First day of PSYCH538

My University of Phoenix class "began" today which basically just means that when I log in to the UoP eCampus website, the class shows up under my "Current Classes" tab instead of "Upcoming Classes," and the professor has posted the syllabus and course schedule.

Being a six-week course, they don't waste any time. My first assignment is due on Saturday, and my first paper due on Monday.

The course weeks begin on Tuesdays and end on Mondays. From what I can tell, the course discussion board (or forum as it is called at UoP) is used extensively - much more than in my FSU courses, and in a much stricter manner. I've had courses which required you to post responses to a certain number of threads or questions by mid-week and then post a certain number of replies by the end of the week, but for this class, our entire class participation grade requires us to post to the classroom's "Main Forum" with two substantive posts on each of four days during the course week. Substantive is defined differently in different classes apparently, but in this class, it means between 200 and 300 words. From what I can tell, that means 8 discussion board posts a week. Two of those posts will be responses to certain discussion questions which are due on certain days of the week. Except for this first week when the discussion questions are due on Thursday and Friday, they will generally be due on Wednesdays and Fridays.

We will also be assigned to "Learning Teams," which I can't say I'm looking forward to at all. According to the syllabus, 30% of our grades are from group assignments, with the first group assignment being due next week! We don't even have our teams assigned yet. I've been pretty lucky with my groups at FSU, so I'm hoping my luck holds out and I end up with good group members at UoP as well.

The next six weeks would be busy even if this was the only class I was taking, but taking this class along with an FSU class, and trying to study for the Florida Teacher Certification Exams at the same time is going to be rough.