Course Review: Introduction to Nutrition

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Note: this post is my own personal opinion based on my personal experiences with this course.

Required Text

The required texts for this class were a Medical Terminology text and a Dietetics text by The American Dietetic Association. You will use both of these books and they aren’t expensive.

Grading

This is how the class is graded:

The Course

This introduction course also included medical terminology, which I appreciated because I didn’t have to take *another* class to get through my DPD requirements.

You’ll see by the grade schedule posted above, there were basically 5 things going on in this class: medical terminology quizzes, discussion board questions, two projects/papers and a final. This class was broken up in to weekly due dates. We had required reading from our medical terminology text, dietetics text and usually some other things that were posted in blackboard. Each week we had to read everything posted in blackboard and then answer a question in a discussion board about it. These were pretty cut and dry, and your grade was basically just a completion grade.

There were weekly medical terminology quizzes that were matching and usually consisted of 10 questions. These were closed book but did not need to be proctored.

The dietetics part of the course basically walks you through what it takes to become an RD- education, internship, and different career paths (clinical, food service, community and non-conventional).

Likes and Dislikes

Likes: I liked the discussion board posts because I really got to know people taking the course which usually doesn’t happen when you’re taking an online class. The first assignment was just an introduction and it was fun learning about my fellow classmates. It also made me feel better to know that many people in the course were continuing their education and were still working full-time like me :)

I also loved that we had weekly due dates because it really kept me on top of things going on in the course. If everything is due at the end of the semester then I sometimes put it on the back burner.

One of the assignments was to create an online portfolio and resume. We had to get the resume sent to career services for an evaluation. I have had a working resume for 4 years now and career services corrected several things on it! This was an excellent and useful assignment.

Lastly, Lori Greene was very quick in returning emails. This was very helpful!

Dislikes: Three things:

– The final paper and exam were almost half of our grade but were not due until the end of the semester. I had a high A in the class all the way through but that meant nothing to me since my grade really depended on those two assignments.

– I felt like there was not a lot of guidance for the final paper. I think this was because it was not a formal paper and was graded just based on completion and what we learned but I felt completely lost while writing it. I ended up getting a 100 on it, though.

– The medical terminology final was only available the last week of class. It would have been very convenient to make it available for a wider window of time so people could take it whenever they wanted. I would have probably taken it over Thanksgiving break to have it out of the way.

I don’t know if this should really be a ‘dislike’ but I felt like studying for all of the medical terminology quizzes was a lot of work for a 1-credit class considering we also had the other reading and discussion assignments each week. They weren’t difficult, though.

Advice if you are taking this course

This course is pretty cut and dry. If you don’t get an A in it then you really did not try very hard to do well! The only advice I have is to communicate with class members or the instructor if you don’t understand something.

Overall

This course, despite just being 1 credit, was probably the most informative course I have taken throughout my college career. I learned so much about becoming an RD even though I felt like I had previously done a lot of research on it. You will love it!