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Final Reflection

Learning independently is very important for college students to gain academic success. By taking this course, I have studied a lot of materials that help me study online. Before taking this course, I never used Google calendar or Google drive, then I found that it helps mark the important things and share the documents with friends and classmates efficiently. The online tools are very helpful for students. It saves me much time and effort to remember the key terminology and prepare for class. What’s more, by mastering these online tools, we can learn the knowledge in a creative way. OSU online library has so much resource that we can use to write paper and do research. Although this course is an online course, I can communicate and collaborate with classmates by blogs and discussion board, and I think it is also a good way to learn from each other.

This course helps me know more about myself. The reason I take this class is to overcome the procrastination. Having specific goals and maintaining motivations are key points to overcome procrastination. After finishing these modules, I learned many tips and strategies to make myself motivated and think positive when I feel lack of energy and courage.

I think the best thing and the most meaningful experience from this class is learning the time-management strategies. By setting up the timetable, I feel that I am more powerful to control my time instead of being controlled by my laziness. Therefore it is very necessary and important to visualize the schedule. When I write down the tasks, I feel I am more responsible to finish these tasks and I also feel great by achieving these goals. Moreover, it makes me realize that in the same period of time I can do much more valuable things than I can imagine, in other words, I cannot waste the valuable time and I should live with passion. I am very appreciating this course changes my point of view of my life and I am trying to live differently and be a better me.

In the future, no matter what fields I work in, the materials I learned in this class will help me. For example, by using the time-management strategies, I can finish my task before the deadline and I can also balance my working time and spare time. It is always nice to make ends meet and enjoy my life. What is more, mastering the online tools helps me to be creative. For instance, if I have a great idea, I can put it in words, in animation, in mind map and so on. It provides me a broader way to express my idea and make it easier for others understand me. Other than that, by learning how to use the online resources, I think it can save me a lot of time to do the research, especially when I am working under great pressure. Overall, I enjoyed taking this course and I would recommend this class to my friends who suffer from procrastination. I learned many strategies that are so useful in college life and the later life after the college.

Searching& Researching

For college students, mastering the searching and researching skills is crucial for academic success. There are many courses that requires students to write many research papers. Doing research is also a good way to study a lot of knowledge that is not taught on the textbooks. However to write a good research paper may take a lot of time and effort.

A good research paper does not necessarily need to be attractive to all people, and it is more important to make sure you enjoy this topic and you want to know more about this topic. In the most of the time, the professor will you the right to do a research on your preference within a field or related to the courses. Therefore when you choose the topic, make sure you want to write about and you are interested in it, or you will feel bored and have a hard time to finish the paper.

What is more, it is very important to evaluate the quality of the resources. The resources with better reliability, quality and utility can make your paper more persuasive and the professor can tell that you have made so much effort and you are serious about the academic research. Wikipedia is a good place to know a topic, and it saves you much time to find related preferences. However, it is not very recommended in many courses to use Wikipedia as a resource directly, because everyone who can access the internet can write or change the content of Wiki, and it will take more time or even impossible to check the credibility of those people and what they say.

NYTimes: Orange County Bankruptcy

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/08/business/orange-county-s-bankruptcy-the-overview-orange-county-crisis-jolts-bond-market.html

The New York Times is the American daily newspaper, which was founded in 1851, and the website of the New York Times is one of the most popular websites in America. The article, Orange County’s Bankruptcy, was published on 12/8/1994. It described the overview of Orange County Bankruptcy.

The content of this article is very reliable.  Firstly, it is published by New York Times newspaper which is regarded as reliable resource. Secondly, the author used a lot of quotes from many crucial people of the bankrupt case, such as Austin Tobin, the president of the Delphis Hanover Corporation, which prices municipal bonds. These quotes improves the reliability of the article because they are from the professionals.

This article is considered to have high quality. The author described the details of what happened to Orange county that leaded bankruptcy. Other than the quotes from professionals, the author also provided quantitive information that let people know how badly the price of the municipal bonds  dropped.

The utility of this article is high. In the history of America, Firstly, it is very rare to see a municipal bankruptcy. Municipal bond that is issued by government agencies is considered to be safe with less stringent rules than mutual funds. Therefore this article let people know what made finance field shocked. What’s more, on Dec. 1, 1994, California’s Orange County announced that its investment pool had suffered a loss of $1.6 billion from municipal bond market and its derivatives. Five days later, the county filed for Chapter 9 protection from bankruptcy. This news was published on 12/8/1994, it was very timing for people to know the whole story of the bankruptcy.

