So, I'm getting my BSN online. It's great, because I don't have to sit in a classroom, there are no group projects, and this school has six semesters a year, so I can get stuff done faster.
We just started a new semester, and I bought my books through Barnes & Noble, because I have a discount card, so I don't have to pay full price for my texts. The school would like you to buy your textbooks and course materials through them, but $225 a class is just way to much for me to justify, since the "materials" are copies of the lectures on CD-ROM, and a bound handout like the one you would get in a classroom, with a printed copy of the syllabus and all sorts of PowerPoint handouts that go along with the lectures.
I've done two classes with this school, and I never found that I needed the "materials." I watch the lectures online with streaming video, I don't need the PowerPoint crap because the lectures are VIDEOS and I can just pause to take notes if I need to (which I don't, because mostly the lectures are just rehashing the book), and the professors in the last two classes posted important project information on the class message board.
This instructor seems not to be too into it: She hasn't posted a bio, or any information other than "see the study guide" for the two big projects we will be handing in. I politely posted a request for the information about the projects, to which I got three replies of completely useless information from classmates, and a statement from the instructor that "It will be most difficult to do the work in this course without the Workbook [sic]. . . . I think it is a necessary requirement to do well in the course."
Look, I understand that it sucks to ask someone to give me for free what other people have paid for. But I don't need the whole workbook OR the CDs. I just need the information about the stupid retarded projects. Perhaps a nice classmate would step up and email me the information. No dice. Even though I spent HOURS online explaining to these mostly computer illiterate people how to format a Word document and how to draw circles for a genogram for the last class: "Look up at the toolbar. Click on the word 'insert.' Click on the word 'AutoShapes.' Click on the button that has a little picture of a circle, a square, and a triangle on it."
So now I have to lay out $80 (which includes a $20 2-day FedEx fee, since it's considered an "emergency, " even though I told the rep I ordered it from that I wouldn't need it for at least a week, maybe two) for the CDs and a bound pile of xeroxed paper that I only need two pages from. As Yosemite Sam would say, that just burns mah biscuits.
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8 comments:
That bites and your classmates are assholes. Have they never heard of scan and email.........or scan, copy and paste. Jerks! but.......Yay! for online classes,they usually rock as long as you don't have to go to campus to take the exams.
That sucks. We get allotted a certain amount of pages that we can print for each semester. 3 courses with an 8 page syllabus, then powerpoints with 75-100 slides adds up quickly. It is such a waste.
Have u try the online bookstore Cocomartini.com
http://www.cocomartini.com to buy textbooks
I get all my textbooks for this semester from this bookstore. All are brand new textbooks and half price discount textbooks and cheap textbooks.
Good luck and wish some help.
hehe ^_^
Been there, done that...
I never use the campus bookstore, but luckily our school puts all of that info online for everyone; only the textbooks have to be purchased. For that, I use Amazon..
Can I ask which online school (having just finished a group project where my lab partner turned in his pages the night before the project was due)?
I wonder if college profs get a kickback for using a specific text, and then changing editions, so that the used books are useless to new students. Sounds like racketeering to me....
GGRN Hubbins, here: When I was a kid on trumpet, before I ditched for bass and subsequent guitar, I had a good lip. My fancy private trumpet instructor who came to the house had me buy HIS books. Included among them was a friggin' blank book of staffs with his name on it.
Everybody wants their little bit of the graft.
You probably should not waste your time helping your fellow students, since they clearly do not have any intention of helping you. You are probably ruining the curve.
See if the school has a message board for alumni. You might do better buying the little bit that you, an intelligent adult, need. Maybe even getting a copy of the material for what it is really worth outside of the school - nothing.
These apparent lowest common denominators probably need a whole lot more. Or is it just the computer stuff that they have problems with?
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