Hi everyone,
I would like to share my experiences with you concerning the course up till now.

Before I started the course I didn't have any experience with online courses so I didn't know what to expect. I tried to gain as much information as possible from the UWG website in order to prepare myself for "the unknown". The first hurdle was familiarizing myself with the homepage and getting to know where to find everything. The group in Suriname comes together once a week to share our experiences and to help each other to figure out the assignments. This helps a lot!
The first assignment was a lot of reading about the history and purpose of distance education. As I read the assigned articles and gained more information I got more and more interested in the topic of this course and wanted to know more especially with regard to the use of Distance Education in the traditional classroom. And yes I wasn't disappointed! In our second session we learned more about the use of DE by open universities and other organisations and their experiences with using DE. In the third session we got to choose a DE tool and learn more about the tool we choose. We also got to share our information with each other. I choose Blackboard collaborate. As I looked for more information about my tool I became more aware about the different advantages but also the disadvantages of DE. Some people have good experiences with certain tools while others have not so good experiences with the same tool! The information I gained during the past few sessions caused me to think and also generated a lot of questions! I'm still figuring out what DE can mean to me on a personal level and to my profession on a general level. I hope that at the end of this course at least some of my questions will be answered.

I would also like to comment on the schedule and build up of the course up till now. Up till now this course is very doable. However some experience in education is recommended. The time allotted for the assignments is sufficient. The build up of the course is logical.

Looking forward to the next sessions!
Debbie Feurich