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What has your teacher done especially well in this course?
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| The explanations of the philosophical aspects of the electronic frontier have been
very informative and presented well. |
| An excellent mix of technoligical issues with sociological issues. I was challenged
beyond any of my expectations. Dr. Cox is knowledgeable and extremely open minded.
I was asked on a weekly basis for my opinion. This never happens any other type of
course. |
| Dr. Cox has created an amazing forum for learning in this class. The web based locker
enhanced the whole purpose of this course - the electronic frontier. |
| Taken out the attendance factor. Getting to class is a nightmare at GMU with the
traffic and parking. This class provided excellent learning through electronic tools,
not the traditional lecture and books. |
| Designed an outstanding distance learning course. This is the only appropriate way
to deliver this course. Also the instructor provided an outstanding level of personal
support to anyone needing help. |
| He checks our tasks many times a day then gives comments us in order to improve our
concepts. |
| Brad has done an especially good job of combining the theoretical and technical aspects
of this course. This course could have easily slid into a morass of technical detail;
Brad made sure it did not. |
| The instructor has balanced the technocentric portion of the course work with the
sociocentric aspects. If his intent was to make us think about Quality, what it is
and how to improve on it, he was successful. |
| I like the organization of this course. I always was motivated to learn during this
course. |
| Professor Brad Cox has spent countless hours, I would think, working on the coordination
technology that is the bedrock of this course's learning experience - for this I
thank him and appreciate what he has done for the students' learning. Brad also made
himself available 10am - 10pm for phone consultation which is just extraordinary
service offering - for this he should be commended. |
| Dr. Cox offered us techinical information on how to build web pages, but more importantly,
helped us explore the humanitarian aspects of the web. I think that this course is
unique and of value in that regard. |
| Brad is available all of the time and returns calls in a timely manner. |
| The organization of the course was excellent. Each task built on previous tasks so
that the projects became easier to complete. The hands-on approach gave me practical
application for the theory. |
Much information has been conveyed during the 15 week course. Prior to this course,
I had not downloaded software or ever made a web page.
Now I can do both very easily. The tasks assigned provide an excellent way to learn.
I always like being able to read about how other students performed a particular
task. This is very helpful, especially when encountering a problem on an assignment. |
| Brad has collected an enormous amount of information in the form of hot links and
ancillary/background information about the many diverse topics covered in this class.
An excellent holistic approach is taken in the production of electronic properties
taking into consideration current industry paradigms, software used, qualitative
philosophies, copyright issues and cryptography. |
|
Dr. Cox has done a superior job in taking a concept of distance education, and
making it something which is very effective, and EFFICIENT. As a graduate student,
and a full time worker, Dr. Cox has gone the extra mile to make the course, and himself
very accessable.
This course is no softball by any stretch. In fact I would say that the intellectual
rigor required is alot more than the "traditional" courses in which I am
enrolled.
Those students with a desire to learn will apply themselves to the tasks at hand,
and in so doing, learn something. Not just the course materials, but something about
the Internet, education and themselves.
Those students who are trying to just get by will sooner or later just drift away,
becuse this form of instruction takes desire, on both the student's and the instructor's
parts.
I think the forum that Dr. Cox has utilized is exactly right for this course.
How better to learn about the Electronic Frontier than to experience it. This is
total immersion. How can you learn about this vast, and quickly changing arena unless
you experience it. Thus, this course is experiential and not ephemeral.
Dr. cox has done a superior job in my estimation, and it is a shame to see this
course being removed from the curriculum. Who else will replace the materials taught,
and the concepts presented by Dr.Cox? I might not agree with all of his positions,
but he caused me to think, and to defend my position, and to back it up with demonstrated
performance.
In my estimation, Dr.Cox has done a superb job of instructing me on the essential
issues concerning today's electronic Frontier. I know that I have the skills, the
knowledge, the background and the vocabulary to understand the issues and to discuss
them. Additionally, I know that the Virtual School provides a knowledge base that
I can always tap into to gain the most recent information.
I believe that ten years from now, GMU will realize the mistake that it has made.
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| In my opinion, "How we did it" is really helpful because in my case my
computer skill is not good. Through others's answers, I can figure it out easily.
