I have been enjoying this course as well and have found the teaching style to be simultaneously exhilarating and frustrating. This course has provided a fantastic immersion opportunity that has helped me to learn and explore these new technologies in ways that I likely wouldn’t without the benefit of being registered in a course.

I subscribe to a great listserv called Tomorrow’s Professor and every once in a while I receive a message that just stops me in my tracks. The message on Friday entitled “How many pages” which discusses theory of “Achievement Goal Orientation” with regard to instructors and students to orientation/motivations on an assigned class task. I thought you might like to read this Dave.

In the post two of these theory’s orientations are described: “mastery or learning” orientation “Here a student is trying to learn or master the content” and “performance approach” orientation
“When students adopt this orientation, they are concerned with demonstrating their competence rather than learning.”

But interestingly the author adds “strategic effort” orientation and described that “This kind of orientation recognizes that there are many demands on everyone’s time, and sometimes students have to sacrifice quality in the face of over-commitment”

I am quoting heavily from this because I think in all courses, particularly when there is little structure for a particular course and the instructors want the student to be self-directed in their learning, these orientations need to be considered.

Because this was sent through email I am unable to provide link until they upload the post to the website. I’ll figure out how to share it.