If you haven’t noticed, our class is mobile accessible. That means you can put that expensive phone to use. If you have a smart phone: iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile or an iPod Touch, you can access the class on that device. You can do just about everything except doing the assignment and submitting. That means you can read handouts and Connect Composition chapters. You can participate in the discussion, watch videos, and listen to the podcast. Give it a try. Here’s a demo video showing how it works.

Mobile Learning for ENG101 & ENG102

I am Dr. Alisa Cooper, your professor for this hybrid session of ENG101. I wanted to contact you to give you some information about the course and give you some tips on how to do well. Please seriously consider my advice before continuing on in this course.

Each semester students enroll in my hybrid English courses here at GCC. Many do so for many different reasons and more than half have never taken a hybrid course before. They don’t know what to expect or what it even takes to do well in a hybrid course. I want to tell you what is expected up front, so you’ll know, and I also want to address some of the reasons students take a hybrid course. First, to be successful in this course you have to be self disciplined. That means that as a student, you don’t need for someone to tell you everyday what you need to be doing. You can jump right in, set up your own time schedule and get to work. You must also be a problem solver. That means that if things go wrong, you can jump in and try to figure things out. You can also find a way, some way, any way to get things done before you would even consider giving up. Those are the characteristics of a successful student. In addition, you must be comfortable using the computer and the internet, including a Word processor, email, Blackboard and social networks. Your computer needs to be able to handle viewing web pages with audio and video on a high speed internet network. Dial-up may be troublesome.

Now some students sign up for hybrid courses because they think hybrid courses are easier. Hybrid courses are not easier. They are in fact more difficult because there is more reading and writing involved on top of having to learn how to use all the online resources that are part of a hybrid course. Hybrid course are more convenient because you only have to come to class one day a week. You can access the class and work at 3am or on the beach from Cali if you want to for the online portion of the class. But you still have the instructor in person for one day for face to face questions and clarification if you needed. Since we only meet once a week, it’s very important that you make every class session. Excessive absences are not permitted.

We recommend that students taking a 3 hour course spend 2.5 to 3 hours studying for each hour of the course. So a 3 hour course would require 7-9 hours study time per week plus the 3 hours for the course for 16 weeks. That’s 10-12 hours per week. If you don’t have that much time to spend on this course, I recommend you take it when you have a lighter schedule.

So if you are a self motivated, problem solver who is not afraid to work on the internet using new tools, a good high school English student, and have at least 2 hours a day to devote to ENG101, this may be the right course for you. So make sure you take a good look at the course. This way you can decide if this is the right class for you, and if it’s not, you can still get your money back. To get started, click the START HERE tab work on the list below. The Blackboard part of the course is there for back up in case we need it, but you will find everything you need here on the course network, and on Connect Composition. Good luck to you, and if you have any questions, feel free to email or call me.