MVSmith asked this question over in the Daytona State College forum:

Virtual College

Where did it go?

I’m signed up for Sociology via online with the VC and not only have I not yet heard from the professor, but the links I have to the VC no longer work. On top of that, I’ve been searching the new site for DSC and there’s nothing there (that I’ve found anyways).

So, if we have a class online, how do we get to it?

It’s a good question. The new virtual college is confusing. My Physics professor, Dr. Gajendra Tulsian, asked a student to log in to his account on Monday for a demonstration. He didn’t know how, the next student didn’t either, and the system wasn’t even working for the last one. Barring problems on the college’s end, here’s the reply I wrote detailing the steps:

They do make it confusing, I know. Here’s what to do:

1. Go to class.daytonastate.edu.
2. Enter your user name as first initial, last name, last three digits of student ID. Mine is rthripp658, for example.
3. Enter your password. I think this is your Falconmail password. Use the Forgot Password link if you need to, and the system will email your password to your Falconmail account.

And to log in to your Falconnet account, click the “Falconnet” button at the top of the daytonastate.edu home page, log-in with your Student ID and password as birth date (081791, for example), click the big “Check Email” button toward the top-right, click “Continue…”, and finally, click “Inbox.” Too many steps, I know.

Once you’re in at class.daytonastate.edu, there are even more steps. Under “My Courses,” you may have to click the little plus sign to the right of “FA08″ (for Fall 2008) to get your course list to appear. Then, click the course you

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I learned some tricks when I took my human nutrition course (HUN1201) online last fall. The college offers many courses online through a program called Florida Online, which was previously Virtual College.

They use Desire2Learn Learning Environment for their online classes and tests. With the exception of finals, teachers create their own tests, usually with multiple-choice answers, but sometimes essays or fill-in-the-blanks. The latter is harder for most students, but also harder for the teacher to grade, so you don’t see it often.

The time limits vary quite widely. My teacher, Myra Vergani, had six tests, with 50 multiple choice questions each, and a limit of 45 minutes on each one. This means you have to work quickly. You can cheat as much as you want through Google or by looking things up in the book, but unless you have a good system you won’t get to the information fast enough.

The answers for all the test questions are in the book, often worded exactly the same. There is no answer list in the book because the teacher makes the tests. The questions are jumbled up to discourage cheating. The surefire way to get an A is to know the material by rote so answering the questions is no problem. This would take about 10 hours of studying for each test in human nutrition. I spent about 2 hours studying and consistently got A’s. My study area looked like this:

1. An index of the chapter is open in a text file.
2. Google is open in one window for fast searching.
3. The encyclopedic CD that came with the book is open in another window.
4. The book is in my lap.

First, let’s give some background info. You need a fast Internet connection. Any time spent waiting for web pages is time wasted. …

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