I took this class the Spring 2020 semester. It was an interesting experience because half of it was in person like it was supposed to be while the other half was all online because of COVID-19. At first, I was unsure if fully online classes would work well for me because I like to interact with the other students in the class and the professor. I realized though that since some of the assignments we did for the class were already online, I did not have to completely get used to a new way of learning. I was already a little prepared for what we had to do because of the pandemic. This transition showed me that I did have ideas about what was supposed to be discussed in class and that I would gladly participate in the discussion board assignments so that everyone understood what they were learning at home. These discussion boards made me realize that I can say what I think when we get back to normal classes. I should not just sit there quietly. The online transition also showed me the abundance of documentaries and shows that can help us understand history. I did not know these documentaries and shows existed before they were assigned to me. They gave me a way to learn of important events by seeing people talk about them while they were being illustrated in the background. This helped me understand the events more. The online transition pushed me to be more creative and think more about how I responded to the events we were learning about.
For one of the assignments I had to send in a video instead of writing a response based on some documents we had looked at for the topic that week. For the video, I had to think like a specific group or person of the women’s liberation movement and respond to some questions the way they would have responded to them. It allowed me to be creative and practice public speaking. I was able to gain a bit of confidence after filming and posting the video to a discussion board for my peers to see. I was not afraid of what people thought of my opinion. I was happy to be a part of the discussion. Below is the video.
The experience I had for this class showed me that I can do both in-person and online learning well.