Kirsten’s E-Learning Blog

My online courses were fairly simple.

The interactivity level was fairly low, as there was no way to contact anyone with questions (as far as I could tell).

Any feedback that was given was my own personal critique of the work I was doing, although I did get my sister to read over my attempt at a short story and she told me it seemed too much like what I would like to happen in my own life (which is pretty true actually)

The content was all written (there was a flash version of the content, but I couldn’t get it to work for me), so all the learning styles probably weren’t considered when designing the courses, however, I think the BBC intended these courses to be just a general guide, not anything major or life changing.

The courses at each level weren’t in any sort of order (as far as I could tell) and there were no suggestions for continuing (for example, you have completed course x, why not try course y or course a from the next level) which would have been useful.

There were different levels for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners, which was one good point.

The exercises contained in the first course involved finding time to write, and gathering inspiration from around you, whereas the exercises in the second course involved more actual writing, such as creating a 500 word description of a character, or writing a 2000 word short story, involving the character you described in the first part.

Overall I enjoyed the courses, and I will continue to complete the second course, and will update my blog with my new stories as they are completed…

I’ve been reading through the course, and it seems it meets my needs a lot better.

I’ve read through it a few times, but writing can’t be forced, and my life has been quite hectic lately, so I really haven’t had that much time to put pen to paper.

Once I’ve had a chance to get everything done, and my life has calmed down a little, I’ll probably get around to either writing a new story, or reshaping my original.

I spent a while reading through the course a couple of times, to make sure I totally understand what it was about, and I realised that although this course gave you some useful information, it wasn’t exactly what I expected or needed.

I understand about how when writing, the most important thing is to never leave a blank page, to just write anything, I don’t need to be told.

Victoria told me that if I felt the course wasn’t right or didn’t add up to the 4 hours needed I could choose another off the same site, so I did. I chose another beginner’s course: What Is a Short Story?

This seemed much more appropriate to what I actually wanted to do (which was to physically write a story, not learn about how to jot down your thoughts)

I started to read the course, and discovered there were two versions of the information that came from the authors involved in the course: flash and text only. Apparently the flash version didn’t work for me (I’m not quite sure why), so I resorted to text only, which probably didn’t give me the best learning experience, although I do have a Read/Write preference on the VARK scale.

The online course isn’t exactly portable (as a writer inspiration can come from anywhere, at any time, I am told), so I printed out a copy of both the course, and the author’s tips.