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At the beginning of the course, I knew very little about the importance of time management and searching using multiple databases and search engines. I only had a rough idea about time management. And I had never used an online calendar to plan my day and analyze how I spent my time. Because of that, I found it difficult to utilize my time and energy efficiently. I also learned how to find the appropriate databases for different subjects.

The most important things I learned from the class:

1. Plan your day ahead of the time and monitor how you spend your time to improve your efficiency. One of the biggest difference between high school and college is the lack of supervision from other people. Professors would normally assign deadlines to students without checking progress and urge students to meet the deadlines. To make the matter worse, college students have to deal with multiple classes while job searching. It’s very easy to lose track of your activities and fail to meet deadlines. Therefore, time management is essential for academic success in college.
2. Learn how to find and use academic sources. In college, professors require students to use credible and reliable sources in their paper. Proper citation style and presentation formats are also usually required. It is important for the students to learn and apply these techniques when writing academic papers.
3. Learn to take notes effectively. With effective note taking skills, students can record important information on notebook for later use. The class introduced me to the Cornell system and concept mapping note taking techniques. They are really helpful in recording and organizing the information from lectures.

I definitely learned about myself in this class. I learned from this class that my time management abilities are improved by the end of this semester. I also confirmed that I had a strong preference for visual learning by taking the quiz in module seven.

I will apply what I learned from this class in the future. First of all, time management skills are essential for college success. I will use the worksheet method to help me plan and organize my time usage. Secondly, I will use the methods I learned from module six to find and evaluate academic literature I find in the future. I am sure I can improve the quality of my paper by applying these methods. Thirdly, I also learned about many online study tools in module four’s discussion board. Websites like Wolframalpha, studystack, evernote and Memorize can definitely help me in the future. Lastly, I will setup course goals at the beginning of the semester. Goals are important for academic success too. Instead of copying what others are doing without my own ideas, I can discover my own way with a clear goal in my mind. Setting intermediate goals throughout the semester will also help me motivate myself (e-learning companion: A student’s guide to online success (4th ed.) by Watkins & Corry, page 161).

My parting words to my readers are to focus on your tasks at hand with passion and clear goals in your mind. It’s very easy to get distracted in college. So try to regulate and use your time efficiently with calendars or the methods that work the best for you.

In this module, I have learned about using search engines and library catalog search engine. The most useful part that I have learned from the module is how to look for academic literature based on different databases and subjects.

In this post, I’d like to give some advice about using the library.osu.edu and how to find good academic sources for writing assignments.

There are two things that you need to pay attention to when writing for academic assignments: the credibility of the source and the usefulness of the source.

When it comes to credibility, peer-reviewed articles should be considered. As it was stated in the textbook, the most reliable publications are typically those that are blind peer reviewed(e-learning companion: A student’s guide to online success (4th ed.) by Watkins & Corry, page 69). It is also worth noting that commercially published books should always be taken with cautions in mind.

The usefulness of the source largely depends on what you want and what you are going to write. The only way to determine the usefulness of the source is to read through it and find out yourself. However, you can always read the abstract or the summary of the article to learn the rough idea of the article to save you some time by avoiding the articles that you don’t need.

Normally, the best research tool for a student at the Ohio State is to do an online search at library.osu.edu. You could find academic journals, research materials and many other literature that covers various fields of study. The search engine also provides filters to help you filter out unwanted entries by language, date of publish, type of publication and etc. You only need to type in the keywords of your interests and read through the search results to find the academic sources that work the best for your writing needs.

In this blog posts, I’d like to give some tips about learning using online videos.

With the advance of technology, learning is no longer confined to classroom or library. The internet provides a convenient way for anyone who is willing to study. One of the most useful study tools internet has given us is video. College students could use online education videos to help them improve their study experience and broaden their knowledge and skills.

I’ll use my experience as a STEM students to talk about how online educational videos is helpful and what online educational videos could help greatly for college students.

As a STEM students, the most difficult subject we are likely going to encounter during the first two years of study is likely going to be math. Most of us are going to take calculus, linear algebra, differential equations and statistics. These classes could become very difficult if the students missed a few lectures and failed to catch up. This is where the online videos come in. The students could simply do a search on YouTube. And normally, someone would have already made a video that offers tutoring regarding the topic. You might even get your questions answered by posting them in the comments section. But make sure to check your spellings and grammar before posting online to ensure effective communication (e-learning companion: A student’s guide to online success (4th ed.) by Watkins & Corry, page 121).

