A Simple Reset to Stay Motivated (Module 7)

Now that the semester is coming to an end and exam week is right around the corner, these next couple of weeks are going to feel like a sprint to the finish line. With four exams within the span of a week, there is no doubt that I am going to feel the pressures and magnitude of such a compact week. With so much to do and so much on the line, finals week has the ability to make me anxious and feel overwhelmed at times. With that being said, I’m hoping that I can use some of the relaxation exercises, specifically breathing exercises, to help me stay motivated and feel mentally healthy over the next couple of weeks while working through exams (Slide 24). There is no doubt that when you’re feeling stressed or anxious, your motivation levels can plummet significantly. Breathing exercises like deep breathing, alternate nostril breathing, and diaphragmatic breathing can help reduce stress and anxiety levels, allowing you to feel more motivated and focused.

When you take deep breaths, you increase the amount of oxygen flowing to your brain. This can help improve cognitive function and mental clarity, making it easier to focus on tasks and stay motivated. Additionally, by doing simple breathing exercises, many people find boosts in their energy levels and an improvement in their overall mood. This past week while trying out some of the breathing exercises provided in the modules, I felt the positive impacts on my mood, energy level, and motivation by taking a few minutes out of my day to focus on breathing exercises. Over these next couple of weeks, if you are ever feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or worn out, I highly recommend doing some of the simple breathing exercises provided in this weeks modules as a way to reset your cognitive functions and reduce your overall stress levels!

Just Keep Searching, Just Keep Searching (Module 6)

During this week’s module, we recognized three essential aspects a source must contain to ensure credibility: reliability, quality, and utility. For me personally, I think the most important of these three aspects is the need for the source to be reliable. Using reliable sources is important for ensuring the accuracy, credibility, and relevance of your work, as well as avoiding plagiarism, and demonstrating professionalism in your work.

To help decide whether a resource is reliable and can be trusted, we discussed a few points of interest we want to look at to help ensure credibility (Slide 14). When analyzing a resource and determine whether or not it is a reliable source, it is extremely important to locate the author of the work and find their credentials. If the credentials of the author aren’t provided in the article, it can help to run a google search on the author to find out more about their related accomplishments and relationships with the field.

Another really helpful tool to look at to ensure reliability of an article is whether or not the article was fact checked or peer reviewed. Often times, if the article is reliable, the source will have been fact checked by a trusted peer in the same field. Having multiple people confirm the reliability and facts of a resource is a great way to feel comfortable about the information you are using to answer your research question.

Beyond the Title: How Interpersonal Skills Make or Break Effective Leadership

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Greetings, Buckeyes! My name is Matt Gramza and I am thrilled to be in the final stretch of my academic journey here at OSU. Throughout the past four years, I have been diligently working towards my Bachelor’s degree in Accounting with a goal of completing 150 credits to qualify for the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) certification. While I’ve been fortunate to have many enriching experiences during my time at OSU, my most cherished opportunity has been serving as a Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for Introduction to Accounting courses. This role has been a cornerstone in my pursuit of my goals this semester and beyond.

For almost two decades, my focus has been on academic pursuits, and I have acquired several strategies for being an effective student. As I approach the end of this chapter, I am eager to apply new strategies and goals to help me thrive in my future professional career. Upon graduation in May, I will be embarking on a career at PwC in Columbus. Although transitioning from a student to a professional may present challenges, I am confident that the techniques and tactics I learn through this course project will equip me with the tools needed to confidently take on my first day at PwC. In order to guide my way to developing the fundamental leadership and interpersonal skills necessary for me to grow in my professional career, I have relied heavily on the techniques offered by Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Amazon.com: [0671027034] [9780671027032] How to Win Friends & Influence People Special Anniversary Edition-Paperback : Office Products

There are a few reasons why I opted for this book. Even though it wasn’t part of the recommended reading list for the course, my Dad introduced it to me just days before the semester started. He strongly believed that it contained valuable insights and strategies that could help me succeed and feel at ease when interacting with people, especially in a professional workplace. The material in Carnegie’s book aligned seamlessly with the course project, and I’ve relished putting my own spin on the project throughout the semester to accomplish my objectives.

As my time as a student draws to a close, I’ve seized the opportunity to incorporate strategies that I can use in my future professional endeavors. While technical expertise is undeniably critical in the field of accounting, personal skills are just as valuable to a company. Therefore, the strategies outlined in the book can be instrumental in equipping me with the skills I need to be a well-rounded employee from day one of my job.