That is a really good idea. And in this course our teacher has led us step by step.
Our teacher gives homework assignment every week. They were really hard and time
consuming but that was very useful. |
| the technology that runs the course itself. |
| Given depth of focus to both the technical and social considerations pertaining to
electronic frontier content. |
| Provided a distance learning mechanism coupled with coordination technology that
enhances and facilitates grad-level study for busy professionals. |
| Dr.Cox has combined the sociocentric and technocentric views of Taming the Electronic
Frontier in a fast-paced graduate level course. Virtualschool.edu is on the bleeding
edge of the Electronic Frontier and Dr. Cox has done a fantastic job in creating
and constantly improving this site and this course. |
| My teacher has enlightened me in regard to the philosophical questions we face every
day in the computer driven electronic world. My teacher has given me insight to the
changing internet world and the substance which makes it. |
| I have had no prior experience with anything that we have done this semester in this
class, so everything that we did I learned a great deal from. He introduced me to
the whole technoligal world out there, and for that, I am grateful! |
| The professor has gone out of his way to make himself available to the students. |
| The teacher has provided a way to reach him and encourages us to contact him for
anything, that is very important and I have never seen that in a class before. He
also does a pretty good job of helping us out and explaining things. |
| He has kept the task pages running smoothly and kept the class guessing. Group projects
seem to always bring about a situation that keeps the wondering which way the instructor
will lean. |
| Dr. Cox is obviously very knowledgeable in his areas of expertise (redundant?) His
lectures were always very well organized and related well to the assigned course
material. He has obviously put an ENORMOUS amount of time into this course, it is
absolutely amazing how much information he has collected and downloaded for our use.
The great thing was that he made a three hour class seem shorter than that! |
| Brad Cox has prepared the course in such way to teach students that behind the scenes
of the world known as the internet, there are some basic principles that must be
followed so that the future of the internet will continue to grow. Quality was the
buzzword for this course and if you don't have a good idea of what it is all about
after taking this course then you must of been sleeping through it all. Brad preparation
and thorough knowledge of distance learning was exceptional. |
| Present the outstanding material in a clear, organized and logical manner, give amazingly
quick feedback, and read all tasks submitted and get to know his students. The addition
of Thomasina has been great. She is forthwright, knowledgeable and a delightful person
who lends valuable assistance in this course. |
| Provided an amazing unique environment and medium for learning. I am repeatedly amazed
at how mature this class is in embracing a new way of stimulating and teaching students. |
| Made the students learn. Computer illiterate students like me learned more about
computers and software. And HTML code. Who would have thought that this was possible
for me. |
| Brad has covered a wide range of topics in a brief amount of time. The weekly tasks
were good as hands on activities and the lectures definitely helped in being able
to better understand the class. I was glad to have the opportunity to look at the
slides on line on one occasion when I needed to review the course material in order
to prepare an exercise. |
| The course was innovative, challenging and highly rewarding. He has been generally
available to students despite the unique distance nature of the course. |
| The teacher has given challenging assigments that required surpassing my intellectual
capacities. |
| The course assignments being presented in a web page was new and exciting. |
| He organized all the coures materials well. It is so effective for students in this
course. |
The teacher has made an incredible personal commitment to create an experiencial
(sp?) learning experience for the student. Most teachers would not put forth the
time and effort that is necessary to be available to answer questions on the telephone
and to constantly modify the programming that makes the course possible. In other
classes you are lucky if you are able to talk to the teacher during scheduled office
hours which might be 2 hours a week. This teacher has office hours 84 hours a week.
This teacher has made a personal commitment to the learning process that is almost
never found. It is a tragedy that future GMU students will be deprived of this truly
exceptional learning opportunity. |
| Presented an interactive forum where the student and teacher can communicate outside
of the classroom via the interactive forms platform. I just love this. |
The distance learning applications are incredible. He is very well organized in this
aspect.
