This semester, I’ve noticed that I’ve been turning in a lot of my responses to our class readings via email or Blackboard journals. Now that we’re in the third week of the semester and I’ve turned in online assignments for several of my classes, I’ve decided that I prefer this form of submission as opposed to printing out my reflections and handing them in during class.
There are several formats that our professors use to collect our responses. Some encourage us to engage with other students, while other assignments are private and only the professor can see our responses. For example, in my African American Literature class, each weekend our whole class engages in discussions based upon prompts from our professor. This is helpful because the class is only on Mondays and Wednesdays, so discussing our thoughts over the weekend keeps the content fresh in our minds even when we are not physically meeting. On the other hand, we also turn in individual responses via email for that class. Our professor writes feedback and hands it back to us during class, so we each get individual attention from her even though the class is fairly large.
Two of my other professors have us write weekly journals that only they can see and respond to on Blackboard, our school’s academic website where we can see our grades and send assignments to professors. Within a few days after I post my journal, I can log onto the site and see my professor’s responses. This will be convenient when I am studying at the end of the semester or brainstorming ideas for papers because all of my journals and professor’s comments will be easily accessible and organized.
Beyond the ease of posting online and the individualized responses, I like doing exclusively online assignments because it saves so much paper! Even though we get $20 of printing money for the semester, I prefer using as little as possible and online assignments make a huge impact!
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