For my first blog post, I am going to reflect upon another online course that I have taken recently, “New Venture Creation”. In this course, students learned about entrepreneurship, including elements of new venture creation. The course culminated in the creation of a business plan for a new business. The course resources and presentation was entirely online, except for two textbooks.
The course attracted students who were interested in starting new businesses. It was loosely paced but had no hard deadlines other than the course end date. In this way, the course was very flexible for adults with other commitments. The course resources were varied, including videos, readings from periodicals, and two course textbooks. The course did not include any online face-to-face interactions with the instructor or other students. The course followed a format similar to paper-type correspondence courses, in that learning was divided up into modules. Throughout each module there were requirements to comment on questions, and present your budding ideas for your business in relation to the course material for that module in a blog post. Ideally, students would comment on each others’ posts and then students could learn from each other. Each module also ended with a large assignment that was marked by the instructor.
I found that assignments were marked promptly by the instructor, and that detailed and helpful feedback was given. Nevertheless, the social aspect of the course, including blogging, as well as interactions with fellow students, were completely absent. I found that there were not enough students enrolled in the course at any one time for this to be feasible. Blog posts were usually months in the past from other students, and it was not worth spending time commenting on blog posts from students who had already completed the course. In this way, I felt I missed out on learning from other students’ ideas, and had to rely solely on the course content that was provided, supplemented by my own research.
glammie
September 26, 2023 — 3:40 pm
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for sharing. The New Venture Creation sounds like an exciting and detailed course. Your feedback on the lack of social interactions as a negative of the course highlights that learning is not only academic but also requires a social and emotional component to be effective.