Goals For the Semester:

  • Goal #1: One of my key objectives this semester was to enhance my capacity to lead and influence people in the workplace. In public accounting, it’s tempting to remain glued to your computer and unquestioningly carry out your manager’s directives. While it’s undoubtedly critical to follow the guidance of your superiors, it’s equally vital to exhibit initiative in your work and serve as a role model capable of assuming additional responsibilities. In order to continue to progress in public accounting, possessing robust and impactful leadership skills is essential to reaching that pinnacle.

 

  • Goal #2: My second objective for this semester was to cultivate the abilities required to optimize interpersonal relationships in the workplace. As I noted earlier, attaining promotions in the public accounting industry necessitates specific qualities. While accounting expertise is undoubtedly indispensable, exceptional interpersonal skills are relatively uncommon in this field. Being able to build meaningful relationships with coworkers and clients is critical to reaching one’s maximized potential at the company. The individuals who can showcase both their technical and personal skills over the long haul are the ones who get promoted. With that being said, I aim to leverage the strategies outlined below to boost my interpersonal skills at work over the course of the semester.

Strategies Implemented From the Book:

  • Strategy 1: Become genuinely interested in other people and talk in their interests
    • This strategy, aimed at improving my personal skills, has proven invaluable in forging connections with students as a TA. The approach revolves around being intriguing as well as interested while conversing with people. It’s critical to infuse discussions with passion and enthusiasm. Through this method, I’ve actively engaged with students by inquiring about their interests, and I’ve noticed that they are becoming progressively at ease with me as their TA.  This closeness with my students has contributed to a more satisfying experience for everyone involved!
  • Strategy 2: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
    • This strategy emphasizes the significance of recalling someone’s name. When you recall an individual’s name, they automatically feel a personal connection and a sense of being valued. I have always struggled with remembering names. To improve this skill, I requested my students to wear name tags in class for a few weeks. This tool proved helpful in quickly learning my students’ names and feeling confident in addressing them when they had questions or responses. However, the only hurdle I faced was that some students chose not to wear name tags despite my request.
  • Strategy 3: Ask question instead of giving direct orders. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.
    • This leadership strategy has proven to be a game changer in my teaching style, as it has allowed me to become a more engaging and personable instructor. Rather than simply giving out instructions, I now take an interactive approach by posing questions to my students and involving them in problem-solving. Before each class, I identify key points in my lesson plan where I can ask questions and encourage participation. When a student answers a question, I make sure to thank and praise them, regardless of whether their response was correct. By doing so, I’ve noticed that students are more likely to contribute in the future and have become more comfortable and confident in the classroom

Tracking my Progress:

  • Implementation Tracker
    • In order to track and ensure I implemented these strategies into my teaching and turning routine, I have created a spreadsheet as my method of tracking. This spreadsheet ensures that I review and implement my strategies before, during, and after class time. Reviewing the strategies before teaching will keep them fresh in my mind and help me plan out how I want to implement them during class. In order to track and reflect on the strategies taken from Carnegie’s book, I wrote reflections in a digital journal. These reflections allowed me to digest the good and the bad and make recommendations on how I wanted to proceed in the future. This implementation tracker helped me clearly visualize the steps necessary to achieve my goals and ensured that each action was completed on time.

  • Reflection Journal
    • Like I just mentioned, after incorporating my strategies into my teaching and tutoring routine, I have been writing reflections on my experience with them. Within the reflection, I acknowledge what went well, what went poorly, and how I want to use the strategy in the future. These reflections helped me organize my thoughts and document key takeaways on how the implementation of my strategies went. These journals are quite lengthy, so I have provided the link to my reflection journal as well as an excerpt from my first week of reflections. I recommend checking out the link below to see my progress and experiences while implementing the strategies above in my problem sessions.

