‘Twas two weeks before finals, and all through the school…

Final exams for full-term courses will begin two weeks from today, so for this post, I thought I would offer some study tips:

• Attend all of your remaining classes.  Final exams tend to focus on the content in the second half of the course, especially if you had a midterm.  You don’t want to miss information that will be on the final.
• Study all of your course material.  Even though the focus of a final exam may be on content since the midterm, do not assume that nothing from the first half of the course will be on the final.  If you studied well for the midterm, though, studying material from the first half of the course should mostly be refresher of stuff you know well.
• Study a little bit every day.  Pick your best time of day to study (are you a sparrow/morning person or an owl/evening person?).  Plan to study one or two subjects a day, and separate studying for similar content if you find yourself becoming confused over content in similar courses, like psychology and sociology.
• Study in blocks with breaks interspersed.  One hour of study plus a half-hour break, followed by another hour of studying, can be more effective than studying for multiple hours at a time.  During breaks, your brain will have time to process and store information.  Constantly cramming new information in your brain does not give  you the time your brain needs to properly retain material.
• Use multiple study methods, and focus on the method that works best for you.  We learn through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic means, so you will be robbing yourself of helpful study habits by relying on one specific method.  Use flashcards, study in a group or with a partner, and practice with hands-on activity (even writing out practice answers to questions gives you hands-on learning).  At the same time, we all tend to have a preferred/best study method.  For instance, if you find that you best remember information that you hear, put more effort into auditory learning than into visual and kinesthetic learning.
• Use effective time management.  You will find that if you write down a planned study time, you will be more likely to stick to that study time than if you just make a mental note to study.  Then, cross off a completed study time–even that small act feels rewarding because you did what you said you would do.  Also, be sure to prioritize what you need to do.  Keep a to-do list that includes household activities, work, studying, and more.  Then, label each activity based on its importance:  give an A to the most important items, a B to items that should get done but that can wait, and a C to things you simply want to do but that can wait for a while.  Studying, of course, should be an A activity.

Fall Registration FYIs

In fall 2012, Northern is offering some unique course offerings that can help students accelerate through transitional education, work at their own pace, and/or promote their own success.

There are several options available to transitional education students that will allow them to accelerate their developmental coursework, this fall.

First, an ENG 090/ENG 101 combination will be piloted on all campuses.  Students enroll for a specific section of ENG 090 and a specific ENG 101 section that follows the 090 section. A minimum Compass score of 50 is required. Here are course details by campus: 

1. NM  20433  ENG 090-031  (1000-1115  MW)  and must register for  24238  ENG 101-034  (1130-1245  MW)
2. WT  21464  ENG 090-022  (1000-1115  MW)  and must register for  24235  ENG 101-024  (1130-1245  MW)
3. WH  20122  ENG 090-001  (1000-1115  TR)    and must register for  21829  ENG 101-008  (1130-1245  TR)

Second, a MATH 92/93 accelerated combination will be offered on all campuses. Courses run back-to-back with normal contact hours and for three days a week. Details by campus:

1.  NM  20449  MATH  092-031  (0930-1110  MWF)   1st eight weeks AND  22530  MATH  093-032  (0930-1110  MWF)   2nd eight weeks
2.  WT  21966  MATH  092-021  (0330-0510  MWF)   1st eight weeks AND 23616  MATH  093-023  (0330-0510  MWF)   2nd eight weeks
3.  WH  21938  MATH  092-002  (0230-0410  MWF)   1st eight weeks AND 22304  MATH  093-003  (0230-0410  MWF)   2nd eight weeks

Third, MATH Lab classes will meet at normal class times, but students will still be able to progress at their own pace.  They then move on to the next class when they finish a class.  There will also be a math lab on the Weirton campus. Here are the lab sections, for both campuses: 

1. WT  24240  MATH 086-026  (0530-0645  T);   24241  MATH 092-024  (1130-1245  MW);   24242  MATH 093-024  (0100-1245  TR)
2.  WH  24157  MATH 086-013  (0100-0215  MW);  24158  MATH 086-013  (1000-1115  TR);  24160  MATH 092-009  (1000-1115  MW);   24161  MATH 092-011  (0100-0215  TR);  24159  MATH 093-006  (0230-0345  MW) 

NOTE:  There are no minimum Compass scores to register for any of the math options.

