Final Blog Post

Hybrid Course Reflection

Just from doing a quick search online, I came across several other so-called “hybrid” courses here at UW Madison. Specifically, I found a class entitled “Advanced Nursing Practice Interventions”, which aims at building the knowledge and skills required to design and then implement nursing interferences at advanced levels. Another example of a class with the same idea is called “Ads and Shopping in American Culture”. As explained in the description, this course is designed to give students a sense of exposure to how anthropology impacts marketing in America. Both of these examples differ from the work done in LIS 201 in the sense that these courses use the online tool as a source for learning, while we use it to personally reflect and share our findings from face-to-face discussions. Looking back at my experience in LIS 201, my familiarity with online learning definitely increased as the semester progressed. Although I still feel like I learned and benefitted the most from in class discussions and interactions with my peers, the online element of the class definitely gave me the chance to improve my technology skills and take advantage of the efficiency of automation. Personally, moving forward, I suggest that instructors should be cautious with how much they use technology and online tools in their class because students should be pushed towards improving their personal communication skills and not be able to rely on a faceless computer or tablet screen to work with others. With certainty, the course material in LIS 201 did make the online component that much more valuable. Learning about the information society we live in today, and the widespread accessibility to technology that is available at our fingertips, constantly blogging and using our Wiki’s confirmed the arguments made in our course reader on how social media and dataveillance are changing the way humans interact. Overall, I really enjoyed the dual dynamic of this course, and can honestly say I learned a lot about the progression of literature throughout our society’s history, as way as the social norms of the present and future that lean towards relying on algorithms and post-Fordism mechanization for answers and human interaction.