I hardly know how to express how pleased I am with the quality of work most of you produced this week.  Hopefully you can hear the excitement in my voice as you listen to this audio.

Here's the deal.  I've taught this course online every semester since summer 2004 including one section for high school students who were part of the College Institute.  For those of you who aren't familiar with that program it for very high achieving high school students most of whom are heading to selective 4 year schools.  I have taught online courses to professionals - high school and college counselors, faculty, administrators, and staff for several years.  The reason for all this background.......I would put your discussion contributions, especially how you answered the three questions, up against any discussion I have had in any of my online courses.  If I was writing a book about effective communication, I would use each and everyone of your examples - they are outstanding. 

Now some of you may be saying, well, if that's true, why didn't I get 15 out of 15 on the Communication discussion grade.  Here are some of the reasons:

• You might not have answered all three questions
• You may have answered all three questions, but didn't identify which barrier was getting in the way or how you might have handled the situation differently, or how you might have resolved the conflict using effective communication.  These are important elements that I wanted you to learn from this module.  Even though we are not in the same room, I can hear you saying, oh my is she picky.  Remember, this is boot camp for academic success.  Here's a hint - in your assignments for all courses, underline all crucial parts of the assignment and make sure not to miss any of them.
• You may have responded to one or two students rather than three.  Check the Assignment sheet.
• You may have not posted initial answers by Wednesday

After looking over your discussion contributions, email me if you still have questions about why you didn't receive full credit.

I will accept late answers to the questions through this week with penalty, but I will not accept responses to others.  I really want all of us to move on to the next module rather than linger in past discussion areas.

Now, on to the MyMC assignment.  Let me tell you I was just as thrilled with the way you did that one as I was to the way you participated on the discussion board.  This was a new assignment for the course and I wasn't sure it would be meaningful.  Well, your comments certainly answered that question.  One of you hit the nail on the head when you said that you didn't think many students were aware of all there is in MyMC beyond registration and checking grades.  As a means of sharing MyMC information with others, I would like to post this assignment and the summary of your answers on the Online Student Success Center and invite other DS 107 instructors to use the assignment.  I would like to share your work so they can see how beneficial the assignment can be.  If anyone objects to me using your work in this way, would you please email me by the end of the week and I will delete your work from the summary. 

I was surprised by how many of you read the news online.  I do as well.  Let me share with everyone my favorite Google Tool.  Google News allow you to customize what news is delivered to you.  Check this out at: http://news.google.com/  Google scans hundreds of newspapers across the country and the world and delivers articles on just the news that interests you by allowing you to
customize and personalize your settings.  It seems like you can add just about anything when you choose to Add a Custom Section.  It is very cool.  I had it as my homepage, but I wasn't getting any work done, so I had to save it to my Links folder so I could get to it easily, but it wasn't always in my face.  Hey, that's a time management technique, but more on that later.

The last assignment of the week was the mentoring assignment.  If you didn't start on this one at the beginning of the week, it was hard to complete both parts of it.  You earned 5 points if I saw an email to someone you asked to be your mentor.  You earned 10 points if I saw an email from your mentor saying ok or in one case, asking for further clarification.  Both parts of this assignment can be turned in up to one week late.....I wrote this before my husband distracted me from my online teaching to go shopping.  Since then I have heard from one of you who didn't understand why she got 5 out of 10 on this assignment.  I went back into the module outline and saw that the expectations for this assignment were not clear.  I have changed the outline for next semester and have changed your 5's into 10's.  Thanks for helping me make this a better course. 

A couple of you asked me to be your mentor.  I hope to have that kind of relationship with each one of you, but for this assignment I wanted you to connect with someone else on campus. 

Bravo for a great week - those of you who are actively participating in the course are well on your way to becoming successful students.

I'm guessing that one of the things that may be getting in the way of those of you who are not keeping up with this class might have something to do with the way you organize and manage your time.  Module #3, Time Management contains information, self assessments, and worksheets that will help you learn skills so you can improve what you do with those 24 hours that we all have.  There are many activities in the Time Management Tutorial.  Activities do NOT have to be turned in, just discussions and assignments.  Experiment with the forms to see which ones may work for you.  Each of us has an individual style - one size definitely doesn't fit all.  Figure out what approach works for you.

Let me alert you to one thing.  Discussion Question #1, asks you to keep track of how you spend time during one full week.  Write everything down on the form provided for this.  Most students are amazed.  I don't expect to see answers to Question #1 until next Monday.

Our course is 1/4th over.  Take advantage of the 6 weeks we have left.  Have a great week.  See you on the discussion board.