TESC Photography Course Recommendation

[Westerner]

In week 10 of the course now.

Module 3—metering and bracketing. Experimenting and getting the best picture. Practicing with ISO.
Module 4—no photo exercise. Discussing the history of photography: wet dark rooms vs. digital workspace.
Module 5—lighting. Taking photos in different lighting conditions and times of the day. Also, in this module, the class looks at famous portrait photographers; every student picks one. DO NOT pick Annie Lebowitz. Her famous photos are quite obscene. Yousef Karoush, Ansel Adams, and Dorothea Lange are good options.
Module 6—up until now, you've only been required to post 4 photos/week. In this module, you collect 16 photos that demonstrate techniques you've been learning throughout the course.

And, I hope you don't have to take this course with Paul Light, but if you do, his main thing is to take creative pictures. I have been getting Bs on the photo exercises (except on 1, which I got A-) and on the corresponding discussion forums. On the creative exercise forums (in which you write about your personal inspirations and such), I get 100s. But since those don't count nearly as much as the photo exercises and DFs, I asked him about how to improve my photography so I could get As, but all he wrote in his return email was a copy-past from the instructions and his original post with his expectations (namely, to be creative). I could've gathered that much and would've liked a more personal response (after all, what's a professor for if not to help his students?) but I guess I'm not getting that from him. I agree with other students of his who say that he expects too much from people taking an "Introduction to Photography" class.