2009: A Scholarly Odyssey
Posted by Sharon Cece on February 26th, 2009
When you consider the itemized supply list required of erstwhile brick-and-mortar college students, it’s mind-boggling. Visualize the multi-text’d/ pen, pencil, marker, highlighter’d/ calculator/ notebook/ ruler/ lined and graph paper’d/ protractor’d/ 3-ringed binder’d backpack-toting college attendee who’s overstuffed countenance resembled an infantryman going to battle (actually, I think I just described my middle-schooler).
Moving ever onward, we span the educative evolution to the present-day online student (cue music from “2001: A Space Odyssey”):
We have entered a new dimension of scholastic matter, that of “non-matter“… digitized academics…pens and paper artifacts of the past…
Well, nix the music for a minute because we still (gasp) use hard-cover textbooks.
Yes, it’s true; textbooks are still the tangible matter of choice for many courses, even those presented online. Yet, the scope of academic material for the Online College Student, New Millennium consists of said textbook and a computer and, in most cases, that’s all she wrote. Or didn’t write, since online course materials are now accessed from your computer and more often than not made of bits and bytes instead of pencil and paper. This includes the syllabus, the course lessons, supplemental links provided by your professor, university library links, and so on. Course work is submitted electronically via Word/Works, and students can also download hyperlinked files from the instructor to enable the student to upload and submit their assignments through other venues.
When I first started my courses online I, being old-school, had my handy spiral notebooks, pens and highlighters close by to facilitate learning. But as my courses progressed I found out very quickly that everything I needed was accessible from my computer; this I consider to be exceptional progress from the infantry-packed college student of yestermillenium. Consider also, while attending FSU online just a few years ago I had an antiquated eMachine rather than the slim and portable Dell notebook I own today, which would have allowed me to work on and submit my homework from anywhere at anytime. All of my research was completed digitally, and the Florida State University Libraries website made it possible to access compulsory adjunct publications from a remote location. Thus, other than the textbook mentioned above and perhaps an accompanying CD (which admittedly more often than not sat collecting dust or coaster-ing my coffee) as far as academic matter goes, that’s all she…text-typed.
