Wow! Online learning is much more difficult than I ever imagined. It is amazing the difference between sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture than it is reading about it yourself. I have a very visual learning style and it seems that online learning would be perfect for that scenario, but as I recently discovered it is much different than I expected.
The tests were the most troublesome part of this class for me. I have very little problems encoding information into long-term memory for certain subjects, but in other circumstances I have great difficulty. I have a very mathematic mind and am very good at following steps and algorithms. When there are many correct answers and you must choose the best I seem to have great difficulty. Heuristics can be very helpful to me but I usually have trouble in determining the correct answer. I like structure in my life and it is very difficult for me to choose the best among alternatives.
I greatly enjoyed completing coglabs in this class because when we answered the questions they have ambiguity. I like being able to express myself as I see fit and that greatly helped throughout those lessons. The reading and remembering information for the tests was extremely difficult for me. I tried using techniques that we had learned such as state-dependent learning and the peg-word technique. I had very little success when it came to the final and mid-term exams. The quizzes were not as difficult because I am able to encode little bits of information into my long-term memory but when there were massive amounts of information that need to be processed I have trouble retrieving the information.
Throughout this course I have learned great deals of information and I wish that could have shown through my tests. I have always had trouble with tests and this was no exception. I wish that I could express better what I have learned, but one of the only ways in an on-line class to access that information is through tests. I greatly enjoyed the material in this class and look forward to using it in my future endeavors.