He manages to tie technical information in with philosophy of Quality quite well. |
| The method of experiential learning is excellent. His dedication to that, despite
obstacles are very much appreciated. |
| Provided an environment in which I could learn experientially, work with a group,
and go beyond the traditional limits of textbooks and in-class lectures. |
| Provided a distance learning environment that has surpassed any classroom experience
I've ever had. In particular I found virtualschool to be an outstanding source of
information, tools, opportunity for interaction, etc. The assigned tasks fully exceeded
driving the point of the electronic frontier we're currently facing. His efforts
should be commended... |
| There are a number of things that you have done well this year, and I am sure in
years past. The layout of the web page is great, and it facilitates learning on the
web. Your availability to the students is exceptional. I like your grading style,
it makes me do things untill they are correct, and while it can be frustrating having
something bounced back 5 times, I am forced to learn the material, and that is why
I am in school. |
| He has done a great job of showing me how much there is in the realm of telecommunications.
he has shown me a great variety of programs that are necessary and vital to everyday
use. I have also been enlightened that you can leard via the use of web based tools.
This is a starting and continueing wave of the future. Most people have time for
web based schooling because they can look at it anywhere. I found that peope in my
class were able to learn through this class whether or not they could attend class
time. I got a whole new appriciation for web based learning as we as students are
now working and sometimes far away. But the ideaology of the web based learning has
transended all of that and made it possible for you to learn no matter where you
are. This will be the ultimate wave of the future of education in my generation. |
| I learned a tremendous amount of information in short (semester) period of time. |
| The thing that stand out most to me is the immediate feed back for all the assignments
in this course. With the number of student in this class how does he has time to
read every reponse and reply sometimes within minutes after it has been submitted. |
| |
| He has taken a complex technical issue and made it understandable and interesting
to a non-technical student. |
| In my opinion, Professor Dr.Brad did very well in the technique, multimedia and the
information both the social and technique info. I learned many things and got the
useful information from him. Doing the assignment via the internet is very cool!
Itis very high technology. |
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How might the course be improved?
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| The level of some of the more technical aspects of the class were a bit over the
head of a beginner like myself. I did not realize from reading the course description
that it would be so challenging and time consuming. Also, I had a difficult time
with the assignments that were added on toward the end of the semester. |
| Offer it again at GMU! |
| The only improvement I could think of might be something to encourage students to
attend the classroom setting. However this is not a necessity for this virtual course,
so it may not need improvement. |
| There was an overloade of work in this course, very time consuming. I think a few
individual tasks could have been eliminated and the course wouldn't have suffered
nor the learning. |
| I think the course tried to accomplish too many things. I woudl have liked more plumbing
and less sociology/politics. I had hoped to learn better web searching techniques. |
| This distence learning class should be kept. |
| By not letting it die. |
| This course is going to be difficult for any instructor to follow in my opinion.
The course needs no improvement - it just needs to continue! |
| It is very time consuming course. Eliminating some work would be appropriate. |
| Offer it as a two three-credit courses stretched over two semesters. |
| The workload of this course constitutes a 4-hour, or potentially a 6-hour class.
I might suggest lightening up some of the exploration into some of the web based
publication we read and discussed. |
| Take away some of the tasks that are really not needed such as the desert storm task
and the halloween task. |
| |
I think the amount of material covered in this course is excessive. I have taken
three other graduate courses that required aprroximately 40 -50% of the time that
this course does.
I think the requirement of reading the first book should be dropped. I don't think
it added value to the course. I think the message about quality can be conveyed in
a much more efficient way than by reading a 380 page outdated book from the 70's.
The time spent reading this book could have been used to learn an additional language
such as Javascript. |
| Brad, I truly hope you to take my commentary seriously. Your focus of what is important
fluctuates, changes and gets off-track. e.g. you said we must learn HTML, only to
say move on and use an off the shelf editor the very next day so the task can be
finished. You have an excellent holistic approach, but you draw no discernible limits.
