After going through this course I feel that I have a better overall understanding of how to go about studying, preparing, time management, and use online tools to my benefit. I felt coming into this I had a decent understanding, but this course has given me a more structured way to go about all of these things. One of the most important things I learned was managing my time effectively. An important thing from the text this week, on page 162, was to create healthy habits. This included managing your time effectively to get the right amount of sleep, and exercise throughout the day, and week all while still staying on top of assignments. Other useful things from this course, include all of the online study tools, especially the videos on searching for reliable resources online when doing something for a class. This was an easy way to quickly learn how to create a correct and meaningful search when doing assignments like papers for a class.

I learned that I have a pretty good idea of time management and how to go about everything, but still have little things that I need to work on like procrastination, and doing what is most important first. Not allowing all the work to get paired up together and spend the same amount of time on a 2 point assignment as a 15 point assignment, I can help this by not trying to be perfect in all of my assignment and by doing the more important stuff first. One meaninful experience of this course was creating the spreadsheet on one of my weeks. I thought this was interesting because It allowed me to see exactly how much free time I had, how much time I was spending on school, exercise, and even sleep. Once that spreadsheet was completed it really let me see how well I was managing my time and exactly the areas I needed to put the most work in to improve. I felt I learned really well from this visual of my schedule and really improved my time management.

This class was very helpful in introducing new tools and creative ways to go about studying, management time and setting goals. I will use the tools learned to benefit myself in the future. A way of doing this would be to use online study tools more often like, Kahn academy, Quizlet, and other sources. These are especially helpful when what the teacher was talking about was confusing for you. Hearing a different voice, and even a different method of teaching the material from one of these study sources and help clear any confusion up and allow you to better understand the material for upcoming exams. Use these sources to your advantage. Experiment through them and find which sources help you the most and continue to use them in the future, that is something I am going to try to do more. Also I will use the search strategies to my advantage in the future. When writing an essay in the future I may use wikipedia to get a broad, or general idea of the idea, then use an advanced search for a scholarly source to cite in my essay. All of these little things will benefit you in the future and should be used when necessary. Don’t just use the minimum class requirement, go outside the class resources and find other sources that help you learn the material, a great way to do this is through the tools we learned in this class. Be creative with you searches and study tools, and also be sure to manage your time effectively.

One of the most useful things I discovered throughout this module were the tips for evaluating online sources. These are found on pages 67-69 in the textbook and will help you determine if the source you are looking at is a reliable one. It tells you to check to see if the author’s credentials are available, the contact information is there, and about the publications reputation. This gives you some background to determine if this source is credible and can allow you to ask important questions to the people who made the source if you need to. Another thing that I learned is if the information uses broad or generalizing statements. This is found on page 69 also. I have put this into practice by making sure the source I’m looking at doesn’t use key words like “everyone” or “always” when talking about a topic or subject. This allowed me to determine if the source quality information or not, an allowed me to decide right then and there if I wanted to continue using this as a source for my project.

One thing that I can put into practice in the future, and focus more on is the audience level of a source. If the audience level of the source I am trying to write a paper on is way below my course requirements it is not a good idea to write using this source as a reference. If I am able to focus and determine the audience level more easily it will make picking out sources for a certain project much quicker.

Some advice I would give to you is to use these little tips when looking at a source. If you can do this it will allow you to quickly determine if this is the right or wrong source for you based off the topic or course you are writing in. If you look and there are no author credentials and it is below your audience level then you can quickly determine that this source is probably not the one for you. These tips will help when you are struggling to find a source that will help you in writing a paper, or doing a project, so I would urge you to use them to your advantage.

One of the most important things I learned from this module is that during a podcast there are so many things you cannot see and are unaware of. With these things you can’t control what you can is your focus on things like verbal cues from the instructor. Doing this will help you pick up what the instructor thinks is important and will allow you to easily access the material for future study. With this something I have already put into use from this chapter is outlining key points from lectures for future reference, this is stated on the power point at slide six, titled “Note Taking Approaches.” For example, as the instructor using specific body language, or hand gestures I would bold, underline those points as key points in the lecture. Doing this you can have organized notes for future reference this works out great when you need to study for exams and brush up on old information.

