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This week’s module was all about building and maintaining motivation. First thing is first, you have to decide on if your motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. Meaning, are you motivated for your own personal interests and gains or because of external things that could help you to attain or avoid an outcome. After you decide on what motivates you, you can work on maintaining that motivation.

One of the things that we discussed in this module was your environment as a motivator on slide 6 of Lesson: Module 7. I had never put much thought into my environment being a motivator up until now. Having a positive environment when studying can really help motivate you to get your school work done. One of the recommendations that I had tried this week was downloading an app such as Noisli or the White Noise app to help with background noise. Listening to music/sounds that help to promote a relaxing environment as well as drown out any other noises that could be distracting really helps with my own personal productivity. I would recommend anyone who has a hard time focusing to try these apps for a couple of days and see how their studying time goes!

One last thing that I would like to add to this weeks module on motivation is how we were reminded to stay healthy. Being healthy mentally, emotionally, and physically play a key role in motivation as well! Making sure to get a good night’s sleep and exercising can help you stay more focused and help to fight and relieve stress associated with school work.

Finding what motivates you and making sure that you maintain your motivation will help you succeed not only in school but also in life. A lot of the concepts I have learned throughout the class I have found can be applied in other aspects of my life.

Hello Everyone! In this week’s module we focused a lot on the differences between doing a search for a topic and researching that topic. On slide 3 of Lesson Module 6, it stated that searching can be an important part in learning because it can help find information that you may have missed. Researching, however, involves growing your understanding of a topic. Knowing the difference of these two things is very important when it comes to writing papers in college. Most college classes are going to require you to write a paper at some point that will be more in depth and require credible sources to be cited where you obtained your information from.

While we are about credible sources, it is important to know how to find out if your source is credible. Another main topic in this week’s module was exactly that. A source has three categories you should look at when deciding if it is credible: Reliability, quality, and utility. Is your source reliable? Ask yourself these questions: Does the author have proper qualifications on the subject? Can you contact them for more questions? Or is the articles source reputable? Next, does the article show good quality? Is the article well written, concise, up to date, and free of bias? Lastly, is the information related to my subject and meant for the right audience? These three areas will help you determine if you have a good resource for your academic writings.

The last thing I want to talk about with this week’s module is type of search engine to find those resources for your paper. I, myself, had no idea there were different types of search engines. For instance, google.com is a keyword search engine, yahoo.com is a category search engine, and search.com is a metasearch, meaning it compiles various engines. This can be helpful depending on what kind of search you are doing. My latest discovery, thanks to this week’s module, is google scholar. Google scholar lets you search for published literatures regarding your topic. This video will help explain how to use google scholar more in depth. I believe that this search engine will help me more when writing research papers.

This week’s module has been very helpful for me with my other academic classes right now! In one of my classes I am currently writing a chapter of a book that will be published as an eBook through OSU. I plan to use the google scholar search in order to help me find more credible sources for my chapter after I get feedback on my rough draft later this week. I cannot wait to apply what I have learned this week with my other classes! Hopefully some of the things that I have found useful this week can help you out as well! Let me know if you have any other tips or tricks to help with researching or if you have any questions!

This week in class we focused a lot on note taking methods and the importance of good note taking skills. I never realized that there were so many different methods to taking notes. There is the Cornell method, outlining, maps, sentences/bullet points, and many more. The most important thing to remember about noting taking though is that you are taking the notes in the first place in order to be able to study and learn from them. So, it is very important that you are able to follow your notes and make use out of them!

When it comes to the different methods there are simple and complex notes. This video does an awesome job at explaining the different methods as well as how not everyone will use the same ones. The most complex in my opinion would be the Cornell notes. These notes take advantage of all the paper space and lead the thought process by dividing the notes into categories or subtopics and asking questions to steer your learning forward. The simplest would most likely be an outline which uses main points and supporting details to each. The most scattered to follow would be a map. A map is good when you are linking all your information to one main point but can get scattered without the explanation of any of the links. Writing sentences/bullet points would be just repeating everything the instructor has stated. This can cause issues when it comes to the amount of time it uses up as well as not differentiating between important information and filler information.

Though there are distinct differences in all of these methods, not everyone is going to use just one. The best notes come from a mixture of several different methods and making them work for you! In this video I learned that I mostly use just one method which is the outline method. One fault in this method is that I do not include a lot of details in my notes. Sometimes the smaller details that I exclude can involve something as simple as what ties the section together. In the future I plan to try and incorporate more of the Cornell method in my notes to help with my studying. I like the idea of asking a question on the margin to encourage thought on the main points.

