn new computer skills in order to complete the course. It is reasonable to expect students to know how to maneuver Angel and to know basic computer programs such as Word, Excel, Power Point, etc. It is reasonable to expect students to know how to search articles and information on the World Wide Web. To me, it is not reasonable to expect students to know how to create a blog or a wiki site. I have never had an occasion to “zip” documents or make pictures “smaller” in order to upload them prior to taking this class (and this is my last semester at FGCU and all of my classes have been online). I did not know how to do this and had to get help in order to accomplish the task. There is a lot of pressure just to complete the assignments and do well on the projects without throwing in the added stress and confusion of trying to figure out how to “do” the assignment in a blog or a wiki site. There were many occasions where I spent hours of time trying to figure out how to upload a picture, or a video, or a sound clip and simply could not figure out how to do it. This is not a computer class.

Also, I do not think it is fair to “require” students to do service learning hours when they have already completed the number of service hours “required” by FGCU in order to graduate. I was told by the Legal Studies professor that I could only take this Colloquium class in the year that I planned to graduate – so this is the last semester. I had already completed all of the service learning hour requirements prior to taking this class. Then when I get this class – I learn I am required to work ten more service learning hours. If a student has already completed the number of service learning hours required by the university to graduate – then the requirement for ten additional service learning hours for this class should be waived for that student.

What assignments would you keep or discard?

I would keep the writing assignments (Papers 1 and 3) because they require critical thinking and organization and comprehension of the material presented. I do not agree with the “peer review” of the draft of the paper. I do not feel qualified to “judge” or “critique” another student’s paper – because I am a student myself. I would discard the peer review part of the writing assignment.

I think the field trips should be an option to choose and also have the option (if you cannot go on field trips) to write papers about nature preserves, swamps, farms, etc. Or, field trips could be “extra credit.” In my particular case – I had surgery on both of my feet and could not walk very much and could not drive – so in order to complete the field trip assignments, I had to arrange for someone to drive me there and had to walk the terrain (which was against my doctor’s orders). None of my previous classes had required field trips – so I was not concerned with scheduling the feet surgeries during a semester – actually thinking since I would be spending more time at home, I would have more time to do my schoolwork. Also, in order to go on the field trips and do the service learning hours for the final project – I had to cancel or change things in my schedule. When people work fulltime and have a family – it is not always easy to come up with the additional time to go on field trips and work volunteer hours.

I like the discussion board assignments. I always learn a lot from the other students from their ideas and postings.

I would keep the “journal” idea to chronicle things we have learned and experienced in this course, but I don’t think it should be required to be in a blog format. A written journal could be kept and uploaded instead of a blog.

I would discard the wiki assignment and the group work related to it. Group work is difficult unless everyone in the group works together and works hard. It is not fair for other people (in a group) to have an impact on my grade – when I have no control over the actions of the other people. I don’t understand why we need to create a wiki page. Most of my classes in Legal Studies caution us not to use wiki as a source for any assignments. I really did not understand the “point” of the wiki assignment.

I did not like the assignment to interview your grandparents. Not all college students are young people. I am 55 years old and my grandparents and parents are dead. I find it a little embarrassing at my age to have to interview someone for a school assignment.

What readings did you like or dislike and why?

I really liked reading A Land Remembered. It was an interesting book with a very good story. I feel like it helped me to learn a lot about the history of Florida and having been to the Everglades on previous occasions, it brought the Everglades to life in my mind. The State of the World book was interesting; however, it seemed biased to me in the way it was written. I thought that the articles by Dewey, Low and Orr were difficult to read and difficult to understand. I had to re-read them several times to get the “gist” of the message. The single spaced two column pages in landscape format made it hard to read.

What suggestions for activities or field trips do you have?

I think that finding and summarizing current newspaper or magazine articles about the environment or sustainability would be something that could be added. As far as field trips, I think there should be more inclusion of animals as part of the environment in the curriculum. Perhaps a visit to a sea turtle habitat or beach or zoo with “natural habitat” exhibits or animal sanctuary. I think it would be interesting to have people write about places in nature they visited in the past or as a child that they remember as special. Or, I think you could even write about national parks that people can visit and why you would like to go there.