Study Tips
Tips for Success
1. Have an open mind and a welcoming heart.
Open your minds and hearts to new perspectives and ways of learning and understanding.
Don’t be afraid of change. Push yourself to explore ideas and skills beyond your comfort zones.
Complain less, do more.
Do not resist the learning experience and embrace the task given to you.
Without openness and optimism, learning will not flourish.
Take on a positive attitude toward difficulties and feedback. Use these to make yourself better rather than point fingers and be dejected. Remember that criticisms are meant to make you realize your weaknesses so that you may learn and be able to address them. As adults, we should take a more proactive and productive viewpoint on critiques and challenges.
2. Be responsible for your own learning.
Reflect and self-assess.
Take advantage of your learning styles to develop your own strategies in studying and to formulate study habits that work for you. Take initiative.
Take initiative and Take charge of your own learning.
3. Develop a study plan.
Time management is one of the important skills that individuals have to develop in order to get all their work done. Creating a study plan can help you schedule and put a time line for your different tasks and responsibilities, and avoid procrastination.
4. Be diligent in doing research.
Search other resources that will enable you to learn and understand the topics better. To be able to share your knowledge, you need to have that knowledge first. You will not be able to form a comprehensive and solid stand or insight on certain issues or concepts if you are not knowledgeable about them. Thus, it is essential that we widen our awareness and understanding by constantly
keeping ourselves updated and informed through research of other resources and learning materials. Hence, you are expected to apply your skills in evaluating Web resources.
Here are some tips on evaluating Web resources:
Evaluating Sources
Evaluating Internet Resources:
5. Participate and be involved.
We learn more and develop deeper understanding of concepts when we participate in collaborative activities and discourses. Thus, I expect you to be active in forum discussions. Don’t be afraid to express your mind. Don’t allow yourself to become a lurker and just be passive recipients of other people’s ideas. Your opinion matters.
6. Use your own words.
Even though knowledge is a social product, it is important that we acknowledge our sources and use our own words when discussing or writing our papers and outputs. Practice proper way of paraphrasing. Read the document, Plagiarism and APA Citation, to know about the guidelines on avoiding plagiarism.
Let’s work together to preserve and uphold honesty and integrity in our class.
You may provide assistance to classmates who have forgotten to cite their references or to include proper in-text citations, or call their attention if they have inadvertently committed plagiarism.
You may also notify me if you have noticed blatant plagiarism in the work of your peers, so I may also help them correct their mistakes.
If you know you have committed plagiarism or have omitted proper citations, please take the initiative of correcting yourself by editing or revising your work (previous or current).
Please note that outputs with plagiarized content will not be accepted and should be revised.
Otherwise, you will be marked 5.00 (Failed) or reported to the appropriate authorities of the University.
7. Take down notes and summarize.
To be able to handle the amount of resources and information that you will encounter in this course, you need to practice effective note taking. This need not be handwritten. You can utilize digital technologies to take down notes.
While taking notes, you should be able to synthesize what the resources are conveying and take note of salient information. Compound the learning that you will gain from the rich discussions that you will have with your classmates, from the course activities and tasks, and from your personal readings.
8. Use advance organizers.
To organize information and ideas better, make use of concept maps, diagrams, and tables. In answering the questions in our forums, I strongly recommend using advance organizers. This will help you organize the concepts that you have learned, while also allow your peers to understand your response better.
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9. Read the assignment/requirement guides completely and ahead of time. Accomplish your requirements promptly.
Assignments and other course requirements are given to enable you to process and apply your knowledge concretely, which can result to better appreciation of your own learning and to deeper understanding of concepts. This will also help measure your achievement of the course’s
objectives. We must view academic requirements as a tool for learning and not as a burden.
Read the guides and instructions as soon as you receive them so that you can start planning and preparing for your assignments and requirements.
Do your assignments as soon as possible to get them out of the way.
This will give you enough time to breathe and prepare for the next module or assignment. You don't want your requirements piling up on you, do you?
Time management is the key. The study plan you develop will help you become more organized and systematic in accomplishing your tasks.
Always be on your toes. I understand that we have several roles to perform and
responsibilities to meet, but trust that you will be able to accomplish all of these with hard work, persistence, organization, and, of course, lots of love. :)
10. Answer the Study Questions.
Although the answers to the study questions are not checked, you should answer them as they will help you do the tasks in the modules and formulate your responses in the discussion forums.
11. Evaluate your work and performance.
Be reflective.
Assess your academic performance and the quality of your output.
Use the rubric given to you in your requirement guides to be aware of the criteria and standards that you should meet.
12. Perseverance and positive attitude are keys to success.
Never tire of learning. Continue to work hard. Even if you are faced with a road block, do not waver. Enjoy your experiences as you go through the entire learning process. Plough through your obstacles and before you know it, you are already at the end of the journey.
Note: Image source: https://pixabay.com
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Supplementary Readings:
To those who did not take the Online Learning Skills bridge course, you may access the resources below. They offer additional study strategies which you may utilize in the course.
Becoming a Self-Directed Learner:
http://cte.smu.edu.sg/learning/effective-learning/self-directed-learning Planning My Learning:
https://www.tut.fi/ms/muo/vert/1_orienting%20_phase/pdlri_msp_howshouldiplanmylearning.html Strategy for the Learner: A Student’s Guide to e-Learning Success:
fbajaber.kau.edu.sa/GetFile.aspx?id=156503&Lng=AR&fn=P3.pdf Understanding and Overcoming Procrastination:
http://academics.uafs.edu/sites/academics.uafs.edu/files/Departments/Academic
%20Success/overcoming_and_understanding_procrastination.pdf Is Rereading the Material a Good Study Strategy?:
http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/rereading-material-good-study- strategy/
Note-taking Skills: https://student.unsw.edu.au/note-taking-skills
