Saturday, February 9, 2019

Brain Challenge

As of January I am enrolled in an online University of Toronto Alumni six weeks course to challenge my ability to study new ideas and then do required assignments , online discussions and quizzes.The course is , “Managing Your Health ; The Role of Physical Therapy and Exercise”.
There are video lectures from the university as well as others linked to YouTube and information put out by the various branches the course has decided to have us pursue.
The first week focused on what is a good guide for healthy people in regards to exercise along with what are good food choices to maintain general good health. It was easy to read articles and make a note of what they suggested as important goals to keep. These would be in quizzes that I was able to pass easily. However the first assignment was to create a four week plan that I would follow using a template of an excel nature to include several categories and how I would execute them in that time frame
 It took some hours of work to import the template into the IOS Numbers software on my laptop and I got there. Yeah.
Then I meticulously filled in all the columns and rows with what the course suggested would be a good exercise plan. It even asked for a comment and completed column. I did that and it looked very cool. I had to be creative and use letters to represent words like A for aerobic and S for Stregthening and it seemed all good until I tried to cut and paste my completed work back into the feed online. It just would not work. 
I took a screen shot and tried to figure out if that might work. It did not. I was almost ready to quit the course because I felt stumped. But I tried one last approach. I asked my UK daughter,a computer geek, to log onto my laptop and see if she could assist. It sort of worked. My own headers of columns had to be reverted to the original sample template but she was able to get “my ducks in a row” within the template using my work and then get it into my work space inside the course feed though it failed to show the vertical and horizontal lines found on spread sheets. I was grateful and as I moved on to do the peer reviews I discovered no one was able to use the template. The course provider was at fault. I ended up peer evaluating a whole bunch of garbled attempts of other people’s plans that made my own appear rather good and I had the ambition to stay in the course. I am now working on week four as we were allowed to work at our own speed. Week six ends March 4.
Here is how my work should have appeared but it did not.

I am finding it interesting as I move along in the course that the Heart and stroke Foundation, the Diabetes Foundation, the Osteoparosis Foundation and the Cancer Society have all had their spin put into the course and of course our provincial and federal health guidelines. Interesting. Of course there is the emphasis the therapists are there to help along the path of managing one's health and they point out what their role may be. After all the course title implies they are important.
Is that the new way for students to get "unbiased" higher education?
What do you suppose?