The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: Online Classes

The Art Institute's online classes were some of the biggest headaches I have ever encountered.  I no longer have access to them, but here is an example of a post a student made on message board of my U.S. History class (I saved this post because it was too classic):

"Monroe Doctrine was written by James Monroe (former president) after the Latin America fought for independence. The main purpose and focus for the Monroe Doctrine was to enforce that they European influence and to warn them that they couldn’t reestablish colonization. After all of the discretion, the European powers were to stay out of foreign affairs. The European powers to stay away from the American continents to declare U.S. to stay always from the American continents to declare U.S to stay our of the affairs of the European. To the end American influence in Europe & to end the European influence in America limits the influence in the Western hemisphere the Doctrine has affected American history since then because the Americans try not to have any problems with the Europeans just to reduce conflict."
Honestly, I have no idea how the Art Institute's online classes exist...why everyone isn't revolting against them.  I took these online classes because the school wasn't offering anything interesting for its electives (more on this in another post coming soon).

To get into the online classes, I had to get it approved from the dean.  I had to have grades that allowed me to qualify for the class.  I also attended an hour long presentation about online classes (I don't know if this was required).  The presentation made the online classes seem very difficult and time consuming, but rewarding.

I took two online classes:  U.S. History and Natural Science.  There were reading assignments, of which I spent the time reading at first until I realized there was absolutely no need.  There were no tests or assignments given from the book, but to answer the questions on the discussion boards the online instructors asked you had to delve in to many other sources for proper responses (but the vast majority of responses were not proper).

(This is a screen capture of the start of a paper I had to write my Online History class.  I had to praise Lincoln because, according to the class, he was a great president.  No.)

 

It was one of the worst experiences in education I've ever had.  Once a week, I had to pick one of five Discussion Questions and "substantially" answer it.  To me, a substantial answer means at least a couple paragraphs supporting your answer.  However, the vast majority of answers were very slim.  What made this assignment very hard was that we had to "substantially" respond to two of the answers from other students on the message board.  Simple enough, except when you have answers like the one above, when an answer looks directly copy-pasted with no or poor sources, or when a complex question is answered in one or two sentences.

All of our supporting facts to our arguments were to be cited in either MLA or APA format.  Very rarely did I ever see MLA or APA format - most of the time just a link was pasted from some random website (because everything on the internet is true).  I don't think I ever recall one time seeing anyone use any of the online resources the school supplies. 

We had one assignment in the History class to make a Power Point.  Although I appreciated not having to write a paper, it was rather annoying making a presentation that was never going to be presented.

(Our Power Point required a Primary Source Image.  Most other students in powerpoints that I observed literally only had the one image.  How boring are people?  These are suppose to be creative students, yet I've never seen such a collection of boring presentations)

Being a school that is technology-lenient, I expected more (maybe that's my problem - my expectations are too high).  I expected videos from either the class facilitator (it's hard to call the professor an instructor when s/he is literally teaching nothing) or some sort of interactive experience.  All I received were typed words from the instructors.

If my experiences with these online classes were anywhere near the standard for an online class, then online classes are a joke (but a great way to make money)!  Maybe I'm just expecting too much for the money I guess.

List of all the posts I have about my experiences at AILV