#####ABOUT In the Soto school of Zen, dharma transmission is an acknowledgement of the connections between teacher and student.
Unfortunately, a lot of students in online courses lack this connection with their peers and instructors. The experience as a whole is very impersonal and cold. With Transmission, I hope to bridge that gap.
For now, this is a small project: a simple website to provide resources, and a private Google+ community to facilitate study groups via Google Hangouts. I really wanted to create a small app utilizing the Google Hangout API, but Transmission is a school project with time constraints at the present moment.
#####CONTEXT My name is Jenny Coffman, and I'm currently enrolled full-time at Hennepin Technical College for web development.
This website is being created as a part of my final project for a class on critical thinking. We had to find a problem we cared about (something that affected more than just ourselves), and attempt to solve it/put in action using what we've learned in class. I gave myself some additional criteria: this project had to have lasting value. I didn't want to file this away as another frivolous school project. We've all had them. Most of us probably hated them. I took them for granted in high school, and grudgingly gave them a little effort and thought as a photography student at Columbus College of Art and Design. Now, as an non-traditional student in community college, I'm all too aware of the opportunities wasted.
As a number of instructors have pointed out to me over the course of my educational career, you only get what you put in. Garbage in, garbage out.
Programming and design are pure problem-solving. All of the apps on our smartphones, tablets and desktops started as problems to be solved. Creating a website felt like a natural choice for this project. Not only would it let me flex my coding muscles and provide a piece for my portfolio, but it solves one of the problems within the main problem: encouraging connections between students and instructors without sacrificing the convenience of taking an online course.
I'm going to keep a journal of sorts to document my progress and thought process as I work on this project. You can find it in the project_journal folder.
#####CONTACT I encourage anyone who stumbles upon this to get a hold of me with feedback. I believe constructive criticism and discussion are integral to the learning process.
- EMAIL: scarling@gmail.com
- TWITTER: @jenny_roses