Finally, the college has created a new course, Financial Literacy and Student Success (ORNT 115).  This is a two-credit hour course that teaches students skills and strategies for college success and financial management.  Students can learn about active listening, note-taking, time management, conflict management, and stress management in addition to budgeting, loan borrowing, mortgages, financial aid Satisfactory Academic Progress, financial resources, and more.  If you have elective hours to fill or are looking for an interesting class on top of your 12 hours, this is a great option for any student.

Study Tip–Combining Auditory and Visual Learning

I’m finishing my masters program, and that means that I am going to be taking comprehensive exams soon.  These exams will test me on anything and everything I’ve learned in the classes for my program.  No pressure or anything…

I started studying for these exams a while ago because ensuring that I can recall and synthesize all of that information is a complicated process, and I want the paths to this information in my brain to be very clear come test day.  To help me study, I was trying to use the various study tips I give to my students.  I created some flash cards, I started reading notes out loud and pretended like I was teaching to someone (my program is a distance program, so I cannot form a true study group).  I review my notes frequently, and I created a study schedule for myself.

I also recently upgraded my phone, and when I was reading notes to myself, a light bulb went off in my head:  my phone has a voice recorder.  You see, I like to work out faithfully, but my workouts involve a lot of movement.  This means it is hard for me to read while exercising, so I was losing some quality study time to exercise.  However, I can listen while exercising.  Once I had my epiphany, I started recording myself as I read my notes out loud.  I have almost all of my notes recorded, so now when I go to the gym, I can listen to my notes so that I can study and work out at the same time!  Genius!

The highest form of learning is to invent something.  For me, I invented a new way for me to study using technology.  Lots of students have smartphones or phones with recording devices.  When you are studying, you can incorporate both visual and auditory learning, or capitalize on one when the other is not an option.  My tip for this week, then, is to record yourself as you study out loud.  Then, while you wash dishes, go on a jog, or do something wherein you can listen but not read, you can actively engage your brain in learning and other activities.  What more could a multi-tasker wish for?

Making the Most of Student Email

Did you know that your student email account through Northern offers a lot of utility?  It’s not just useful for emailing.  You can also use your account’s calendar and task functions to keep track of important due dates, to set a semester schedule, and to create a to-do list with color-coded priorities and reminders.

Calendar:

Your Calendar can be accessed on the bottom left side of the screen once you log into your email.  To create a listing for a deadline, test day, or project due date, for instance, click on the day and then click “New” on the left above the calendar.  Enter the information in the dialogue box and save it to your calendar.  You can also set a reminder (anywhere from minutes before the event to several days before) that will pop up at the reminder time you set.

Tasks:

This is another great time management tool.  Like the Calendar, you can click on the “Task” tool on the bottom left side of the screen while you are logged into your email account.  To create a new task, such as completing research for a term paper or working on MyMathLab homework, click “New” on the upper left side of the screen.  Then, put the subject of the task (i.e., “MyMathLab problems”) in the Subject box, enter details in the large dialogue box, set a due date and start date, and choose a priority (Low, Normal, or High).  High priority items could be those that are important and immediate–they must be done soon.  Normal priority items could regard those that you would like to do but could wait to do.  Low priority could be purely related to things you want to do but that don’t have major consequences for not doing them.

Sky Drive:

One other tool I wanted to highlight is your Sky Drive, which is accessible at the top middle portion of the screen.  Use this tool to save your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.  That way, if you don’t like to carry a thumb drive, tend to forget your flash drive, or are looking for a way to save your documents, you can access your papers and other documents anywhere you have internet access. 