There are many websites that offers free tutoring on the subjects that I mentioned above. The mathematics department of MIT’s channel on YouTube is a great source for educational videos. They filmed their entire lectures and posted it online. My linear algebra’s professor also recommended their videos to me once. The module 5’s lecture’s slides also recommended some other good sources like khanacademy and academicearth.

Summary of the video:

It’s commonly known that humans’ DNA share a lot of similarity with other living beings’ DNA. Humans DNA share 50 percent similarity with bananas, 80 percent with dogs, and 99 percent with chimpanzee. In reality, the human’s and chimpanzee’s DNA doesn’t sync up as easily as it sounds. First of all, human and chimpanzee has different numbers of chromosomes. Humans have 23 chromosomes while the chimpanzee got 24 chromosomes. Secondly, tiny mutations exist throughout the genes. Thirdly, researches ignored 25 percent of humans’ DNA and 18 percent of chimpanzees’ DNA when comparing them. Most importantly, small differences in DNA do not correlates with the phenotype of the creature. It means that small changes in DNA can lead to either big differences or small differences. Same logic also applies to big changes in DNA. Therefore, it’s important to realize that the percent difference and similarities between our DNA and others don’t carry too much meanings.

Explanation of how the video supplements or enhance your learning on the topic:

The video did a fine job in explaining the concept of comparing DNA and how DNA impacts phenotype. The video did it mainly by using intuitive images and analogies to present and explain complicated ideas.

For example, when explaining how the scientists compared the humans’ DNA with others, the video used scrolls as an analogy of DNA. By doing this, many other analogies could also be used to explain the comparing process. Chapters were used as an analogy as different chromosomes. The differences in words and sentences were used as analogy of mutations in DNA. And so on. These analogy helped me greatly in understanding the complicated biology ideas. When the video tried to emphasize the fact that DNA difference does not correlate with phenotype differences. Instead of stating the fact directly, it used real life examples combined with pictures to show the fact to the viewer directly. In this way, the message became more direct and easy to memorize for the viewers.

In this module, I have learned about many online study tools that I can use to enhance my study experience.

In this post, I’d like to give some more advice about this online study tools. I’d also like to give some advice regarding writing at college level.

In my opinion, the most important factor that contributes to college success is time management. In college, no one is going to hold your hand and guide you through each step. Therefore, it’s very important that you keep track of your study and know what you need to do. I recommend students to use google calendar to mark important events before they go to school every week. Make sure to enable the notifications feature and sync the calendar with you smartphone.

Another advice I’d like to give is about memorizing key concepts that you learned from your classes. Memorizing concepts can be frustrating. I took a psychology classes during my second year. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of concepts introduced in the classes. To make the matter worse, I had a tight working schedule in that semester. I found myself had hardly any spare time to sit down and read through the class notes. How I hope I had knew quizlet a little bit earlier. Regardless, quizlet is a website that allows you to create flashcards that you can view on a wide range of electronic devices. It’s one of the best learning tool I can find online. I recommend you to start using it for any class that requires you to memorize a lot of concepts.

The last piece of advice I’d like to give is about writing at college level. Writings assignments at college level might be vastly different from the writing assignments you did in high school. One of the biggest difference is the requirements for citation. There are multiple citation styles that you need to pay attention to when writing a paper. Make sure that you follow the right style to avoid grades deduction. On page 195, the textbook explained in more detail: review each page of your assignment to confirm that you have followed the appropriate format requirements, inserted appropriate in-text citations, and included a complete reference for each citation included in the paper(e-learning companion: A student’s guide to online success (4th ed.) by Watkins & Corry). Purdue Online Writing Lab is a good resource that you can use to learn different citation styles. The website includes many citation examples that you can follow to make your own citation.

The most useful thing I learned from this module is staying organized online.

In college, almost every classes require the student to use their computer to some extent. Some classes require their student to upload their work in digital formats or bring their own printed copies of class notes to the lecture. It’s very easy to lost track of your saved work if you don’t keep those files organized.

Take my own experience as an example. During my first year of college, I put all my homework and class notes in my computer’s storage space without putting them in different folders. There were so many different files, it became too difficult for me to find and upload the file that was required by my instructor. I had to email the professor for an extension so I could redo the homework that I couldn’t find.

One advice I would like to give to the college students is: remember to keep your digital homework, class notes and any course related material organized for later use. Some good tips were also given by the textbook(e-learning companion: A student’s guide to online success (4th ed.) by Watkins & Corry) on page 126: create a folder for each courses and save the files in those folder so you could keep things organized.

Another advice I would like to give is: use google docs to coordinate teamwork with your group mates. This advice comes from my personal experience. Google Words, Google Excel and Google Presentation are great tools for you to draft your group project. But you need to make sure to check your formatting of the files you created.