Free Essays, Term Papers, Research Papers at Anti Essays

Elevator Speech

The scenario is instant messages sent back and forth between me and my friend Sara.

Sara:
Hey Cynthia! How's it going? I heard you were going back to school? How's it working out for you? What school are you going to?
Cynthia:
Hi Sara! I am going to school, I attend Axia College, it's an online school. So far so good!
Sara: An online school? Wow, what's that like?
Cynthia: Well, it's called DISTANCE LEARNING and it allows me to take the courses at my own pace and gradually earn my degree over time. It's when a student and a teacher can be in totally different locations and use the technology we have today to have that distance learning take place.
Sara: Do you have to be online at a certain time? Or do you have to log in to class with everyone at the same time?
Cynthia: No, we are not usually online at the same time because some of us are in different time zones. We all log in at times that are convenient to us, that's what they call “asynchronous communication.”
Sara: How do you go to class? What I mean is, how does it all work, I was thinking about taking online courses but never really knew how it worked.
Cynthia: Well there is a website that you log into to go to your classes. You click on the class and then you enter what is called a FORUM which is basically your classroom. In the FORUM you can read threads from your instructor and your classmates and respond to discussion questions just like a classroom only you are typing the responses. Those are then turned into threaded discussions which just means that there are more than one response. The cool thing about it is that you can go back and reread them in case you need to. You also get feedback from classmates on your answers to the discussion questions and can give feedback too. That's how you participate in class.
Sara: Really? Do you have actual assignments and things you have to turn...