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!