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Here is a list of resources that I would like to revisit later in my academic or engineering career.

Online Student Success: Creating measurable and meaningful goals, link N/A

This was a huge takeaway for me from lesson 1. I have trouble creating reasonable to measurable goals, so I am often disappointed at the end of the day with my progress. This reminder from slide 28 resonated with me, and I want to remember it in the future.

Communication: Dealing with Group Members, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=NZRyDgDlvqA&feature=emb_title

In engineering, group work is incredibly common on projects or tasks. This video have great tips on how to communicate and work with different kinds of group members to give the team success. I definitely feel that this will come in handy to me in the future.

Efficiency: Google Calendar, https://calendar.google.com

This is a resource that I would like to utilize more because I have a google account, and I regularly use my mail or google drive account, but I often forget about Google Calendar. The assignment related to this resource reminded me of its utility.

Studying: Crash Course Study Skills, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=SZbdK9e9bxs&feature=emb_title

I found this video incredibly interesting, and I wanted to try the study method that they detail towards the end of the video where they have different boxes that determine the frequency that they study the material. I thought this was a super cool way to scientifically understand studying, and I wanted to give it a try.

Note taking: Note Taking in Class, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=32&v=Yc5qyMTjO3k&feature=emb_title

This video gives great tips for note taking in class, and detailed many note-taking styles. I had never really thought about my note-taking style before (I just wrote what I thought was important in a way that I thought made sense), so this video was very interesting to me, and I would love to go back and look at it to hone my strategy and maybe implement other methods that I had not thought of before.

Searching and Researching: E-Learing Companion: A Student’s Guide to Online Success, https://www.amazon.com/dp/113331631X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_dp_b1m1AbY68S55G

The quick information from this book that was presented in the lesson was very useful for college learners, and I would like to be able to go back and look further into this or recommend it to a friend or peer later on.

Motivation: TBD

This week’s modules detailed the importance of effective virtual communication. The pandemic situation has brought even more awareness to the need for students to be able to interact and conduct themselves online. As the slides detail, this is a crucial first step to many professional and academic conversations. As a college senior about to leave Ohio State, I have compiled some college tips from the lesson–and I added some of my own too!

First, students should always remember to remain professional, straightforward, and to the point. A nice greeting and salutation go a long way as well. Creating a welcoming atmosphere will likely benefit the relationships that students can make with each other or university staff. Emails are a key start to the communication line. The lesson details an appropriate academic email layout on Slide 8. This entails an appropriate subject line, greeting, straightforward subject, a closing, and your full name as a signature (Slide 8). Other online collaboration resources include google drive, One Note/One Drive, and Slack. I have used all of these tools throughout my time here at Ohio State. Google drive is awesome for group projects were multiple files must be shared to be worked on simultaneously. The documents/slides/presentations even update and save in real time. One Drive is another effective sharing tool. Throughout projects, I have also utilized slack or other messaging apps to keep in touch with my team quickly and less formally than emailing.

By utilizing resources like these and others, tackling college virtually or in person can be much less of a daunting task for incoming students! These helpful sites have allowed me to effectively and intelligently collaborate with group members and to create strong relationships with my peers and professors. Good luck!

This week’s module discussed how to stay motivated using online resources. Several resources presented looked very interesting, specifically apps/sites that let you create a “Soundtrack for your Motivation” (Slide 8). As explored in the discussion board, I dove into the background music apps this week with great success. As a student, it can often get a little boring/dry studying or trying to get work done for several hours throughout the day while working in silence. Because of that, music or podcasts can be super helpful to keep you in the zone. However, like many students, this can sometimes distract me when I am trying intently to study. With that being said, I was super intrigued by the Noisli and White Noise apps shown on slide 8. Both apps provide users with background noise that can be tailored to fit their needs and attitude at the time. This is huge because it goes back to the point previously discussed in class to create a positive study environment. Taking little steps to change your audio surroundings to something enjoyable and promoting of productivity is crucial on some of the long study days that students face each semester. Any steps that can minimize distractions and maximize attention are steps in the right direction!

This week’s module gave a lot of great information for academic writing in college and detailed how it differs from high school. This might be daunting for an incoming college student, but using resources to guide you and make the most of your writing can make any student successful! The most important thing that I took from this week’s lesson was how to find and evaluate sources for academic writing. As stated on slide 4, writing in college is likely “argument- or inquiry- driven.” Because of this, reliable and meaningful information must be used to back up what you say in your writing. Wiki resources (slide 18) can provide good background information to allow you to become familiar with your topic. Then sites like Google Scholar (slide 25) or the Ohio State Library webpage can be used to find academic and scholarly reviewed sources.