Major Takeaways:

  1. One of the most effective ways to establish a connection with someone is by genuinely showing interest in what they have to say. Rather than focusing on talking about myself, I shifted my attention towards discussing topics that align with the other person’s interests. When engaging with students, I focused on questions relating to their weekend plans or how their week was going. In order to get more individual facetime and conversation with each student, I changed the way in which I took attendance over the course of these three weeks. I had each student come up to me when they walked into class to check themselves in. This allowed me to ask the students questions about themselves and showed that I was genuinely interested in getting to know each and every one of them. While some students certainly were more reserved than others, I noticed an overall increase in engagement throughout the class due to me being more personal and interested in the students. As a result, I have become a better listener, and this has had a positive impact on my relationships with my students.
  2. Remembering someone’s name is crucial for building connections. In the past, I didn’t pay much attention to memorizing names when meeting someone for the first time. However, this semester, while teaching, I realized that I rarely addressed my students by their names when asking them questions. To help remember my students names, I had them place name tags in front of themselves to help me incorporate their names when calling on them to answer questions. One problem I had with this strategy was that some students refused to put out a name tag, so it was more difficult to get the names of those students down. Nonetheless, by the end of the three weeks, I improved my knowledge of my students names by a significant manner. As soon as I started calling them by name while they walked in and out of class or when answering their questions, I noticed that my students became more engaged and felt a more personal connection with me. This resulted in more active participation in the classroom as students became more comfortable with me when I addressed and remembered their names. Additionally, I also noticed that more students began addressing me by name, showing that my focus on remembering names lead to more students using my name in conversation.
  3. By encouraging and praising students, I have seen a significant improvement in their level of participation and understanding of the material. Instead of merely giving instructions, I opted for an interactive approach by asking questions and acknowledging students’ contributions with positive reinforcement. In my preparation for class, I wrote out specific questions I wanted to ask throughout class. I made sure to give the students the necessary information to help them feel comfortable and confident when answering questions. I did this in hopes that more and more students would volunteer and participate during class. As a result, I have noticed that students have become more confident in their knowledge of the subject matter and are more willing to engage in discussions. By letting them know that I am proud of their efforts and believe in their ability to succeed, I have not only uplifted their spirits but also enhanced my own satisfaction as a teacher. By setting the tone and praising every bit of improvement and participation, students felt more and more comfortable answering questions and engaging in class. It was awesome to see students who barely talked all year begin to answer questions. This technique of asking questions and praising their engagement is a leadership tactic I will certainly continue to use in the future.

Preparing Me for the Future:

Over the course of the semester, I have enjoyed seeing the positive effects of implementing the strategies outlined in Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In the future, I am going to use these strategies to continue to grow as a leader and friend. While I probably won’t use the implementation tracker in the future, I really enjoyed writing my weekly reflections and want to continue to incorporate journaling my experiences in the workplace. I feel as though I have become a much more influential and personable leader over the past three weeks while incorporating Carnegie’s strategies into my teaching routine. I’m excited to see how these strategies and techniques I learned over the course of the semester will carry over to my job with PwC this coming fall.

 

Source: 

Carnegie, Dale, 1888-1955. How to Win Friends and Influence People. New York :Simon & Schuster, 2009.

 

 

Learning at Your Own Speed (Module 5)

Technology has the potential to enhance learning by making it more accessible, engaging, personalized, collaborative, and flexible for virtual students. One aspect of technology that has change the way people will learn forever is the use and implementation of online video lectures.. For me personally, Youtube has been a key tool that I have used in my educational career and life to help garner and learn certain material. Youtube offers learners a wide variety of educational content to help enhance their learning experience. But perhaps the most appealing aspect of Youtube’s educational videos to me is the ability to learn at your own speed and access the content at any time. Whenever I don’t understand a topic, especially when I’m studying the material for an exam, a simple Youtube search can usually solve my problems within minutes. Since, I am an accounting major, often times the material I look up to help me prepare for my class on Youtube has individuals who demonstrate similar problems and visually display their work. In order to understand the topics to the best of my ability, I typically take notes on the the important points and follow along on the practice problems they provide. The best part about these videos, in my opinion, is the ability to pause and rewind the video at any point in order to make sure I understand it before moving on.  Since I am graduating this semester, these online academic videos will be a key tool to helping me continue my education and knowledge on topics that interest me!

 

 

Work Smarter, Not Harder (Module 4)

For many students, when it comes time for exams, time is of the essence. Having to juggle studying for multiple classes can be overwhelming and time consuming. Trying to figure out where to allocate your time and how to study efficiently in order to maximize your time can be a big challenge for many students. Luckily for us, however, we live in a time where technology tools for students are abundant and easy to access. Technology tools can help you quiz yourself, learn with others, create interactive study tools, and space out your practice and review on your own schedule (Slide 22).

