What kind of work is required from a 100% online university?

My preferred way of writing papers, reports, and technical memos is to try to complete the final drafts about 10 days before their due date then forget about it for a week, then review it a final time, update as neces, then submit.
Of course this approach does not work too well with short term lengths.

 

The use of first person versus third person depends upon the type of paper one is writing. For my MSEd, many of the papers were reflective in nature, and therefore writing "I" was natural. If I am writing a paper about how I used a particular strategy in my classroom, I will use "I" quite often. However, for research papers the use of "I" and the first person might not be appropriate. It simply depends upon the type of paper being written.

-Matt

 

I lol'd a bit at this. I don't even want to think about how many papers I finished up in the final 2-4 (yep, not the final 24) hours before they were due. It was the short term length issue.

 

I don't know of any decent graduate school that would have a "reflective" paper as an assignment. Papers in graduate school are supposed to be about research and facts as opposed to a creative writing type of essay.

 

That's an excellent way of catching errors! When you think you're done with the paper, then set it down and walk away from it for at least 24 hours. Then pick it up and start proofing it for errors. It seems to be easier to find errors this way.

 

Well someone hasn't read The Sociological Imagination! Or at least not enough.

 

Just because you don't know of any doesn't mean they don't exist. For starters, MOST education programs require reflection, as its a basic teaching practice and supported by the National Board for Professional Teaching standards. So whether the program is online, like the one I did with Walden, or on campus, like the one my wife did at the College of William and Mary, they both required reflective writing. You write about how you implement various strategies in the classroom and then discuss the outcomes. Of course, you didn't give your definition of decent, but I would think Walden, being the largest online provider of education degrees, or the College of William and Mary, the second oldest college in the nation, would be considered "decent".

-Matt

 

I just did a Google search for 'graduate "reflective paper" site:.edu' and the results appear to support what Mattbrent just wrote.

 

One could also cite Clifford Geertz' concept of thick description (Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture (Geertz 1973:3-30)), but I guess a professorship at the Institute for Advanced Studies and honorary doctoral degrees from universities like Harvard and Cambridge don't count as decent either.

 

Never heard of em...

 

Odd, I took two education courses through Madison and both profs. required reflective papers written in the first person.