A new concept I was introduced to this quarter was the way in which it was possible for me to use other mediums besides writing papers to convey information. I think I only realized this with the remediation project, where I made a comic strip from my discipline narrative. That was really exciting for me because I feel like I’m never really given the chance to explore other mediums in my other classes, and I wish that more classes allowed me to play around with different mediums instead of just writing long papers.
A new practice that I developed over the quarter that I know I’ll continue to use after the class is the mind-mapping. That exercise was really helpful for me. I feel like I’m a visual learner, and so it was nice to sit down and write out and map and connect all of the thoughts in my head. I feel like this made it easier for me to see the connections between thoughts that I felt were really disconnected in the beginning.
My favorite assignment for the class was probably listening to the Serial Podcast. I really enjoyed it because I had always heard all of my friends talking about the first season and how good it was. I’ve tried multiple times to get into podcasts, but I have always felt that they are kind of boring and I usually am not able to pay attention. I’ve tried listening to podcasts in the car–all kinds: humor, mystery, informational–but they’ve never held my attention. Serial was the first podcast that I listened to that I really liked. I think I liked it so much because of the way that Koenig presented her information, and how I felt like she was an unreliable narrator, so I wanted to really pay attention and listen to all of the facts, even though a lot of the time she was subjective and really emotional.
I think all of the reading assignments for the course were great, and I liked the Ted Talks that we watched. I think the canvas page on the course was a little bit difficult to navigate, but other than that, I feel as though this course was really well thought out and like all of the assignments corresponded to what we were learning in class.
uwp101 