Personal Introduction Posting

Unless you are a newcomer to the program, your colleagues in this course may include a number of people you have encountered in previous courses or perhaps even in workplace contexts. However, in most cases you will also be meeting new colleagues, including newcomers to the program, more experienced students who just haven't happened to be in your courses in the past, and new Instructors. If you are a newcomer to the program, you may well find that you don't know any of the other people in your course.

The purpose of the Personal Introduction Posting, then, is to provide your classmates and Instructors with a bit of background information about yourself. This might include, for example, something about your professional and educational background, work experience and reasons for enrolling in the course.  If you are comfortable in providing it, a bit of personal background such as where your location, family situation, hobbies and personal interests, etc., may also be of interest to your colleagues.

Exchanging this kind of information early in the course is helpful in creating a more familar, collegial atmosphere similar to that which learners establish when they meet and chat informally during classroom-based courses.  Naturally, you are not expected to go beyond what you are comfortable sharing with others in any other context - face-to-face or electronic.

You are encouraged to revisit this forum frequently during the early stages of the course in order to greet and get to know your classmates and Instructors better.  Ask them questions, respond to their questions, and explore in more detail their unique areas of experience and expertise.

Remember, this forum also offers you the opportunity to build a valuable online professional network that will enable you to draw upon the specialized knowledge and experience of your classmates both during the course and, as professional colleagues, long after the course is over.

As with other "major" postings, we recommend that you prepare your self-introduction prior to opening the Discussions tool. This will enable you to review, reflect on, reconsider and/or revise your posting at your leisure before you finally post it to the forum.

You can use any word processing application you wish (e.g., Word, Wordpad, Notepad, etc.) to prepare and edit your message. You don't need to worry about how you name the file as you don't need to upload the message file to the forum - you simply copy the text of the prepared message and paste it into the Discussions tool at the appropriate time.

After you have finalized your message, open the Discusions Tool, select the topic
"Personal Introduction to Classmates and Instructor",
and proceed with your posting.

(If you are still a bit unsure about using the Discussions Tool, you can always follow along with the Discussions Tool Tutorial to carry out this posting.)

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Online Learning Consultants, Ltd. (2009)