e.g. you put 5 hours of links to be read and followed even BEFORE reading your book
and most other tasks. FOCUS on exactly what MUST be done and how long that will take
and THEN give ancillary or remedial suggested links. ANSWER QUESTIONS THAT ARE DIRECTED
AT YOU - not by saying "read the book." If you look back you will find
that MOST ALL my direct inquisitions were ignored, denigrated or overlooked or considered
something else which you never communicated to me. That is where I went ballistic
about your own personal lack of quality. You never engaged me electronically or in
person via the phone you so highly recommend that WE use to contact you. The time
issue. This class required about 15-20 hours a week for me to complete these tasks
if you include weekly 3-4 hours for team face to face and phone communications, reading
& studying books which took about 15-20 hours each, another 3-5 hours a week
working on the final project and then 3-5 hours a week for the tasks. Then you add
on top of that the endless number of times that the server kicked me out, you returned
tasks because you were unhappy with "how I did it" info and that is 3 to
four times the college recommended amount of time that should be required. I am an
expert at internet, networking and pretty good at HTML and FTP & Telnet, so I
am positive that others took longer and retained less. Your request to go back and
estimate the time spent for these tasks typifies your after-the-fact, give me information
that is pertinent only to you on your studentís time request! This is the antithesis
of quality! One would think no one had ever complained about the effort required
to complete this class before today. If you wanted a realistic estimation we could
have done it while we were actually doing the tasks. Next, you wouldnít post
the answers for all to see, because people might be embarrassed that the time it
took them to complete a task might be embarrassing. All your pollings are slanted
in that direction that I question the voracity of any consensus poll from the class.
And you could even say please, it's not required for your grade, or thank you. |
There is not enough time in the term to completely cover all of the programming languages,
or to go beyond basic HTML. If it were possible to make this a two semester course,
with the first semester a prerequisite for the second semester. In this way the students
could take more time getting beyond the basics, and could devote more time to team
projects.
The material itself is outstanding, and I know of no way to improve upon the material
presented.
Time is the biggest constraint here, and the only way I can see to get into the detail
that would be desired would be to find some way to expand the course. |
| I am quite satisfied with this course. If we learned about PGPkeys earler, we can
use it with our team members. And this task is too difficult to finish in the last
week of the semester. In my case, I need more time. |
| add "links" that pull early parts of the course to that later parts. |
| Keep it through the university. GMU will be losing a tremendous resource by letting
it go. It has huge potential and import for technology commerce. |
1. Do the Desert Crashex immediately ... i.e. week one or two.
2. Use the Coordination tool philosophy to break up the ZAMM project into one-three
tasks.
3. Maybe focus a little more on some other IP, telecomm policy, as well as a few
more international issues rather than so heavily on Superdistribution. |
If I were told at the beginning of the semester (perhaps by seeing a graph of previous
students average amount hours spent, per week, on this course) how much time that
this course was going to take in order for me to earn an "A", I may have
reconsidered taking the course. I spent an average of 25 hours per week on this course.
I tried to read everything that was recommended, and I also have a very vusy personal
schedule, some of which has had to be postponed due to this course. Some course components
were not taught, such as HTML, the tools were simply given to the students and we
were told to just do it. This was extremely difficult.
The course was very time consuming and perhaps a few less assignments could have
helped to alleviate that time pressure. |
| The course should analyze companies and people who have tamed or are taming the Electronic
Frontier. Examples of success and failure can be given and analyzed. |
| The course can be improved by reducing the number of tasks. As you have heard for
years, this course is far more time consuming than we are getting credit for. It
is also frustrating to know that our grade is only sightly affected by these tasks
that take forever to complete. This was even stated by you for the task that was
graded through peer assessment: "This is only one task out of 20 that altogether
count for 40% of your grade. Even if you got a zero on this one it would only lower
your overall grade by 2 points." It seems to me that either the tasks should
be worth more, or that there should be maybe ten tasks instead of twenty. |
| The amount of reading and writing is overbearing and should be limited so that the
student can spend more time learning the technical and artistic elements of web publishing. |
| The course could be improved by limiting some of the work. There is alot of work
to be done and for people who have other jobs, family, or other classes, this is
an extremely time consuming class. |
| I think there needs to be a little more consideration to the types of articles that
are assigned to the group. Like others that I spoke with in the class, some of the
articles were too long and too technical for the class to understand, oftentimes
leaving me with an understanding that the articles are obviously pertinent, yet out
of my league. |
| I think that the amount of assigned material was too much. I often spent 5 to 7 hours
in front of the computer screen finishing a task. Some of the assignments could be
dropped and the focus on Superdistribution was kind of one dimensional with not many
"right answers". It seemed like he only wanted to hear what he wanted to
hear, so I just stopped trying to submit one task. |
| Make it a must in Undergrad studies as a general study! |
| That is very hard to say. This course has been evolving in a very positive fashion
over a period of time in response to student needs and observations made by the instructors.
