So far within the Modern China course, I’m feeling pretty good about my learning and the material that we have been covering. I’m really enjoying working through the materials for each week especially with the ability to choose a new and slightly different exploration pack each week. As I know personally I would be pretty bored within the course if I had to choose to read the textbook each week so having the ability to choose what I want to learn about is something I’m really enjoying. The other facet of having different exploration packs for each week is that when giving feedback and reading other students’ posts there is some diversity there, it isn’t just reading the same thing over and over again on the same subject.
I feel as if each week I have been engaging pretty well with each of the sources, especially since I am genuinely interested in all of them as I get to pick what I am reading that week. I’ve been making a concerted effort to really read in-depth into the sources and take notes so when it comes to my blog post or commenting on others I have a good grasp of what I am supposed to be talking about. I think the one thing that has made this engagement and note-taking much easier for me is just using hypothesis to take my notes, just having them directly attached to the document is really useful and is not something I have done in the past. So I feel like I’m doing pretty well, considering all things, in engaging with the materials, maybe something that I could improve on would just be to skim the other exploration packs in order to give me more insight overall on the unit or read into the optional sources more.
I think that one thing that I like so far is the ability to share almost everything I learn in this course within my blog. For example, I was really interested in Giuseppe Castiglione but didn’t want to take my blog post in that direction for the week so I ended up using that interest and knowledge towards an extra credit post and would’ve put it towards a show and tell. Additionally, the info that I’m learning in this course is really useful for another course I’m currently taking, Asian American Media which is taught by Dr. Chein. The background that Modern China is providing is really useful especially the most recent unit that has gone over more recent events such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. Also, the information that Asian American Media Provides also helps me form a greater understanding for this course as well, the combination works really well for my learning which I did not initially anticipate.
Lastly, if I had to grade myself on what I think I deserve for my participation in the learning commons so far I think I would give myself an A as of right now. I think I would give myself an “A” because I feel like I’m doing everything to facilitate a good learning commons for me and my peers. I feel as if I’ve done providing good comments and constructive criticism on other classmates’ blog posts and trying to help them do as good as they possibly can, I think doing extra commenting also helps this so as many of my peers get feedback as possible. I also think that me taking notes on the articles helps me personally be more involved within the zoom sessions and participating, I do think that I could move some of my notes to the HST271 hypothesis instead of my private notes in order to help some of my peers jump-start their thoughts or see what I am thinking. Overall, I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job starting off the semester and I’m excited to keep going.