Throughout this weeks module, we got introduced to an ample amount of technology tools that can help students improve the efficiency and quality of their studying habits. For example, for an assignment this week, we were asked to create an infographic, animation, mind map, etc. to help us organize and present course material in various ways. At first, I didn’t recognize the value in creating visualizations to help memorize key course concepts. However, after using the technology to create an infographic to help visualize the steps in performing an audit of ICFR, I quickly became an advocate of these types of tools. The infographic helped organize the steps in the audit process and allowed me to see the process in the full picture. Instead of getting overwhelmed trying to memorize the steps by reading the textbook, the infographic laid out the material in an easy, simple manner to understand.

Another technology tool that I got introduced to this week that I want to continue to use in the future is Khan Academy. Through my own research, I discovered Khan Academy and quickly saw the value in the program. This educational program offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and personalized learning dashboards to enable students to study at their own pace and outside the classroom. I can think of many times throughout my courses where I was confused or not comfortable with a topic that the professor went over in class. Instead of trying to learn the material on my own, Khan Academy produces short lessons in the form of videos for hundreds of educational and important topics. The next time you come across a topic while you’re studying that you aren’t comfortable with, check out Khan Academies lessons to help you gain a better understanding and confidence in the material. 

All in all, it’s clear to me that technology tools can enable students to work smarter, not harder. There are an abundant amount of online studying tools out there that can save you time and energy when studying course material. The time saved using these programs can reduce stress and allow you to better utilize your time while working through course material. Give these tools a try the next time you are overwhelmed in the studying process!

When in Doubt, Write it Out

There is nothing worse than waking up on Sunday morning, logging into Carmen, and seeing a dashboard filled with assignments due at midnight. College students call this phenomenon the “Sunday Scaries”. Throughout college I have had my fair experience of “Sunday Scaries”, and let me tell you, they are no joke. The anxiety that comes with trying to cram hours of work into one day is overwhelming and immense. However, there is a simple solution to avoiding the “scaries”.

This week in my Online Strategies course, we learned about several strategies that can be used to help beat procrastination. One of these strategies, tracking your time, has been a key technique to my success in college and my ability to avoid the “Sunday Scaries” each weekend. Before each week starts, on Sunday night, I take about 30 minutes to plan out the week in front of me. The weekly planner that I use, while it is not digital, lays out each day in hour intervals. This allows me to allocate each task I have for the week to a specific time. Not only do I put my classes and work hours into the planner at their allotted times, but I also include the upcoming assignments I have due throughout the week. In doing so, I can easily see each day what I need to get done in order to not procrastinate and end up with the dreaded “Sunday Scaries”. Simply writing out and tracking my responsibilities for the upcoming week not only increases my efficiency throughout the week, but lowers my anxiety while completing the tasks.

Figuring out the right time tracking strategy for you may take some time, but I assure you the benefits will not only help your grades but your mental health as well!

Communicating and collaborating your way through college

Good Afternoon everyone!

Throughout this past week, I was introduced to many different communication and collaboration tools to be utilized while working your way through college. Being a current senior here at Ohio State, many of these tools have already made beneficial impacts on my leaning habits while working through some of my toughest courses.

For example, in one of my upper accounting courses, the professor primarily used OneNote when completing problems in class. OneNote enabled my professor to work through the problem on his own device and share his work with the entire class through a cloud-based software. This tool not only helped the course stay very organized, but enabled the students to see the work done in class even if they were unable to make class that day. After being introduced to this tool, I quickly saw the benefits it had and wanted to use it in other aspects in my life. While OneNote is very similar to Notability, it has the unique feature of being able to share ideas and documents through a cloud software, enabling many people to work on the same document at one time. When working through group projects and shared work, I have found OneNote to be very beneficial and recommend students trying it out for themselves.

Another tool that was introduced in the modules that I have used before is the Slack communication software. Slack, as defined in the module, is a group communication tool that allows teams to quickly communicate. Slack is a more user friendly, innovative platform that can be used to communicate with peers, co-workers, and professionals. This past summer, when I had the opportunity to internship with PwC, I was introduced to Slack. Most employees at the company preferred communicating over Slack, finding it both effective and easy to use. I think it would be interesting to see more professors at Ohio State encourage students to use Slack as a communication tool in their courses. Not only will it prepare them to use similar applications in the future for professional use, but Slack can improve the communication and collaboration in that specific course tremendously as well.

I hope I was able to shed some light on some helpful tools I have used throughout my time here at Ohio State!