Hopefully this week’s post wasn’t too confusing! I know that note taking can be a boring subject but can be crucial in the success of a student. I have always been one to not put much thought into my notes and just re-read them when it comes to studying for texts or exams. Hopefully by incorporating other methods it will make the studying process a lot smoother and I will retain more information before actually having to study! Good luck with your notes everyone and let me know if you have any questions or advice as well!

This week’s module had a lot of helpful tips on how to not only read but comprehend and retain information that we are studying about. Just because we continue to read our textbooks or notes several times does not mean that we are turning that information into long-term knowledge. In order to continue to be successful it is important that the information we are learning is being retained throughout our courses as well as after graduation.

In the module I found that there was one video that stood out to me. When it comes to studying for a big exam, I am one of the people that will wait until the last minute and cram all night in order to pass the next day. In this video, that was shown on slide 15 of Lesson: Module 4, it explains the importance of not only studying over the course of several days but also getting enough sleep and exercise for the body to function properly. It has been scientifically proven that a student is more likely to retain the information through repetitive testing as well! So, when studying be sure that you take breaks in between to get a little exercise in. A great example would be what my friend calls dance therapy! Dance around to a couple of songs and get some of your energy out and then try listening to some soothing music while studying again. After a couple hours try to test yourself or have a friend or family member test you. After figuring out what you missed you can try to study more on those areas the next day after a good night’s sleep!

I plan to try and put these tips to use over the course of the next several weeks. As I have stated in previous posts, I am a procrastinator and that is one of the reasons I tend to stay up cramming at night for exams. Hopefully these tips will help me get a little more rest and help with retaining the information as well!

Hello everyone!

This week helped open my eyes more on ways to beat procrastination and better manage my time. My favorite assignment this week was creating and tracking what I did for 24 hours for 7 days. This time sheet assignment helped to breakdown activities into categories and see where I spend most my time and if I need to reallocate that time to another task. I would urge any college student that is having a hard time completing assignments ahead of deadlines to try tracking their time!

One thing in particular that I am sure most of us do in our free time is play on our phones, whether we actually should have that time or not. Over the past 7 days I noticed that I probably spent one or two hours on my phone each night and I could have used that time to try and get some of my school work done as opposed to procrastinating and waiting until the day my assignments were due. On slide 22 of Lesson: Module 3 there are recommendations for reducing your digital distraction. The one that stands out to me the most is placing your phone in another room when working. This is a suggestion that I plan to make use of immediately to see if it may help to reduce my distractions and the amount of time it takes for me to complete my assignments!

As a student that has always waited until the last second to complete my work I hope you take my advice and try tracking your time for just one week. You never know, it might surprise you. You should try it even if you are not a procrastinator. It’s just as important to have down time to enjoy yourself as it is to have enough time to study! So be sure you are spending your time wisely! Procrastinator or not it’s also a good idea to unplug from social media and technology when trying to get school work done. The less distractions the faster or easier your assignments could be completed!

Hello everyone!

This week in class we learned about how online skills and communication can play a major role in your success, especially for online learning. Utilizing online tools can play a crucial part in getting assignments done as well as communicating with instructors or fellow classmates.

One of the many things that I believe go overlooked with no second thought is using netiquette. In the video we watched this week over netiquette it explains how you should always be conscious of what you are posting. A lot of people believe that what they post on their Facebook cannot be seen by potential employers or class instructors as long as they are not friends. This is not true. You should always keep in mind that anything you post can and will be found by someone you may not want to see it so you should try to be respectful and mindful of others. Personally, I have chosen not to have social media because even if am respectful it does not guarantee the actions of others on my page will be the same. I certainly wouldn’t want to ruin my online reputation over something as simple as a social media post and possibly miss out on a job opportunity! One of the first things my employer does when they receive resumes is look them up on social media to see how they are portrayed publicly before considering an interview.

A tool that I found helpful was taking a time management self-assessment to get an insight on any skills that I may need to work on when it comes to managing my time for class. I would encourage anyone to take this assessment even if you are not in school, be sure to clink on the link! This assessment breaks down time management to 5 main points such as goal setting, prioritization, managing interruptions, procrastination, and scheduling. Through this assessment I have learned that my weak spots are procrastination and goal setting. I plan to work more on both of these areas now that I realize that I have slacked off on them. My first plan of action is to create goals for this class! Would you believe that one of these goals will be to stop procrastinating when it comes to completing assignments?

I will say that one of the online skills we reviewed that I believe I excel at is emailing my professors. I can still remember being taught how to compose a letter in grade school and view an email with the same type of format. I make sure that my emails are as professional as possible and have been spell checked before sending them. One of the last things I want to do is look stupid towards one of my professors. Talk about a bad first impression!

Well everyone that’s all of my insights from this weeks readings! Let me know if you have any advice or links that you find helpful in the comments!

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