Take up a masters they said, it’ll be fun they said

Well this is awkward, just mere two years after my graduation from University I’m back at the same school. Well, virtually the same school and I’m not talking about the changes that the buildings my have suffered but rather the fact that my masters program is a virtual one. Yes, I get to go to school on my computer, so if I thought I couldn’t be any geekier I just proved myself VERY wrong. At first I thought: “well this is going to be rather easy, I just need to make sure that I do all my work like before and I’ll do just fine” and then reality came barging in with a can of whoopass just for me. As it turns out it is a bit harder than just reading and doing my homework.

I really like studying, if I could get paid to do it I wouldn’t think twice about it. But this is very different. “Attending” a virtual comes with its own set of bugs/features, pardon my geek:

Collaborating with people you don’t even know
One of the things that come with being able to go to class on your computer is that there are no geographical constraints any more. Anybody just about anywhere could end up being your classmate which is awesome but at the same time not so much. The main problem is that even at this level of education people don’t seem to be studying because they want to better themselves and you can tell by the lack of commitment. One of the great things of everyday physical interaction with your classmates is that you develop a sense of responsibility towards them when it comes to team work. The fact that you will see them and be working with them the rest of the period makes you think twice about not delivering that piece of work the team is expecting you to do. This face to face interaction is nowhere present in virtual courses, your classmate is reduced to an email address which in my case is just their student number (not very helpful!). When it comes to grading group work it makes it rather difficult to be objective about what grade each member deserves, though a good collaboration tool really helps this part of the issue (more on the issue later).

When is this effing paper due?
This is not a problem with the platform but rather with myself (well the platform does make it very damn hard). A little more background on this: there’s this little ugly platform called Blackboard and everyone seems to love it, I on the other hand have nothing but utter disgust mixed with true and untainted hate for it. Being completely objective is not that bad, but it isn’t good either… ok parts of it really don’t work with my way of life. The calendar module for example has no way of exporting your tasks which in turn makes it really difficult to plan your work ahead. You can either plan your whole semester out front at the beginning of it or you can go back every week and check if there’s anything due, that added to the fact that there’s no real professor reminding you that you have to do your homework leads to me not turning in my mid term paper in time (not me, I always turn my mid term papers in time). It’s hard to think that even today there’s no way to export it to your mobile calendar, or even to Outlook or Google Calendar. Bad, bad, bad!

Where can I buy the freaking book?
At the beginning of the course you get a list of the materials you are going to be needing throughout the duration of the course, and that’s fine. But it’s very hard to find where to buy the books. Most of them are English editions (which they don’t sell in Mexico thank you very much). You can buy them from Amazon and get them 5 weeks later, just in time to study for finals which is in no way a solution. Some of the books have kindle editions or other mobile solutions but not all of them. I really think for this kind of courses professors should make sure that the material for the course is easily accessible.

On and on the experience has been great. Team work while hard is fulfilling (I just threw up a bit). So if you are thinking of going back to study to get a masters me recommendation is to do it. At the end of the day an extra diploma in your office looks awesome!