The final (and crucial) step to finding a good source is determining its credibility. The source must pass this check point to be included in the final product. The lesson offers three criteria to rate the source on–reliability, quality, and utility. If the source can be determined reliable, of good quality, and overall useable, then it can be considered a great source to include in your next writing assignment!

This week’s lesson had a lot of great tips and tricks on how to navigate the information presented in tough academic classes online. One of which was taking notes in class. Note taking is a key part to any college course, regardless of the topic. This exercise allows students to become familiar with the information and to interact/organize it in thoughtful ways. Through visual organization methods, connections between topics and disciplines can be discovered, presenting an easier way for students to absorb the information. Becoming an effective note taker is key to a student’s success. The video on slide 7 titled, “Taking Notes in Class” from Indiana University gave a great way for students to put their note-taking abilities to the test. The pros and cons of several different note-taking methods were discussed. Mind mapping, bulleted lists, outlining, and several other methods were offered. Realistically, students will likely use a unique combination of methods such as these during classes. They may even switch methods depending on the topic or lecture structure that day. Either way, it is important for students to hone their skills and become comfortable and efficient with processing the information before them. Good notes often lead to a good understanding of the information, and they are a key stepping-stone to achieving success in a course.

In this week’s module, several tips and tricks for reading, studying, and learning online were discussed, and many resources to do so were explored. What I was most interested by this week was the effective learning method proposed in the video on Slide 16 titled “Memory: Crash Course Study Skills 3#” by CrashCourse. This video starts by detailing how memories are wired into your brain and the different types of memory. Things begin as sensory memories where you take in the world around you and your environment. This is all short-term. These short term memories can then be transferred over to long term memory, but this takes time. When studying, this process should be attempted to be optimized so that students can efficiently recall relevant information. As a current student, I know first hand that this process can be tough as you are often responsible for a lot of information, and you want to spend just enough time to be successful without overdoing it. This video proposes methods to be mindful of this goal when studying. This includes mnemonics, making connections (even obscure ones) between information, and regularly recalling the information that you wish to keep stored in your mind. Spacing repetition is then introduced where you slowly space out the time between recalling/studying and tracking your memory progress. Lots of resources (Anki, TinyCards, Quizlet, etc.) are available to successfully navigate spacial repetition. I have used Quizlet before, and love it. I am eager to try others now, and I highly recommend utilizing resources like this to any incoming students so that they can study smarter and quicker.

One quote that really stuck with me from this week’s lesson on procrastination and time management was included in an article on the creativitypost.com by Jordan Bates. The quote itself was from H. Jackson Brown Jr., and it read ” ‘Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein’ ” (Article linked here).

As an ambitious college student, I found that it is often hard to juggle between all of the different aspects of my life– schoolwork, social life, down time, work, hobbies, involvements, and physical wellness. With so much to work on and do all of the time, it is easy to become overwhelmed and stressed out. An awesome analogy that I often think back on is that life is like plate spinning. Exploring the lesson this week, I was reminded of it. Though I had not originally head it from this source, some quick googling refreshed my memory with an article titled “Life is Like Plate Spinning” by Eric B. Hutchinson. The article is linked here. Basically, plate spinning is an act where a performer balances and spins a series of plates on top of rods without any of them falling. In the analogy, each plate represents an aspect of life. Again, that could be work, social life, exercise, anything. No one can focus on just one plate, because the others will eventually fall. Instead, each plate needs periodically checked up on and spun to ensure that it continues to spin. That goes the same with different parts of life! Beyond that, there are only a certain amount of plates that one person can keep up with before it becomes too much, and they all begin to fall.

Many tips to successfully spin your plates were explored in the lesson. It discussed the issue of spreading yourself too thin and of the power in saying no. It also referenced the importance of planning when you are going to give attention to one topic/task/plate and when to move to the next. The independence and responsibility of your own time as your enter college is both exciting and terrifying. Learning how to manage your time efficiently and intelligently makes the task at hand much more approachable. At the end of the day, we all have the same amount of time each day, so it really just matters how you decide to fill it. Hopefully, by implementing tips like these and other discussed in Module 3, the days can be balanced, meaningful, and successful.

Thanks!