Some things I can put into practice is making sure I get online and try to find other sources that present the material differently. When my instructor gives a lecture that is confusing to me I should get online to try to find other sources for that material, either videos or websites that can give me a better understanding of the material. Moreover, my advice to other students would be to do the same thing. That when you don’t understand something from an instructor get online, don’t just give up and think the instructor doesn’t like you. Seek out other perspectives of the topics you are learning through sources online. This will help you get the most out of the material by finding an online source that helps you best with you learning style. Take organized notes and look for outside sources that can help you to understand the material to the best of your ability.

This video is all the about the descriptive method called naturalist observation. This is a method that studies organisms in their natural environment, environments that are not controlled or fixed during an experiment. This video gives the example of studying lions in there natural habitat. The experimenter tries to be hidden in a sense, so that the thing being observed acts natural. If the thing being observed knows it is being watched it could act differently and change the results of the experiment. There ultimately is no control of the experimenter in a naturalistic observation, but it is a great way to study everyday life and why things are the way they are.

This video enhances my learning on this topic by providing more example of naturalistic observations. It also does a good job of using more modern language to describe how the observes need to be. It is a good video for younger students like myself who are taking a psychology class or something like that. It simplifies the material down to just the important things that are needed to get a general knowledge for the topic. It also give both the positive and negative sides to naturalistic observations which is important to know especially for a test question when to use certain types of descriptive methods. I thought this video gave me a simpler but better understand of this topic through all those things.

One of the most important things I learned in this module was having effective study tips and tools for school. Being able to demonstrate and see relationships with different concepts. An important thing to do is to narrow the text down and find what is most important, being sure to know and understand that. On page 12 of E-learning Companion I the fact of learning from a class outside of just that 1 or 2 hour class a week was interesting to me. That for each hour you spend in actual class you should spend 3 hours outside of class studying and knowing that material from class. This is something useful that I can use in the future.

A study tool I have already put into practice is before moving on from a passage, is trying to summarize it. Trying to remember the key points before moving on. This is very helpful because after you try and recall a passage it lets you see which areas you left out and may need to focus on in the future for a test or quiz. This proved to be very helpful to me while trying to study for a exams and quizzes.

What I need to put into practice from this module is to spend more time outside of actually class which my work. Trying to get about 3 hours outside of my class to study and review things instead of just using that hour in class. I think if I can do this everything will be easier and the material with make more sense to me. Moreover I this is the advice I would give to students. To not just do the minimum and expect to get what you want out of a class. Spending time outside of class every week will help a ton when an exam is coming up. If you do a little bit every day and every week, you won’t need to cram all your studying for the night before and will be better prepared.

One thing that I learned and was useful in this module is avoiding miscommunication while trying to contact someone through the internet. On page 122 of our e-Learning Companion book it talks about how it is easy to pick up on little things in person or face to face but not through the internet. For example if someone is talking in sarcasm it is much easier to pick up in person, through facial expressions and body language. But if someone is using sarcasm over the internet it will cause for a miscommunication because there is no way to see that difference in tone, or body language in text. These situations are easy to get into and thats why I thought the tips to avoid a miscommunication were very useful in our textbook and throughout module 3. I have already put into practice formatting my emails to instructors like a letter, or in a professional way. This worked out well and my instructor was impressed that I constructed questions via email to him in a respectful, and professional manner. One thing I can put into practice from this module in the future is to always end things with a signature and contact info. I can do this most easily at the end of emails to people which will help them get in contact with me. Some advice I would give to students is to really think before sending and email, text, or anything. Go back and double check everything so that it looks the way you want it to and doesn’t have any possible miscommunications that could be in it. It goes a long way to have good, professional dialogue with instructors and people in general, and based of the information in module 3 it can and will only help you in a positive way.

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