Week 7- Being a Distance Learner- Part 1

I'm guessing that my views on distance learning will differ slightly from other people's, as I truly am a distance learner for the whole of this course!

First of all, I'm going to focus on the positives...I think that being a distance learner can have it's advantages, such as...

• I am able to continue working on my university course, alongside a work placement. Had their not being the invention of the Internet this would not have been possible. True, I could have received mail sent from the university, which I could then send back, but this seems highly time-wasting. Particularly if I had chosen to go home for a few days etc. The joys with having the Internet are being able to access material from anywhere.
• Flexibility. I've noticed a few other people mention this too. Being able to choose when you complete the work and at what pace (within reason, obviously it has to be continuous and done weekly) makes a nice change from attending weekly lecture slots, and I personally believe it takes some of the pressure off (if I am really tired after a day at work, I know I can leave my work until the next day).
• There isn't as much pressure as you can sometimes find in a seminar, when you've attempted to answer a question and find yourself not actually knowing where you're going with it, you have time to organise you're thoughts and write it out how you want to sound. Like Terry Evans suggests, "Articulating ideas in writing helps you understand what you think about a concept or issue"
• Being able to give feedback on other people's blogs. Because I find in real life, doing something like this can often make people feel quite defensive, like they are being picked on. But obviously in this unit we are marked on our ability to discuss and give feedback on our peers work. I think it gives us much more opportunities to learn that we sometimes miss out on in f2f interactions.