Final Letter

12/9/2018

 

Dear Jasmine Barksdale,

 

You did it! You made it through your semester of Cell Biology! It was a lot harder than I had originally imagined. There were many intricate details that had to be memorized and a lot of random letters and numbers placed together that made it hard to remember a lot of the material, but you did it!

A lot was learned this semester, so it makes me wonder what else there is to know about the cell. This was a lot of information to be learned over the course of a couple of months, so I am sure that there is much more to offer in my future studies. The workload for this course was minimal, but that is because most of the time spent for the class involved watching online lectures and making notes and studying. There were short quizzes for each module and online lessons that included 5-minute videos with quizzes. These online lessons were great for a general understanding of what is to be learned in the lecture.

My study techniques throughout the semester fell short of where I hoped to be at the end, but they allowed for me to not constantly be thinking about an assignment that needed to be completed ASAP. I am, however, happy with the outcome and am happy with my current grades. I do feel like this course helped me to become better organized about how I learn information through an online course. It helps to keep an agenda with all due dates and to check it and double check it regularly. It also helps to give Blackboard a quick glance once or twice a day to make sure that no assignments were uploaded that need immediate attention.

If I could offer one bit of advice as you go through the course, I would suggest you watch ALL of the lecture. Don’t try being lazy about it and skim through certain parts. Try and break it up through the week so that it does not seem as daunting having to watch 3 or 4 hours of material. It starts to get tiring relatively quickly. It also can get irritating seeing a question on a quiz that you could have answered correctly had you watched the whole lecture and not half of it.

Overall, my opinion on the topic of cell biology is that it is a very hard topic to fully understand and feel confident about. Reading articles with relevant information is challenging when you may not know small details that help to bring it all together.