Not everyone on OpenStudy is a teen with 10 opposable thumbs! It may seem that way on the chat rooms at 2 am, but when we chatted with one of our loyal users, we were amazed to hear her story. “I am a stay-at-home Mom,” she said. We heard, “OpenStudy RockStar!” So we asked her to tell us her story. Meet Geri Lambert folks.
“I am a re-entry ‘student’ having left the technical workforce to raise a family. What I like about OS is the ‘attitude’ of acceptance and affectivity in getting direction on how to solve problems as well as camaraderie in the learning community. I started using it as I was enrolled in a summer NASA Electronic Professional Development Course with Instructor Fran Ruskin and upon completion of that course I asked Professor Ruskin for other e-learning communities to engage in. At that time I was a stay at home mom wanting to keep my math and science skills up. I was also lonely and looking for avenues to pave the way so that I could return to the technical scientific community when the time was right. It was Fran Ruskin that suggested I try Open Study; this was in 2010.
Probably the only story I have to share is how incredibly unsure I was unsure to how to use the learning environment originally…but fellow peers were helpful without a blink! What was truly wonderful was that my peer’s acceptance and willingness to help kept me coming back, and each time I came back, I gained greater confidence. I truly do not have a worst moment. My experience has been very positive.
I am now headed to complete the PhD in Computer Engineering that I started long ago. I want to become a researcher in the world’s scientific community. I use OpenStudy and I feel accepted. This is important to me. I look to bring other nontraditional students to the forum as well so that they might also prosper and re-engage in their possibly stalled careers. In particular, I commend the job that the OpenStudy team are doing to both engage the community for development input as well as implement suggestions to continue to make the program more adaptable to the user’s needs. They are very upbeat…it is always a pleasure to receive news of what the group is up to with OpenStudy. OS is a win-win!”
There you go. Geri loves programming, C++, and is comfortable around computers and tennis tournaments! This leaves us wondering, HOW DOES SHE DO IT ALL?
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