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This has to be my favorite topic to talk about in this course thus far. Again I will be giving advice to a perspective student. Today I will talk into a few different topics. I will touch on motivators for working in classes, ways to avoid or overcome distractions, and lastly ways to get the most out of your time.

First I would like to talk about motivators for students working in classes and in life as well. There are a lot of classes and work that we may not enjoy when going through our college career. The biggest challenge is to find a way to make it somewhat relatable and interesting to us. The thing that this does for us is that it gives us a why. Without a why we simply have no interest in completing the work to the best of our ability. What I’m referring to here is called intrinsic motivation. You can find it on slide 5 of the powerpoint. Intrinsic in my opinion has more value than extrinsic motivation (outside influences to succeed). When the motivation comes from within our mentality changes and gives us that extra push, especially on those longer assignments we don’t quite want to do.

Second, and this is key, we need to separate ourselves from the outside world for a specified amount of time to be great. Digging deeper into this, you have three different environments usually; your classroom, online, and your study environment, wherever that may be. You can find this in slide 6. In the classroom you may need to distance yourself from your friends to get the most out of the class. Silence or put your phone in your backpack. With the online environment you need to stay away from browsing and wandering off to other sites. Lastly, the social environment when you’re studying on your own. The key here is to find quiet space, put your phone on do not disturb, and spend your time wisely.

Finally, the use of your time. One big study tool I use is called the Pomodoro Technique. This technique includes rounds of studying. At first you study for 25 minutes at a time, then take a 5 minute break. You follow this about four times. After completing these rounds take a longer 15-30 minute break. Whatever you need. It’s important that during the 25 minutes you are working, and during your break you are taking the time to relax a little.

In this post I will be talking about the topic of searching and researching as it pertains to a research paper and a normal paper. I will be talking to the audience of a high school senior or a young college student. The topics I will go into depth on include approaches to start writing a paper, including research and topic ideas. The difference between research paper and normal papers as well. Lastly, I will touch on important ways to do your research.

First off, starting a research paper can cause some difficulties from the start. Usually you are given a list of topics in which you can choose. I would take the advice from the video in slide 6 and choose a topic that truly interests you over something you think will be easier. This will allow you to truly put your heart into it. If you are not able to pick your topic, another piece of advise from the writing tips video was to fake it till you make it essentially. Tell yourself and put yourself in the position in which you truly enjoy the topic for the purpose of writing.

The second thing to look at would be research and topic ideas. The best advice you can have would be after getting your prompt to write down important topics and questions to be answered. This will help you get a list of things to look into when searching. While reading through abstracts browse these first before digging into the bulk of reading. You don’t want to waste your time reading the entire piece if the abstract doesn’t grab you.

Lastly, remember the difference between researching and searching. Searching usually done on your standard search engine (google, yahoo, etc.). Research is usually done on Google Scholar, schools library database, etc. Know the difference between the type of paper you’re writing.

The most useful topics in this video were the active listening and note taking techniques. The best part about it is that these two topics go hand in hand. As a college student I will be speaking to the audience of a young college student or prospective student.

I will start with the active listening portion. The power behind this topic is that it can be used in everyday life, and not just in a classroom setting. Listening is a tool that I believe all people can get better at and should. There is a lot of information out there and it is important for us as students and listeners to comb through it all and weed out the important information. The best ways to do this include: listening for main ideas, volume changes from your speaker which could emphasize important information, creating a picture in your head while the speaker is talking, and lastly the ability to summarize in your head what you’ve heard.

For me this transitions perfectly to the next topic, note taking. As we learned in the lesson there are many different strategies and techniques for note taking. Being able to paint the picture in your head before writing it down is important. The Indiana history lesson video allowed me to visually see the advantages and disadvantages of note different techniques. For me I use a basic outline with bullet points. I think in the future i’m going to start using the Cornell method. Which uses the margins on the left for main topic heads, the middle of the page for your traditional notes, and the bottom portion of the page for a summary of key topics you learned throughout the course. Other techniques included mapping, or even sentence oriented notes. The important part is to find what fits you and your style best to understand the information.

I feel this is a very informative and useful module. I will mainly focus on the setup and execution of a group in classes. As you progress through your academic career group projects are designed to become more professional and move you towards life after undergrad. Typically, when you’re put into groups in a class, the first thing you want to do is get the contact information from your group members. A very useful app that I like to use and have had success with is GroupMe. In this module we talk about informal versus formal communication. I think GroupMe airs on the side of informal communication. It’s different from an email to a professor; it is the norm to talk more like a text message. After setting up communication it’s important to meet for the first time as a group. The structure of the first meeting should be discussing the task at hand, setting tasks to each member (this was mentioned in the video on slide 16), setting a group leader/ supervisor to keep everyone on track, and lastly setting deadlines. After you have your deadlines, the next thing is to get your information into “the cloud” as mentioned on slide 14 with the online collaboration. This gets all your groups work in 1 place, it is automatically saved, everyone has access to it, it updates in real time as you work on it, and it is very user friendly. As you work throughout your weeks it is your supervisor or leaders’ job to ensure the group is on schedule and its important to get the final product to your editor, whoever the group designates, at least a day before the project is due. For me this was the most helpful information that I wish someone shared with me as a freshman in college.

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