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Module 7: Keys to Motivation for Online Learning

I would say that the most useful thing that I gained from this module would have to be the soundtrack for motivation from slide 8 in the lesson. Before this I had never really listened to music during times that I would work because it would only serve as a distraction for me, because I would always listen to music that I thoroughly enjoyed and I would want to sing along when the song came on. Once I took the time to search up good music for studying it helped me in several ways, I found a few playlists on both Spotify and on Youtube that are made up of music without lyrics and just calming beats that I can both block out noise with and also enjoy while working on something. I never really realized how much listening to music that is not distracting while doing school work would help me until I tried it, because I am very easily distracted and so having headphones on that block out noise has always been a strategy of mine when working on something, but now that there is some music also going into my ears I have found that I become even less distracted because it blocks out even more noise than before.

Module 6: Searching and Researching: The Foundations of Academic Writing

I would say that the most useful thing that I learned during this module would have to be assessing the credibility of sources based on reliability, quality, and utility. Before this module I would just find some sources that looked solid in my opinion and not really use any criteria when deciding whether or not they were high quality sources. I believe that using these three criteria when judging my sources for future essays that I have to write will help me a lot when it comes to finding the right sources for a specific topic. I was able to put it into practice for the discussion post where I did a small amount of research and was able to quickly find several sources, but once I started to actually look into them based on these new standards, the number of sources quickly shrunk and I was able to narrow them down to just one that I felt was the best out of my options. I believe that I will continue to put this method into practice in the future as I write more essays during my college career. The advice that I would give to students is to start thinking more about the sources you choose instead of just simply finding some that look decent enough in order to finish the assignment quickly, because the quality of a source can help a lot when it comes to writing an important essay for a class.

Module 5: Web-Enhanced Listening and Viewing Strategies

I would say that the most useful thing that I learned during this module would have to be the different and highly more efficient note taking strategies that were discussed. Throughout my early education and through high school I never really had any classes that required me to take decent notes or really have any solid study strategies, but once I got to college the classes immediately required those skills and it really caught me off guard and led to a rough first semester. Even up to this point where I am about to enter my third year of college I do not really have a great way of studying or taking notes, I just wing it when it comes to note taking and write down what sounds important with little to no solid organization, and then when it comes time to study I take a look at my notes and realize that there is no way that they will help me. One thing that I have already put into action from this module is hand writing my notes, although it is still on technology with my iPad, it is still much better than my old way of typing them which I found to be much faster and in my head more efficient, but I quickly realized that I would get out of class and fully forget pretty much everything from the lecture, but I would have a long and unorganized page or several pages of notes to sift through and try to find the important stuff later on. Hand writing notes has definitely improved my note taking because I am not able to just copy everything that is said, so I have figured out how to actually pay attention to what it is that I am adding to my notes and it has been more useful. Something from this module that I would like to put into practice in the future is a specific style of note taking like the ones discussed in the video, as they seem much more organized and also much more useful when looking back at them. One piece of advice that I would give to other students would be to figure out a good note taking and studying strategy before you get to college, because even if you believe that you will not need it, you definitely will and it is good to have one before it is too late and you have thrown away an entire semester.

Module 4: Web-Enhanced Reading and Study Strategies

For me, remembering key highlights of a book that I have to read for a class has always been a struggle, as I always just try to fly through the book and get it over with as fast as I possibly can, and this is a problem. I would like to implement the idea of interacting with my online readings, with strategies such as highlighting and reviewing important information found throughout the section, creating my own mnemonic devices, because those have always been a super helpful way for me to remember things when someone would teach me one, but I have never taken the time to create one on my own, and using the margin of the book to summarize key ideas, or even taking notes on a separate notepad or in a document on my computer while reading something so that I am not just reading it and letting it immediately flow out of my mind to be forgotten as soon as I flip the page. One problem that I have ran into in the past when actually highlighting sections of a notebook is mindless highlighting, where I will only highlight the material that the professor tells us specifically to highlight, or highlighting only words and phrases that are already bold or highlighted in the book.

Module 3: Efficiency in the Digital Age

I would like to start off by saying that I struggle with procrastination horribly, as you can clearly see by the fact that this blog post is being submitted at pretty much the last minute possible, so this module is going to hopefully be very helpful to me. The most useful thing that I learned from this module would have to be the 10 minute rule(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8D1cGW5Qk). I really enjoy the idea of implementing this rule and hope that I end up doing it because I always look at larger assignments as a huge pain and push them off until the last minute possible, when I could be chipping away at it day by day in ten minute intervals and it would feel much shorter every time that I work on it and it would probably come out much better as a finished product. The advice that I would give to students based on what I have both read and experienced this module is that procrastination is a horrible habit to have and it is very difficult to keep up with assignments when you procrastinate them and push them away until the very last minute possible, and I would heavily recommend that you implement some of the strategies discussed in this module and I hope that they help both you and me when it comes to procrastination and getting school work done.

Module 2: Communicating and Collaborating

More than likely the most useful tip that I learned during this module would be how to format emails between myself and professors or TA’s, because no matter how many times I have had to email a professor to ask a simple question I am always worried that my formatting will be unprofessional or too casual and they would not appreciate it. A specific example from this module that I have already put into practice would probably be from the video “5 Tips for Dealing with Lazy Group Project Members – College Info Geek” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZRyDgDlvqA) and that is assigning roles and tasks during Fundamentals of Engineering during my freshman year. This splitting up of the work and figuring out who was going to be in charge of what helped tremendously when it came time to do our final project for the class, and without the use of that tip it could have ended horribly with us missing some part of the work and then receiving a significantly lower grade. An idea that I would like to put into practice in the future is to try and get into a group in which the members have similar schedules, and also are in similar time zones in order to make group meetings more easily accessible for each member and not run into any scheduling conflicts. One piece of advice that I would give to students when it comes to online communication is always try to be thorough when communicating with others if they can not hear the tone of your voice, sarcasm and such are not very easily caught over a message and it can cause confusion.