Each class will be somewhat different so I guess it is just a matter of taking the
pulse of each class and making adjustments as they seem to be warranted. |
| Extending on the good points of this class could make it even more intense and effective.
Possibly including more multi-media or other methods to make the tasks and lectures
more multi-faceted could help, while being careful not to depend too much on bells
and whistles which we all know can be more distracting than effective. |
| Continued focus on stressing quality to the students. Otherwise, it's already on
the right track. |
The scope of the work is almost too much for one class. All the subjects were interesting
though. Perhaps, students could have the option of doing exercise A or B for one
week's exercise. After all, we were given the choice of doing the encryption exercise
which proved to be very interesting and challenging.
I don't think there was enough time between the first and second peer reviews of
the web page. I did not focus on doing the improvements to my page because of the
workload. |
| Less group work if possible. |
| The only thing that I will like changed is some of the basic straight forward assignments
that are required to explain how they are done. |
| This course mght be improved by moving the PGP assignment so as to be presented with
the other skills building tools, such as HTML coding. |
| It need to be limit some of assignment because some week there were more than two
or three assignments.It is extremely time consuming class. |
The only criticism I have is the grading system which has 50% of the final grade
based on the team project, 40% based on individual tasks (including the portfolio)
and 10% for other. Based on the time expended and effort required, far too much weight
is placed on the team project and far too little on the portfolio. Most people spent
far more time and effort on the portfolio and nearly as much time on Persig as they
did on the team project.
I believe that maybe there is too much emphasis on the team building issues. I don't
think that the team building is such a problem. This is a very demanding course and
much more weight should be accorded to the portfolio and other tasks. It is certainly
OK to have a team project that forces the students to confront the difficulty of
virtual teams etc., but the team project should not be more than 20-25% of the grade.
The portfolio should be a similar amount. The reading and other tasks should be 30-40%
(they are as much work as taking exams) and 10% could remain as other. |
| Expand on the use of the interactive forms for teaching it to the student which would
required capacity on the servers. |
Some of the assignments are overwhelming in the amount of essay questions asked.
I would ask for a few less questions on some of the longer assignments.
Also, I think the project grade is worth too much of the overall grade. A student
spends a lot of time on the individual assignments, like Pirsig, and I think they
should be worth more. |
| We got the quality picture. We could have used some more real world in our life examples.
Overall, the models discussed were relative and helpful. |
| By making sure all deadlines due dates were established before the semester (instead
of changing dates at the end of the semester). |
| It appears the weight of all tasks are the same. That doesn't balance out well with
me. I recommend weighting the tasks according to difficulty, expected time to complete,
and other obvious parameters. The difficulty and time involved to complete individual
tasks outweighs the time necessary for the semester project. Suggest counting the
project for 30% of the grade and redistributing the difference to the individual
tasks. |
| The only gripe that I have with the class, is that there is a lot of work. I realixe
that this is a graduate level course, but it is still a lot of work. This class consumed
most of my time, and I had little time for my other classes. Maybe eliminate one
or so essay in some of the longer tasks. |
| The only way this course could possibly be improved is on greater reliance in distance
based learning. That is just to make this class fully web based, which I believe
is the final evolution of this product. |
| The tasks are very useful, but take too much time to complete. |
Not sure if the course needs any improvement, just have other courses like it.
This type of course is ideal for those of us that work full time. |
| |
| The course seems to be composed of three general areas: web page development, group
dynamics, and superdistribution. I think superdistribution is an important enough
topic to stand on its own. The current structure does not give it the time I think
it deserves. |
| I'd like to recommend about the amount of assignments that was too much. 40 individual
tasks and one project are overload for one student. I think it had better reduce
some task and expand the time for some task such as Pirzig, superdistribution, holloween
memo, PGP task and etc. |
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