Your student email is not only free–it is also vital to basic student success strategies called time management and organization.  Enter due dates and deadlines for important assignments and tests in your Calendar so that you can see when assignments are due in relation to each other across your classes.  Create tasks for daily or weekly action items to keep yourself on track without getting overwhelmed.  Use your Sky Drive to save virtual mountains of information and assignments you’ll need for school.

 

What kind of student do you want to be?

Characteristics of Successful Students:

 1. …ACCEPT SELF-RESPONSIBILITY, seeing themselves as the primary causes of their outcomes and experiences.

2. ……DISCOVER SELF-MOTIVATION, finding purpose in their lives by discovering personally meaningful goals and dreams.

3. …MASTER SELF-MANAGEMENT, consistently planning and taking purposeful actions in pursuit of their goals and dreams.

4. …EMPLOY INTERDEPENDENCE, building mutually supportive relationships that help them achieve their goals and dreams (while helping others to do the same).

5. …GAIN SELF-AWARENESS, consciously employing behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes that keep them on course.

6. …ADOPT LIFE-LONG LEARNING, finding valuable lessons and wisdom in nearly every experience they have.

7. …DEVELOP EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, effectively managing their emotions in support of their goals and dreams.

8. …BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES, seeing themselves as capable, lovable, and unconditionally worthy as human beings.

 Characteristics of Unsuccessful Students: 

1. …see themselves as Victims, believing that what happens to them is determined primarily by external forces such as fate, luck, and powerful others.

2. …have difficulty sustaining motivation, often feeling depressed, frustrated, and/or resentful about a lack of direction in their lives.

3. …seldom identify specific actions needed to accomplish a desired outcome. And when they do, they tend to procrastinate.

4. …are solitary, seldom requesting, even rejecting offers of assistance from those who could help.

5. …make important choices unconsciously, being directed by self-sabotaging habits and outdated life scripts.

6. …resist learning new ideas and skills, viewing learning as fearful or boring rather than as mental play.

7. …live at the mercy of strong emotions such as anger, depression, anxiety, or a need for instant gratification.

8. …doubt their competence and personal value, feeling inadequate to create their desired outcomes and experiences.

What kind of student do you want to be?

Goal Setting and Time Management

“Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.”  Groucho Marx may have been joking when he said this, but there is some truth to how time goes so quickly.  Time is nonrenewable and nonpreservable.  In other words, once a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, etc. goes by, you cannot get back that second, minute, hour, day, week, month, or year.  Also, you cannot store time like you can store firewood.  I cannot take the minutes I spend typing this blog  to use for something else later.  When we tell ourselves, “I should be studying now but I’m going to do something else and get to studying later,” we’ve lost a valuable, nonrenewable commodity–our time.

When it comes to effective time management, you need to know what you want, know how to get what you want, and aim for balance.  We all have multiple needs and wants, and these vary by individual.  Work, school, exercise, attending sporting events, eating, sleeping, valuable time with loved ones–we have to learn to manage all of these with a finite amount of time.  Therefore, spend time writing down what your specific goals are and create a plan to accomplish those goals in relation to each other.  I’ll give you some of my goals as an example:

• Study for 45 minutes each day for the next two months to prepare for my comprehensive exams in my masters program.
• Respond to at least 7 discussion board threads for my online class each week through the end of the semester.
• Eat dinner at home at least five days a week (rather than getting fast food or eating out).
• Lose 10 pounds by June 1.
• Exercise for 60 minutes at least two days in a row with no more than one day in between exercising.
• Visit my grandmother at least one evening a week for about 2 hours.
• Save at least $40 per month for this year’s Christmas shopping.

