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Hi fellow students!

This week was the last module of the class. I’ve learned so much this semester and I hope you guys have as well. I’m going to share with you the most important thing that I learned in this week’s module, which was about motivation and how to find it. The thing that helped me the most was finding the right environment to help your motivation. First you want to find a quiet place to focus, and some people work better while listening to music, so you want to find a playlist that will increase your concentration. I struggle with distractions on my phone, so it’s recommended to put that out of view and eliminate other potential distractions as well. When I’m studying for finals next week, I’m going to keep this in mind and hopefully I’ll be able to focus better.

Some other tips that I learned this week include taking breaks while studying is important. We also learned some methods for relaxation, which includes deep breathing and stretching. Here’s a video that was given in module 7 that you will hopefully find helpful about how to do deep breathing (Video Here). Sleep is also very important. Some tips to be able to fall asleep include having a consistent bedtime and wake time, developing a nighttime routine, and limiting technology usage before going to sleep.

I hope this was all helpful and that you guys have a great rest of the semester!

-Emily

Hi fellow students!

I hope everyone is having a great break! This week’s module was super interesting for me because I do a lot of research and reading through academic papers, so these tips really helped me out. I am going to start by sharing what the most important thing that I learned in this module is. What I struggle the most with is actually finding good resources to use, so I think the most important thing learned was ways I can do that. I didn’t know much about the resources that the OSU libraries have, especially online. I checked out a couple databases, and there is so much information. I also learned that google scholar (https://scholar.google.com/) is a good resource to get academic papers and other literature. I am going to be using these to search for resources from now on.

Some other tips that I learned this week that I want to share with you include ways you can tell if a source is credible. First check for reliability: Is contact information available? Is the source from a reputable organization? And is the information peer reviewed? Then you’re going to want to check for credibility and ask yourself if the information is up to date, if it is well written and consistent, and if there are citations. The final thing you want to check for is utility. For this, you want to ask if the information relates to your topic and if it matches your audience. We did an assignment where we had to check all of these things for a source and see if it was creditable or not, and I found it super helpful.

I hope all of this information helped you like it helped me. Have a great week!

-Emily

Hi fellow students!

I do tend to struggle with effectively taking notes, so this week’s module really helped me out. I’m going to start off by talking about what I think the most useful thing I learned from this module is. I am deaf, so I can’t really listen and take notes at the same time, so I have to choose what is important for me to take notes of. I have transcribers who type what the professor says, so I usually spend the class period listening, and then go back and take notes reading the transcription after class. However, this week I learned how I can organize my notes to be able to better use them in the future when studying for exams or quizzes. I learned a lot about organizational apps, such as Evernote and a few other apps. I already use notability, but am planning on trying out other apps to see what works best for me, and maybe I can use something else next semester.

Some tips that I learned that I want to share with you guys include make sure you know if taking notes on paper or electronically works better for you. There are pros and cons to both.  For example, online you could have distractions, but you also can better edit the notes and highlight and move things around. There are also many different note taking processes, so I encourage you to research and find out what process works best for you. This can help you take more organized notes and focus on what you need. Here is one video from the module that shares some tips on improving the note taking process (https://youtu.be/Yc5qyMTjO3k).

I hope this has help you out, and that you all have a great week!

-Emily

Hi fellow students!

I found this week’s lesson to be super helpful and insightful. I’m going to share with you the most important thing that I learned, and then dive into some tips that hopefully help you guys out! There was a lot that I learned, but I think the most important thing was interacting with your online readings. I tend to just skim through things, especially when they’re online and not on physically paper in front of me, but this causes me to forget a lot of what I read. There are a lot of technology resources that allow you to interact with text. I use notability to download pdfs, and then I can highlight the text and take notes in the margins. Some other notes that were mentioned are to quiz yourself periodically throughout the reading to make sure you’re actually understanding the material, and use mnemonic devices to remember things. You can also draw symbols or diagrams to help as well. I think this was the most important thing I learned because it’s something that I struggle a lot with and I am now going to put these tips into action and hopefully do better because of it.

Now, for some other tips I learned that hopefully will help you out. Be aware of multitasking. As college students, we are constantly busy and trying to do multiple things at once, but we need to just focus on one thing at a time, otherwise it will not stick in our memory and we won’t understand it completely. There is so much technology out there that can improve our learning, you just need to find it. There are apps and websites for studying with flashcards, quizzing yourself, working in groups, finding information, learning new languages, etc… There is so much out there and you can use it to your benefit.

Have a great week everyone!

-Emily

Hi everyone!

This week’s lesson I found super helpful, as I struggle to deal with time management and organization. The point from this module that I found the most useful was making sure to break down large tasks into smaller ones. I usually find myself overwhelmed with large projects and when I have to grade a lot of papers at once, so breaking that into smaller, more manageable sections makes me much less stressed and able to better complete the tasks. For example, when I have to grade lab reports for my TA job, instead of sitting down and trying to grade them all at once, I am going to spread it out over a couple days and break it into sections, so I don’t feel as overwhelmed with the amount of grading that needs to be done. I can also do the same thing with my other tasks, such as class assignments and research tasks.

After going through this week’s lesson, I have some advice for you guys, my fellow students to help deal with time management. Create a to do list or some sort of task list to help keep track of everything that needs to be done. I have also learned that organizing that task list by doing things that are a higher priority first helps be more efficient when getting things done. I also use a calendar to put in all my classes, clubs and meetings, which makes it more difficult to overbook yourself and you are able to see when you have things going on and not miss them. However, another thing I learned this week is that you can actually put your tasks in your calendar based on when they are due, which I thought was super helpful. This video that was shared in the lesson also has many more tips that you guys hopefully find helpful! https://youtu.be/b3fVtWfhitc

One thing that I do struggle with that I want to work on in the future is learning how to say no. I tend to take on more than I can handle and get overwhelmed when I don’t have time to do other things. I want to help people out, so I tend to say yes when others ask me to do things. So, in the future, I’m going to ask myself- do I have time to do this? And do I want to do this? If either of the answers are no, then I’m not going to do it.

I hope you found my tips, advice, and reflection helpful and can put some of it into action in your own lives!

Have a great week!

-Emily

Hi fellow students!

For this module’s blog post I am sharing some advice based on what I have learned. The majority of the lesson this week was on online communication. The biggest piece of advice I want to give is remember that even though you are sitting behind a screen, you are still talking to an actual person. Think about if the conversation should be professional and make sure you match the tone of the type of conversation. Writing an email to a professor or boss is different than sending a text to a friend, and that difference should be noticed.

In a lot of fields, there will be lots of group work and collaboration with multiple people. Everyone communicates differently, so it’s important to note how others communicate and learn how to share information and ideas. The lesson had a video that I found super helpful about different tools that can help improve group collaboration (https://youtu.be/e49iiu5hxZE).

Learning how to communicate online can be challenging at first and take time to master, especially if you aren’t used to doing things online. However, anyone can learn how to effectively communicate, and I hope these tips and advice helped you out! It just takes practice.

Have a great week!

-Emily