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Welcome back everyone, this is the final week of the blog and we are going to cover some tips and tools for maintaining motivation whether it be during the semester or when you’re studying and working on assignments.  One of the biggest takeaways I had from this week was the importance of eliminating distractions and clearing your work environment before working. One thing you can do is to try having a space to work in that is separate from your normal area of leisure, this can help your mind be ready to focus on your work and help you be not as easily distracted. If you’re like me and you find yourself often pulling up different websites while working on your computer there is a great resource that was introduced in the lesson this week that will block access to other sites while you are working, I will leave a link to it below. Another practice that can help you stay focused for long work sessions is the “pomodoro technique” of working for 25 minutes followed by a 5 minute break, there is another website linked below that is a very easy way to keep track of your time using this technique. Using a combination of these sites and having a clean environment clear of outside distractions, you can maximize your work flow and stay focused on completing your tasks to the best of your ability. That’s all for this week, thank you all for reading.

-Dom

Website Blocker – https://freedom.to/

Tomato Timer – https://tomato-timer.com/

Welcome back everyone, this week we talked about how to research effectively online, and how to utilize search engines more efficiently to make your research a little bit easier. A useful thing that we covered this week was how to judge the credibility of a source, to make sure that it is trustworthy enough to be used and cited in any work you do for an assignment. The way that you do this is by looking at the reliability of the author and organization of your source, look for the author’s credentials and if the publication seems reliable. Also check the quality of the source, make sure the evidence is presented without bias, and that it is written clearly and presents evidence in a clear way that is easy to understand. The last thing to check when verify the credibility of a source is the source’s utility to you, make sure it is closely enough related to your research question. As well as this, one other thing from this week that I thought was really interesting was this video on how to use google to search through entire websites, instead of just searching for a topic on google itself. I’ll leave a link to this video below, I highly recommend everyone check it out so that you can make your researching more efficient and stop searching through pages and pages of a google search without finding what you need. That’s all for this week, thank you for reading and I’ll see you here again next week.

-Dom

Link to the video on how to search better with google https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuA40R__Sng&t=18s

Welcome back everyone, this week we talked about how to listen and take notes more effectively as to ensure you take in the information of a lecture as best as possible. This is a really important topic as it can be very easy to get distracted while listening or watching a lecture and end up not remember the information that was covered, which can end up causing problems later on in a course. We watched a video from the University of Indiana that went over tips on how to be an active listener while in class and it went over a few different methods of note taking to help get the information down so that you remember it and can easily look back and understand it later on. This video had a very cool exercise to practice these new strategies from the video where they had a mini lecture about American History and you compared your notes to those of the instructors in the video to see how you did yours differently or the same as them. I highly recommend everyone try this exercise for themselves and look at their notes afterwards and see how you could improve and make sure you are getting the information as effectively as possible. The video will be linked below for anyone to try, thanks for reading and I’ll see you all next week.

-Dom

Welcome back everyone, this weeks we dealt with how to learn effectively in an online setting, and looked at many resources that can help make this easier. One thing that I really think will be helpful that was introduced in this module is the SQ3R reading method. This is a method to help you read more effectively so that you don’t forget the information as easily and can actually gain the knowledge from the text.SQ3R stands for Skim, before reading the text skim through it to get an idea of what will be in it. Next is Questions, take time to come up with some questions about what you think will be in the reading, then look for the answers while you work through the text. Then the 3 R’s are to Read, Recite the answers to your questions back either out loud or onto paper, then Review the text again, maybe highlighting or taking notes now. There was a really helpful video explaining this more in depth that I will leave linked below. I know how common it can be to work through a boring assigned reading only to forget half of what you read right after, so I highly recommend everyone give this method a try next time they have a reading assigned and see if they find the information easier to remember after. Again, thanks for reading and I’ll see you all again next week.

-Dom

SQ3R Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dhcSP_Myjg

Welcome back everyone, this week we dealt with how to maximize our efficiency in coursework and looked at a number of different resources that can aid in this task. One thing I found really cool was google calendar and the integrated tasks tracking that it has, you can not only set up reminders on your calendar of due dates but you can set up tasks for each day so that all the info you need about your work for the week is in one place. I’ve linked a guide below to help set up your google calendar if any of you are interested in trying this for yourselves. I think the best way to implement this is to sync your google calendar with your phone, so that you can update your tasks and track your progress throughout the week seamlessly on both your laptop/computer and your phone at the same time without any extra steps. I’ve been using it for a few days now and I can already feel my productivity being higher than before with how easy it has been for me to keep track of everything I need to do. So if you’re like me and having trying to keep track of things on paper is sometimes more difficult than the ease of access that having tasks tracked on your phone, then I highly recommend you give a digital calendar a try and see how it helps your productivity. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all again next week.

How to Set Up Your Own Google Calendar:  https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/2465776?hl=en&ref_topic=3417969

This weeks Module dealt a lot with Time Management and had us set up a google sheet to track how we are spending our time throughout the day. One thing I really enjoyed from the material in the module this week was the time management quiz that had you self assess your own time management skills and gave you a score of how well you already are at managing your time. I think this is a great resource that all students should explore as it is very helpful to analyze your skills honestly, as this is how you are really able to figure out which areas you need to improve on to reach your full potential as a student. If you’re interested in taking this quiz for yourself to see which areas you could improve your own time management skills, it can be found in the link at the bottom of this blog post. This site gives very insightful tips about which areas each specific question pertains to so that you can easily figure out where to focus your efforts on after taking it. Putting all of the things from this module to use, like the information from this quiz as well as tracking your time in a spreadsheet, is a great way to make sure that you are always staying on top of coursework and I highly recommend any student reading this to give these a try for themselves. Thanks for reading and I will see you all back here next week!

-Dom

Link to the Time Management quiz, https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_88.htm