And on and on and on…

I’ve listed 7 goals, and these cover a mere fraction of a percent of my total life goals, considering that some are broken down quite simply.  In order for me to achieve all of these goals, I need to create a plan for how to achieve each goal AND to do so in relation to all other goals.  For instance, I need to plan for the 60 minute workout sessions during times when I’m not focused on studying for 45 minutes.  Plus, I need to find time to respond to discussion boards in between those times during the week.  Goals are not isolated.  They need to be realistic and attainable in relation to each other for a person to be able to achieve them all.

This leads to making SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-specific) and using a time management tool, like a calendar, to-do list, or a combination thereof.  You’ll notice that my goals appear to be SMART.  For instance, losing 10 pounds is more specific than writing, “I want to lose weight.”  Ten pounds provides a measurement to know if I meet that goal–I either lose that many pounds (or more) or I don’t.  Ten pounds weight loss is also more attainable and realistic than aiming to lose fifty by June 1, and it is possible if I stick to my other goal of exercising regularly.  My behaviors will also determine whether this is a realistic goal.  If I eat pizza every day and don’t exercise, the goal is not realistic.  Finally, it is time-bound because I’ve set a deadline for when I am to have lost the weight.  Six words can give me a lot of direction.  Furthermore, to help me achieve this goal, I should use a calendar or other tracking system to see how much weight I lose over time and how many times I exercise (and create a plan for specific days and times to exercise) to help me achieve my goal.

I could say lots about time, but I am running short on time and will leave the discussion here for now!  Challenge yourself to be a better goal setter and time manager by writing out your top goals and using a tool to create a plan for achieving those goals.

Understanding Memory and How to Improve It

Picture an elephant in an open field.  Imagine that this elephant follows the same route every day to and from a body of water.  After a while, what will happen to the route the elephant takes?  In a short amount of time, a path will begin to develop, and it will become clear to observers like you and I what route that elephant takes because the path is distinct, memorable.  In a similar way, your brain can create clear pathways to information if we repeatedly review that same information.

Now, I could get into a whole lot of technical jargon about dendrites and axons to explain how the science of memory works, but you’re probably not going to gain as much from that as the visualization provided in the first paragraph.  However, do know that their is a science to memory that explains why we can retain certain information.  At the core of understanding memory is the fact that “traveling the path” one or two times, such as reading a chapter once and never reviewing the information again, does not create a clear, distinct path that will allow us to access the information easily.  Instead, we’ll have to work a lot harder, jogging all around in our memories to recall information for something like a test.

To clear paths to the information stored in your brain, you can try a few techniques.  For instance, use the SQ3R method when approaching reading assignments.  With this method, you scan, or survey, a chapter by flipping through to get a general idea of how it is organized, how important information is highlighted, and what questions are asked at the end of the chapter, which often highlights key points to watch for.  Then, write down questions you have.  If you are reading a chapter on memory, for instance, think about questions you have about memory:  what is the definition of memory?  How does memory work?  What are techniques that improve memory?  Then, read the chapter fully, start to finish, taking notes and highlighting while you read.  Pay particular attention to information that answers your questions.  The second “R” is “recite.”  In other words, try putting what you have learned in your own words by summarizing what you read and review your highlights and notes soon after completing the reading.  Finally, review, review, review.  Take some time each day to read through your notes.  Even 15-20 minutes of reviewing your notes each day provides an effective learning strategy.  When it comes to the test, you will already know the information so well that your review sessions the days before a test will not take large, stressful portions of your day.

Other methods include creating rhymes or songs to learn information and using mnemonic devices.  In the ancient world, before the written word, people had to remember stories and information somehow, so they used song.  Homer’s Odyssey, for instance, was preserved for thousands of years because it was written as a song and passed along from generation to generation through oral (rhythmic) tradition.  Talk about putting memory to hard work!  Some innovative teachers have enhanced learning in the classroom by creating rap songs of course material.  Imagine learning how to conjugate verbs to the beat of your favorite tune?  We can remember all of the words to our favorite songs because the melody jump starts our connection to the words.  Song, then, could also help us remember material studied in class.  In addition, mnemonic devices, like taking the first letter of key words to form a sentence, can help you remember course information.  Anyone who had to learn the order of operations in math probably knows the sentence, “Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally,” to remember the order in which to answer parts of a math problem (parenthesis, exponents, multiply, divide, add, subtract).  “My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas,” helps students remember the order of planets in our solar system:  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.  (Of course, Pluto is no longer a planet, but you get the point.)