Web-Enhanced Listening & Viewing Strategies

As a college student, it is very important to master the skill of listening and taking good notes.  In the college, most courses are taught in the classroom by a face-to-face lecture. Professors usually provide study guides and powerpoints. Before the lecture, it is a very helpful to print out the lecture notes and bring it to class. The lecture notes saves a lot of time for students to write down the main ideas and key points of the lecture. Professors often list the key words and important concepts in the PPT so that we can concentrate more and think about the material of the lecture during the class instead of writing down or copying what the professor says. Also, it is crucial to know a professors’ teaching styles. When students print out the PPT, it is good to print 3 slides per page for professors who like to write down a lot of notes on the boards, and print 6 slides per page for professors who like to put everything on the powerpoint. 

During the class, some professors like to provide examples to explain a concept. When I was in my first year in OSU, I always ignored the examples because I thought the examples were not as important as the concept itself. Soon I realized during the exam, even I could recite a concept,  I could not understand it. Moreover, when I cannot remember a concept, the examples always reminded me of what the professor said and helped me recall the lecture. Therefore, I really suggest college students to make more effort to remember and interpret the examples instead of remembering the concepts word by word.

Sleeping Disorders Video

Sleeping well is very important for most people’s daily life, however some people have trouble sleeping, they may  suffer from the sleeping disorders and unfortunately the cures of some disorders remain unknown.  This video talks about 10 strange sleeping disorders, which are Nocturnal Lagophthalmos, REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, Exploding Head Syndrome, Narcdepsy, Sexsominia, Sleep Paralysis, Sudden Unexpected nocturnal Death Syndrome, Fatal Familial Insomnia, Homicidal Somnambulism and Kleine- Levin Syndrome.  Check it out and see if you have ever experienced these disorders. 

This video is very interesting, the content is about sleeping disorders, however the music is happy, and it makes the content less stressful. When people watch this video, they can accept and understand the knowledge easily instead of feeling the pressure of the content.   What’s more, there are a lot of documentary videos showing on the background, which makes it easier for people to understand the disorders. As you can see, the some terminology of those disorders are abstract, by showing these documentry videos, people, especially who have never experienced the disorders, can understand and remember these terminologies. All in all, I think this video is fun to watch, and it enhances my understandings of sleeping disorders.

 

Web-Enhanced Reading & Studying Strategies

Online reading, unlike traditional book reading, grants readers the freedom to explore beyond what’s written in the text by hyperlinks, images, audio and video. Reading online can expand one’s knowledge much faster due to the fact that one can find supporting materials readily on the internet. But online reading can also be more difficult than traditional book reading because there are so many distractions while we are on the internet. The credentials of the reading material online can also be elusive. It is vital for students to be able to read online effectively to get the most benefits out of online reading.

In order to read online with efficiency, one should first eliminate the common distractions while on the internet. These distractions include various social networking websites (Facebook, Twitter etc.) and video sites (YouTube, Vine etc.). Students can then use their normal reading techniques to read. Sometimes it’s not easy to highlight online as one could highlight a hard copied book. Students can either print the article to write on it or summarize important points. The advantage of online reading is the reader’s ability to expand to other resources other than the text itself. Printing would diminish that advantage. So having the ability to understand the material without highlighting is a important skill while reading online.

Effective Online Communication Skills for College Students

Nowadays,  effective online communication skills are getting more and more important for college students to gain academic and social success.  Netiquette, a set of online communication standards, is becoming crucial for people to interact with others.  In our life, we love people to show respect to us. In the Chinese saying, “将心比心” simply means that we should put ourselves in others’ shoes when we deal with things. No matter in our real life or in the online social network, if we want to gain other people’s respect, we have to show our respect first. There are several tips help students to build a better relationship with other students, friends and professors.

As a student, I often use Email as the main contact to my professor and group members, therefore proper language is very helpful to decrease conflict and misunderstandings. Firstly, when we write an Email to professors, caps should be avoided, because caps appear to be very aggresive, and we should also eliminate the terms like ASAP, urgent and emergency. It is always to think ahead and give other people enough time to think and reply. Secondly,we should make the content concise and specific. I usually use a list or bulletin to make things clear and easier to read, and it decreases the chance for people to miss my question when they reply  Emails.  Thirdly, we should use proper language, do not forget to use greeting words and leave your contact information at the end.  Lastly, when we work in a group, it is very impolite to ignore group members’ emails or reply them very late. Working as a group, people cannot stay together all the time, therefore email is a main method for students to contact each other.(Personally I think cell phone is more efficient but many people think it is too personal.) Therefore if people do not reply their emails, it will affect the overall process of a project and increase the conflict among groups members. Moreover, if something happened that we cannot reply Email immediately, we should apologize to other people first, and it will make other people feel much better.  Besides these tips, there are still a lot of techniques that help student gain success and build a better relationship with other people. All in all, we should always remember that if we want to be treated with respect, we should respect other people first.