Online Courses

Writing courses online as a normal education in class means home task assignments as well.
While completing the reading assignments, identify your knowledge gaps and create a list of questions to ask the facilitator during a live session. This helps you prepare your mindset for the course and maximizes the learning you may achieve. Print the questions and have them available during the session. If available, review the content outline or session topics and organize your questions to match the sequence of the session presentations. This technique will help you organize your thoughts while relating the content to knowledge you already have. As the questions are answered, capture the answers on your list. Another technique is to create your personal course objectives—identifying what you would like to achieve by attending the course. This may be simply an awareness of the topic or deep technical knowledge leading to a certification. Now that we have completed the discussion of writing course content, let's examine the technology aspect of attending a online writing course.

When facilitators organize classroom courses, they make arrangements for the meeting room, printing of course materials, and use of audiovisual equipment. The selection of synchronous software, creation of electronic versions of the materials, and the scheduling of the session are the synchronous equivalent. For classroom writing courses online, you travel to the course site and select a seat in the room to view the presentation. In a synchronous session, traveling to the course is accomplished through use of the Internet connection. You can think of your computer running the participant software as your own personal classroom. Your boarding pass and photo ID are your login and password, while your seat in the writing course online is the view provided by the participant software running on your computer.