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Maintaining Motivation: Module 7

As my course comes to a close, we finalize by talking about motivation. Having motivation isn’t necessarily the biggest problem, but keeping that motivation proves to be the greatest complication. Motivation is a lot of the reason I neglect to do so much. When motivation is absent for me, often times focus is absent as well; two vital pieces needed for completion of most tasks. The two kind of go hand in hand. If you aren’t motivated to do something, you won’t really focus on it, and if you aren’t focused on a task, you won’t be very motivated to complete it. In most cases, I can pull up a playlist and listen to the music and that will help me focus. In other situations, I turn to incentivizing, leaving myself a reward upon completion of said task. The music is most effective, which means I don’t have to incentivize often. However, there is one last thing that helps my motivation, and that is an app on my phone. The app, called Eternal Sunshine, occasionally sends positive notification to my lock screen; messages of confidence and affirmation are most popular. It’s very reassuring to see these little messages pop up and make you feel as if there’s a reason for your work. Stay motivated, my friends.

Web-Enhanced Listening and Viewing Strategies: Module 5

In this lesson, active listening was brought to my attention. You know the basics, pay attention to main ideas, and indicator words, and repeated emphasis on “important details”. All of this is very important, and quite useful information, and I’ve actually taken all of these techniques into consideration in my lectures. Active listening improves the quality of the notes and the retention of the information as a whole. When you take good notes, you have a good understanding of the lesson you were actively listening to. It all works out for the greater good. Utilizing these strategies are important for nearly anything you have to listen to and take notes for. Often times, note taking takes longer than needed because we take more notes than necessary. That’s where successful active listening comes into play. Once you gather the important ideas and concepts, you can take better note of what you actually need to know. Notes may be shorter but at least they aren’t multiple pages and pages of information that you probably won’t even need. Moral of the story is listen as actively as you can. Listen for what was mentioned in the beginning of this blog. It helps a bunch! 

Web-Enhanced Reading and Study Strategies: Module 4

I have returned to tell the people about yet another lesson I have learned in my distance learning class. As we know, using technology to complete school work may not be the finest or the easiest of processes but in many ways, it is helpful in many things that we do. In one way, technology is utilized in making textbooks accessible online. Some people take advantage of this, and some do not, i.e. Me. I don’t see it as useful for the simple fact that I have trouble highlighting when using technology to access my books. It just doesn’t do the same thing for me. However, online study strategies have proven to be quite effective for me. My favorite, as referred to in the lesson, is Quizlet. Quixlet, in my opinion, takes flashcards to a whole new level. It is a website, online accessible through am account, so it is easy to keep your flashcards organized and can be restricted to only your eyes. Not only can you study your flashcards traditionally, but you can also have them in list view or play games and interact with your study material to study them in a way that benefits you most. I love Quizlet and encourage you all to try it as well, seeing that it is one resource that I repeatedly use and is credited for most of my academic success.

Efficiency in the Digital Age: Module 3

Coming up to the conclusion of week three, our focus was on time management and the use of technology. This was probably one of the lessons I was in desperate need of. If there is one thing that I needed major improvement, it is my time management skills, mainly procrastination. While going through this module, I learned that there are actual thought processes that cause us to procrastinate. There was a whole video explanation and everything. Gotta love technology right? Until it distracts you from your work, and that’s my main issue. In most cases I reach for my phone to distract myself from any and every thing, and I will eventually shy away from my work and put it off until the last minute. Unfortunately that isn’t the best “college survival” tactic, and I don’t advise that for anyone. One thing that I have found works for me is turning off my phone during the time I have set aside to do my work. That way, it won’t go off, because once it goes off and I check to see why, it’s over for my work, and I can’t have that. Not in college, it will hinder my success. It is hard, I will say it is NOT easy, but it’s doable, and if your phone proves itself as big a problem as it is for me, I advise you to try this.

Communication and Collaborations: Module 2

For the second week of my online course in self regulated learning, the ideas of communication and collaboration were introduced. I had already had some knowledge on the two ideas, but not to the extent it was explained to me. I never knew how important internet etiquette, or ‘netiquette’ actually was. There are proper ways to do numerous things such as emailing and posting on social media. Who knew? Seems to have been everyone except me. In fact, a chemistry professor by the name of Dr. Fus made a quite short yet informational video on how to properly email your professors. I encourage you to use this information as well, so I’ll include that video at the bottom of this post. Since learning of ‘netiquette’, I have been closely monitoring my social media interactions seeing that each time I interact affects my digital reputation. After all, wouldn’t you? How would you feel if you couldn’t work for a company because of something you posted mindlessly five years ago? Pretty bad I’m assuming; I know I would be. It’s way too easy to post and interact on social media without really thinking about all possible outcomes, so I’ll extend my new found knowledge to my readers and leave with you: think before you post!

 

Oh yeah, and email your professors properly! Listen to Dr. Fus!