First Impressions of Course!

After the first class for IT 7130, I have several initial impressions and thoughts. Overall – the assignments and course expectations are intriguing but intimidating at the same time! As I stated in class, I’ve never had a full online course before. I’ve used Blackboard-type systems for traditional face-to-face courses during both undergrad and graduate school, but have decided against taking full online courses. Online courses were not available as choices for my graduate program (in Industrial/Organizational Psychology), so I was not particularly interested in taking any for this program. However, I was interested in learning more about online courses and how they are facilitated – which seems like a good personal objective for this course.

I’m definitely interested in the facilitator-in-training aspect of the course, yet apprehensive. I don’t have any teaching or training experience and am concerned with that potentially holding me back from gaining a full experience from the FIT project. However, it will be interesting to see how the experience turns out. I also think that a lack of teaching or training experiences may yield different perspectives on the project as well. During the description of the project, I thought about my experiences as a teaching/research assistant during undergrad. Part of what I’d like to determine from the FIT project is how these experiences may be different, yet similar.

One aspect that I’m definitely looking forward to researching and learning more about is emerging technologies within organizations, particularly with different generations. Other courses have discussed technology comfort level or generational gaps within organizations, but I’d really like to learn if there are different facilitation techniques in terms of multiple generations. As I struggle with emerging technologies (postponing taking an online course, never involving myself with blogs or wikis, etc.), I wonder what other employees within my organization feel/expect with these technologies becoming commonplace with corporations. To learn more about how facilitation changes when dealing with potentially different generational or comfort levels with technology aspects is a definite goal/objective for this course.