REFLECTIONS

Professor Gerry O’Connor

Suffolk County Community College

Because the computer easily accommodates interdisciplinary approaches to study, we can use it to develop and to extend our ability to think critically and to make connections between discrete bodies of information. You have to begin to think of yourself as an intellectual nomad, a kind of informational architect. The electronic facility to make connections speeds up the processes of skilled reading, creative thinking and knowledge-building. The instantaneousness of links also permits and encourages sophisticated forms of analysis.

Thomas Friedman, in The Lexus and The OliveTree describes it this way: "When dealing with any nonlinear system, especially a complex one, you can't just think in terms of parts or aspects and just add things up.....With a complex nonlinear system you have to break it up into pieces and then study each aspect, and then study the very strong interaction between them all. Only this way can you describe the whole system."

Every night the lion goes to sleep in the jungle knowing that in the morning when the sun comes up, if he can't outrun the gazelle, it will go hungry. Every night the gazelle goes to sleep in the jungle knowing that in the morning, when the sun comes up, if it can't outrun the fastest lion, it's going to be somebody's breakfast. But the one thing the lion and gazelle both know when they go to sleep at night is that when they wake up in the morning, when the sun comes up, they had better start running.

Conversely, turtles become roadkill. You don't want to be a turtle trying to avoid becoming roadkill. Better to be the lion or the gazelle in this knowledged-based building process.

The winners and losers in these courses will be differentiated by brainpower.

On-line courses are not for the weak of heart or those simply looking to avoid class time. Experience dictates that on-line courses often require more time, more ramping-up-to-speed and a greater willingness to build knowledge.

Students in on-line courses must be self-motivated and willing to work with each other. It is easy to procrastinate given that the classes are held on-line; however, these courses are designed around the act and art of research and writing. They are participatory! Successfully completing each assignment will mean working carefully through all the steps of that assignment and being prepared to discuss your work and questions you have about that work when we meet on-line and in postings to the class discussion list.

These are not self-paced courses. There are weekly assignments and due dates.

These courses require that you be prepared to do all your work at your computer. All components of your assignments will be turned in as electronic text. Most students find they need to work at least 9 hours per week to be successful in these courses.

Location is Irrelevant

You will do this knowledge-building from the comfort of your computer, whether at home, in school, at the office, in a car, on a boat, or in a plane either in New York, California, USA, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa or .....the world. If you can connect electronically, you can take the course. Regardless of your location, together we can establish a community of learning and embark on our journey into cyberspace collaboratively.

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