Memory also tends to be closely connected to our emotions, so my last bit of advice is to HAVE FUN!  Imitate someone else while studying.  Practice your Anatomy terms while pretending to be your favorite comedian.  Review materials with friends and create games out of your study materials.  Make jokes, laugh, enjoy yourself!  When my mom would help me review French terms, she would use the funniest pronunciations, and when it was time for my quiz the next day, I remembered studying with her and laughing.  That good memory of our experience helped me to associate the emotion with the information I needed for the quiz.  If you study feeling anxious and upset, you’ll probably feel anxious and upset during the test or quiz, causing you to be distracted by your troubled emotions.  Adding humor to your studying creates some levity for studying and test taking, and that relaxed feeling will allow you to focus on the information you need to remember.

So, remember, memory is not mysterious.  Anyone can improve memory retention with a few simple techniques.  Find the technique (go to http://www.mindtools.com/memory.html to get more strategies that can help) that works for you.

Online Resource for Your Success

At WVNCC, students will find that resources for their success come in various formats, including electronic.  This blog exemplifies one of those resources.  On this blog, you will find information about various topics, including study skills, time management, stress management, registration, advising, college policies, events, deadlines and so much more to navigate your college education successfully.

In addition to this blog, students can access online career assessments and exploration tools, online tutoring, ways to stay on top of your progress in courses, and blogs from other departments.  First, College Central allows students to search for job opportunities, create and post online resumes and portfolios, and access free career resources.  Additionally, any student who updates his or her account now through January 31 will be entered in a drawing for a Nook Tablet!  A second resource available online for free to students in Smarthinking.com, an online tutoring resource  that is accessible 24/7.  Submit an essay in the Essay Center for feedback about your writing from qualified English tutors.  Chat with a math tutor about how to solve a problem.  Submit a question about a topic and receive a response in 24-48 hours.  Whether you attend school on campus or from a distance, Smarthinking can assist you with your coursework and basic skills in studying and more.

Another resource is GradesFirst.  All degree-seeking students have a GradesFirst account, which allows students to easily email instructors and advisors as well as many other functions.  Use the Calendar to keep track of your schedule and tutoring appointments.  Track assignment due dates and details, if your instructors use the system for assignment posts.  Request a tutor appointment by click the “Request a Tutor” link next to a course (please note that not all courses have a tutor available on campus).  Receive notifications of your attendance and progress in classes as reported by instructors.  GradesFirst serves as your information resource to promote your educational success.  Other online resources include the Wheeling Counselor Blog and New Martinsville Campus blog.  Check these out through the “Blogs” link on the right side of Northern’s webpage (www.wvncc.edu) and receive updates about events and other important information for those campuses.

You don’t have to be on campus to access the tools you need to be a successful college student.  Access College Central, Smarthinking.com, and GradesFirst through the Student Portal at the convenience of your home while online.  Check out the blogs and other links on Northern’s webpage.  Near or far, Northern’s resources for success are within your reach.

Happy Holidays!

For the last post of 2011, I wish all of you a happy holiday season!   Take the time to relax and enjoy the break from school.  Congratulate yourself for completing this past semester of college and look forward to coming back in January to start anew.

Whatever your faith, whatever your plans, have a wonderful holiday break!

Financial Literacy Class–FINAL JOURNAL TOPIC

Highlight 5 financial literacy topics/points you learned and will use, and then highlight 5 student success topics/points you learned and will use.  (Tip:  use this journal as an opportunity to practice/review for the final.)  DUE THE DAY OF YOUR FINAL EXAM.