relativism

One concept from the course I would like to expand on is the concept of the cognitive development in college students because this is something that I have seen myself go through quite a bit this semester. I think when I was younger I was scared of being wrong, so I once I decided on something I wouldn’t be swayed, no matter what evidence to the contrary you threw at me. Right now there are some tough issues that my friends like to talk about, and my goal lately is just to try and understand the issues more. The two things I try to do are to ask them a lot of questions, rather than try to state my opinion. The other thing I do is play devil’s advocate, just to put some pressure on. So I’ve seen myself move from the dualistic stage to the relativism stage pretty clearly. It’s interesting to me that even though I know the “process” of what is happening, I feel there is really nothing I can do to get away from it. I sometimes wonder if moving to the final “commitment” stage is necessarily better, isn’t it possible they’re equally good stages to be in? Just kidding. 

I'm not saying this thing is true or not, I'm just saying it's what I learned."

One thing I have learned in this class over the course of the semester is that there are two sides to every argument. And sometimes what I think is the really obvious answer, or something that is absurd, is actually something I just haven’t thought about very much. An example of this is the arguments in the text for and against college plagiarism. It seems obvious at first that plagiarism in college is bad and unwanted by all college faculties. But I think the writer who argues for it makes some interesting points about how embracing plagiarism is a way of utilizing all the resources that are available to students on the internet. He also thinks that teachers are somewhat to blame for not finding creative ways to teach around plagiarism. This just goes to show that if you don’t take the time to think about both sides of an issue you may not consider some important facts pertaining to an issue. I think it is important to know both sides of a debate in order for a person to make an informed decision.  

favorite and least favorite things

My favorite thing about this class was the online format. I thought the way the class was oriented around the web and not just as a way to turn things was great. I thought the blog form of discussion was very cool. Even though we never had class, I probably discussed the course material with other students through the blog more than any of my other classes. Doing a class online like this is really helpful for my schedule because I work and go to school too, so one of the hardest things besides just finding the time to study is scheduling my classes. So anything that can be done online in a way that I can actually learn the material is really helpful. I didn’t like that the major writing assignments were graded based on group performance. I understand that working in teams is one of the learning goals of this class, but it just seemed a little weird when getting grades based on other people’s performance. I think the group projects would go better if there was more of an individual component – like an individual paper that could be used as a source to contribute to the group paper.