Sam's Story

Sam generally did good in classes. He was a regular attendee and listened well in class.  He wasn't really one of those meticulous planners but he did well in the last minute crisis and pulled some great scores on last minute cramming for quizzes and occasional all-nighters for papers.  One day Sam decided to enroll in an online class and did the preliminary confirmation of his enrollment and then went on his way to attending his other classes.  He checked into the class website several weeks into the semester but felt since nothing was due that week he was in fine shape.  As life got busy with his other classes several more weeks went by as his attention focused on surviving several exams and small papers in his other classes. 

As he checked in again to his on-line class he realized he had missed a crucial deadline for the first exam.  He emailed his professor but she was very firm about not allowing a make-up, something about concern of access to questions since the test had been out there to the other students last week.  Since Sam was optimistic he felt he could overcome the exam loss if he did everything else to an A level.  So he dove into the web site detail for the first time and discovered more bad news.  Not only had he missed an exam but he had missed several discussion groups and the dialogue groups actually had significant point values attached to them.  In a regular class he always picked up the 'class participation' points because he was in the habit of showing up and was always glad to share his perspective on things.  Now as he did the math for the grades he figured he'd need to have almost perfect scores to even score a C and he was in danger of failing.

His research paper for the on-line class got done that semester.  Unfortunately the due date was the same day as another paper in a regular class and with all the pressure it wasn't his best work by his own admission - but at least he got it in.  Well, it wasn't his best work and he got a C- on the paper and now the issue wasn't a good grade in the class but whether he would pass at all.   The final exam came and he had studied hard and was ready both for the objective part and to participate in the on-line live chat as part of a final discussion group.  He had never used the on-line test format before and frankly he found it frustrating as he was not used to having a time limit on each question.  In his frustration he knew it was not his best work - (he had missed both the early practice test and that first exam) as he was a bit at the mercy of the machine.   And then when he went to the IRC (on-line chat program) he had trouble signing in and was "late" which the instructor told folks would mean a loss of points.  

In the end Sam squeaked through with a D- which was not going to help his GPA and was not reflective of his ability.  As he met with the professor to see about taking the class again next semester to improve his grade, it became clear to him that being successful on-line required a more deliberate approach than his standard MO (mode of operation) for a lecture/discussion class.   Next semester would be very different - staying on top of things and listening well on line represented some different skills Sam would need to develop.