LIB100: An Online Experience
In the beginning of the semester, I was nervous to take my first online college level course, Library Science 100. I was worried that I would not have time to work on my assignments due to the fact I’m overly involved like almost every other college student on campus. Nevertheless, once the course began in October, I found myself adjusting my schedule and becoming disciplined to a specific time on working online.
If I’m going to be honest, I might as well be upfront and say it right away, my experience with this online course was fantastic! The way in which information was presented made learning about research interesting and engaging. Also, beginning the course talking about Aaron Swartz made a huge impact on the introduction of information on the internet. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the value of information, and how access to information has an impact on every day life. I truly think that’s what made learning in this class a lot of fun!
Furthermore, being able to apply what we learned, such as how much money libraries spend to get membership access to databases and scholarly journals, etc., helped obtained a real world understanding how the access to information works. One of the things I found the most surprising was learning how much money it cost for people outside of a college network to get bits and pieces of scholarly works. Also, learning how publications are the ones to charge for information access is quite concerning.
Though, I have to say that one of my biggest takeaways from this class was learning how to research and verify the validity of a source. I remember making a comment in a class discussion on how much it has impacted the way I know read my information online. I am huge on reading articles, specifically ones that show up on my Facebook newsfeed. I have now been able to determine the accuracy from articles and clearly tell the ones that are faux. Another of my biggest takeaways, is learning the skill to properly cite my sources. This skill has been one I’ve always needed to improve on, and thus after learning the different citation formats for different sources, I now have a better understanding. This will definitely carry on towards my future research endeavors at Wake Forest University.
The final project was an assignment that I really enjoyed. I researched on Net Neutrality and how that has an impact on freedom of expression. It was tough searching for material that would answer my question directly, and even now I don’t think I got a definite answer, but reading upon the issues was really enlightening on an issue I didn’t even know existed.
Overall, this class was an amazing opportunity to further learn how to research effectively and how to have fun with it. It helped me improve as a student on how to do research and even taught me discipline!
