Hello everybody,

This week’s module focused on improving our ability to motivate ourselves and how to sustain that motivation for academic success. I love music and listening to music is one of my favorite hobbies, as well as something that serves to motivate me and relax me at the same time. I made a playlist recently that helps to serve many moods, also, I have been writing a lot of papers, so music helps me battle writer’s block at times. I also love getting on YouTube and looking up interviews of people of interest and other topics of interest to allow my brain to decompress. While these techniques for staying as sharp as possible and keeping the brain active work very well, I do make sure to not become distracted from these activities. I like to take breaks when my brain seems to be overloaded from too many tasks being tackled at one time. I think that it is easy to put too much pressure on ourselves to work too hard, and we must not forget to take time for ourselves and to take time to reflect on the progress that we have made. Also, we need to be mindful of our stress levels and emotional and mental health, as these areas can be detrimental when we are remiss in our awareness to such things. I hope everyone who reads this will gather something in moving forward that may help your process because it is all about taking baby steps towards our goals.

https://osu.instructure.com/courses/60278/pages/lesson-module-7?module_item_id=2828454

Hello everybody,

After going through this week’s module, I have been able to find some new ways of becoming more efficient in my research techniques. One important thing that sticks out to me is to have fun with your research. Whatever you are attempting to research, don’t limit yourself to broad and generalized information, challenge yourself to dissect the topic at hand in order to gain a better familiarity of what you are researching. If we allow ourselves to stop at our first bite of the apple in our research, we will lose the ability to have a complete understanding of the topic being researched. I have begun to employ some of the new methods from the article listed below from this week’s module in order to improve my researching abilities. I have started to challenge myself to create three questions, which stem from the main question that I am researching, which help to narrow my focus on the topic chosen to research. Also, by doing this, I get to see if there is a better way of addressing the topic of interest and crafting the optimal blueprint for fostering the development of the idea chosen. I think that I will try the mapping method that is used in the video next because of the ability to see the ideas visually in a concise manner, and then using these to orchestrate better questions in order to enhance the focus of what I am researching. Hopefully some of you can try some of these strategies and possibly craft your own ways of enhancing your research.

https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/chapter/developing-research-question/

Hello Guys,

During this week’s module I have tried out a new method for taking notes, the Cornell method. While I found some useful takeaways that I will take with me now, I still like my original outline method better. Although I have come to this realization, I realize that for many of you, there is still a wander as to which strategy works best for you. I feel that after watching the video on five different strategies, which included the Cornell method that I decided to try out this week, I learned that perhaps a mixing of various elements of each strategy may produce the most optimal results, as well as any other student, no matter what the course of study is. I believe that for all students or future students, there needs to come a time in which you feel comfortable and confident in your ability to take notes effectively. While this process comes with constant tweaking, allowing yourself to be flexible in how you approach your note taking yet structured, ultimately will help to ensure that whatever strategies that we employ, will work effectively, and if not, they will be tweaked. I hope everybody will start to consider the ways in which they could improve their present abilities in note taking, as any improvements will allow us to become more active listeners and better readers in terms of comprehension and active reading as well. Continue reading →

Hello guys,

I have taken a tool that I have learned from this week’s module to help me in improving my reading comprehension. By highlighting key points throughout my reading, this allows me to focus on what is truly important in each paragraph for example, and while simultaneously giving my brain a second to process what I’ve read. When I am working in paper form, I have been using highlighters to enhance my comprehension as pointed out in this week’s video, by highlighting; this points out to me what has been deemed as important through the reading. Drawing symbols and pictures can also help in grasping concepts or ideas. Incorporating any of these strategies will be helpful to anyone in the terms of becoming a better active reader.

As we attempt at applying some of these tools into our lives, we should keep the idea of time management still in our minds. To explain further, making effective use of our time is the most important thing, rather than just getting more done quicker. This also can describe why incorporating more active reading skills into my life has led to me becoming more confident in what I am reading while being more effective with my time. Reading and being able to comprehend it and remember it for later requires some basic concepts that if instituted are achievable. If anybody has any other methods that they would like to share on how you have become a good active reader or what things you are trying now in attempting to improve your active reading skills, please share!

https://osu.instructure.com/courses/60278/pages/lesson-module-4?module_item_id=2828392

How’s it going everyone? During this week time tracking I have been able to uncover some places in which I could improve in being more efficient with my time. I knew I was on YouTube a decent bit, but I have realized that it is of the utmost percentage of my leisure time spent. With the many things that I could be working towards during those times that I have been choosing to get on YouTube, I could certainly improve my time management by not spending as much time on YouTube, but whatever it is for all of you, maybe its social media, don’t allow these activities to become priority over your real priorities. I know it is easy to get caught up and wanting to just get lost in some twitter rants and debates but much of this does little to advance you in reaching all of your goals. With the google sheets time tracker I have been able to log my days and pinpoint exactly when I am doing the things that I am doing and should give me information that I can use moving forward setting more focused game plans during my weeks. Another helpful tool that helps me in tracking my need to know events coming up is the “my task” feature on the google calendar that was demonstrated in the video, which allows you to not only set tasks that you want to be more mindful of as well as allowing you to set times and dates for successfully tracking your progression. Hope some of this helps and if anybody else has any other ideas or tools that help them, please share!

Hello guys,

Today I wanted to share some tips and ideas for how we all can improve on our ability to manage our time more effectively for optimal performance in all of our lives. First off, if you guys do not currently do this I would recommend creating weekly schedules that outline your goals and objectives for the upcoming week. This practice is something that I have been utilizing in my own life to help in establishing better organization for myself. Once you become comfortable with setting reasonable expectations and outlines for your week ahead, you can then start to think about adding in an additional week of planning for optimal gain. I have found this very effective in being able to get ahead in certain areas, and this helps us to maximize our ability to utilize our time in the most effective manner. Working to improve our ability in corroborating with one another through these blogs will help us in sharing ideas for future improvement. https://osu.instructure.com/courses/60278/pages/video-module-2-welcome?module_item_id=2858635

As we embark on this journey together in improving our time management it is important to have patience with this process. Having patience will be important in our engagement with this process and will allow us to not place too much pressure on ourselves. The goal of this technique is to help us relieve stress and improve our ability to multi-task and approach our time effectively, so we want to make sure to allow ourselves to try different ways of how to approach this and find which ways will make each of us more successful moving forward.