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mickeycoronado
Member Posts: 71 ■■□□□□□□□□
in Off-Topic
Is it normal for online school forums to be kinda, well lame? The participation part of my grades are based on forum postings related to questions that are asked. I guess it is supposed to engage the group in a discussion about our current topics.
The problem is everybody just answers the questions like robots. It isn't like here where people discuss things back and forth. Another thing that sucks is they only post like 5 questions a week. You only get credit for a correct answer or relevant replies to other people.
This combination basically leads me to camp the forums and try to answer the questions right away for the credit. If you don't get the answer in quick enough you spend all your time trying to figure out how to answer it differently. This would be alright if they were complex questions, but most of them are like "what is displayed if you try to copy a file to a directory that already has that file?"
Because nobody engages in discussions, whether they are to busy or just don't want to, it makes it very time consuming and difficult to get credit. I spend about half an hour a day in these forums for my classes. The total credit I can get amounts to about 1/8th my grade.
Over 8 weeks that comes out to about 30 hours I spend trying to get that credit. I really don't learn much because it basically just covers what we read in our books. Would I be better off abandoning the "discussions" and spending those 30 hours reading tech books or something? I bet I could knock out two or three books every 8 weeks. I am getting A's so far, so by doing that it might drop me to a B if I screw up some exams badly.
In the end is it more worth it to spend my time studying? Or should I just stay with it?
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I try to get conversations going, but people just hop on and answer the posted question without trying to reply to other people. I've come to the point where I start saying random things to see if anybody notices. For instance "The Dingo Ate my Baby", and in response to one question about interview attire I replied with "You shouldn't wear a hat constructed entirely of cured meats". I'm bored I guess. I know I'm not alone because one guy went on and asked "Is this the forum to nowhere?"
The problem is everybody just answers the questions like robots. It isn't like here where people discuss things back and forth. Another thing that sucks is they only post like 5 questions a week. You only get credit for a correct answer or relevant replies to other people.
This combination basically leads me to camp the forums and try to answer the questions right away for the credit. If you don't get the answer in quick enough you spend all your time trying to figure out how to answer it differently. This would be alright if they were complex questions, but most of them are like "what is displayed if you try to copy a file to a directory that already has that file?"
Because nobody engages in discussions, whether they are to busy or just don't want to, it makes it very time consuming and difficult to get credit. I spend about half an hour a day in these forums for my classes. The total credit I can get amounts to about 1/8th my grade.
Over 8 weeks that comes out to about 30 hours I spend trying to get that credit. I really don't learn much because it basically just covers what we read in our books. Would I be better off abandoning the "discussions" and spending those 30 hours reading tech books or something? I bet I could knock out two or three books every 8 weeks. I am getting A's so far, so by doing that it might drop me to a B if I screw up some exams badly.
In the end is it more worth it to spend my time studying? Or should I just stay with it?
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I try to get conversations going, but people just hop on and answer the posted question without trying to reply to other people. I've come to the point where I start saying random things to see if anybody notices. For instance "The Dingo Ate my Baby", and in response to one question about interview attire I replied with "You shouldn't wear a hat constructed entirely of cured meats". I'm bored I guess. I know I'm not alone because one guy went on and asked "Is this the forum to nowhere?"
"Are you suggesting that coconuts are migratory?!"