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Ms. K's College Survival Tips: Copying and Pasting

Sometimes it's the little things that trip students up when they are doing an assignment, like having plenty of knowledge about how to play on computers, but not quite enough knowledge about how to work on computers.

Yes, it's true. I have recently had more than a few students stumped by how to copy and paste information into a Microsoft Word document as part of an assignment. I hope this little video that walks through some common cut and paste scenarios is helpful.


Ms. K's College Survival Tips - Cutting and Pasting

Ms. K's College Survival Tips: Textbooks

I've been meaning to create a video series to help students deal with some of the practicalities of navigating higher education, and here's my first entry.

Ms_K's_College_Survival_Tips_-_Textbooks

Getting to Know Your Professors

A few years back, I was teaching a class where I was required to have office hours once a week. This is not always common for adjunct instructors such as myself, as we often do not have access to even a shared office to use for that, but in this case, the university had a designated shared adjunct office space and I had my assigned time there each week during the semester. It was very, very quiet. Imagine my excitement one day then when a student came in the door. "Hello," I said enthusiastically. "What can I do to help you?" The student replied, "Um, do you know where the nearest ladies' restroom is?" Slightly deflated, I gave her directions, she thanked me, and that was the extent of my face-to-face student interactions during office hours for that entire semester. 

Very few students utilize office hours or other forms of communication with their professors and instructors, and, truly, they are losing out on a valuable part of their college experience by doing so. I state on my syllabi that I am available by email 24/7 and encourage students to contact me that way, because after any given class, I am usually flying out the door to hit the freeway for my next campus.

While it's undeniable that many students and instructors have hectic schedules, there are always ways for students to get that extra clarification and information that will help them do better in their classes. This can also help students build relationships with faculty that can lead to recommendation letters, internships, and even employment.

The simple habit that can make or break your college experience

Maximize Your Community College Experiences by Using Resources

Community colleges are wonderful starting points for many students for a wide variety of reasons. Whether it's because of finances, academics, employment, family, or simply convenience, two-year public schools offer viable options to springboard oneself towards careers and/or transferring to bachelor's degree granting institutions. Many capable students who would have difficulty entering immediately into the university environment thrive at community colleges. Why is it, then, that the university transfer and bachelor's degree completion rates for such students are relatively low?

According to research performed at the Center for Community College Research at Columbia University's Teachers College, there are flaws in how community college students are counseled for selecting classes and are assisted through the transfer process. I know, however, from my experiences at the numerous Southern California community colleges where I've taught, there are MANY resources available to help students through this process and they are VERY visible and vocal on nearly every campus. I believe more needs to be done to encourage students to make the most of their community college educational experiences, and it starts with knowledge. I actively encourage my students to see their academic counselors on a regular basis and try to answer any questions that they might have to the best of my ability. I know many of my colleagues do the same.

Is Community College a Stepping Stone? It Depends

Want to Improve Your Grades and Your Health? Get More Sleep!

College students are traditionally a seriously sleep-deprived population. With juggling hectic class schedules, jobs, extracurricular activities, and social life, getting enough sleep often falls by the wayside. However, the UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative's Sleep Revolution campaign is seeking to change all that. Sleep has a profound impact on global well-being and the time for college students to cultivate better sleep habits is now.

Healthy Campus Initiative goes deep on sleep

Speed Reading? Slow Down Before You Buy Its Claims

Speed reading programs have been around for decades, promising busy students, overwhelmed professionals, and time-crunched bibliophiles shortcuts to reading, understanding, and remembering written information in as little time as possible. However, a scientific review of the claims behind such programs has revealed their weaknesses.

Speed Reading Promises Are Too Good to Be True, Scientists Find

Life Skills That Go Well Beyond College

Here's some great common sense advice from a former Stanford dean about basic skills for life success necessary to young people moving into the world on their own, whether they are attending college or not.

The 8 Skills Everyone Should Have By Age 18

Flashcards: A New Perspective

Flashcards are an old school learning method that sometimes get a bad rap. It's true if they are simply used as a way to memorize terms out of context, their usefulness is limited, especially if they are pre-created flashcards from a textbook publisher or purchased online. However, flashcards can be a handy study tool if created by the student and used for more than just term definitions. Here's an interesting model to consider: the five-sided flashcard.

The Five-Sided Flashcard

Taking Notes By Hand: The Evidence Increases!

Research evidence continues to steadily pile up in favor of handwriting over using keyboards in promoting memory. Read some of the latest studies at the links below.

Handwriting Has a Psychological Advantage Over Keyboards

Attention Students - Put Your Laptops Away

The Best Way To Boost Your Memory Is Already In Your Hand

Hopefully, this line of research will eventually turn the tide back toward teaching cursive handwriting consistently in the K-12 schools here in the United States. While we certainly don't need to return to the days of endless kill-and-drill penmanship practice in elementary school (been there, done that!), helping students develop a decently legible and efficient level of handwriting will only serve to benefit them in multiple ways as they continue their education and on into their working and daily lives as adults.

What Tests Can't Ever Measure

Students, no matter what their age, are far more than just their grades and test scores. In today's competitive society, it is too easy for all the stakeholders in education -- faculty, administration, staff, and students -- to lose sight of that. This teacher took the time to express it in a loving, compassionate, and powerful way.

In One Letter, A Teacher Sums Up What Test Scores Can't

Think Psych You Tube Channel

I've created a Think Psych You Tube channel where I will be posting a combination of selected pre-existing videos as well as original videos that I will develop primarily for my students' use. I am just getting started with this project (as well as reviving this blog and my Think Psych blog), so be sure to check back frequently for new developments.

Don't forget there are also Facebook pages for College Success Insider and Think Psych  so please check those out and give them likes if you're so inclined.  :-)

Is Online Learning Right For You?

Online learning is an exciting option for taking classes, but students often have some misconceptions about what taking online classes is like. While it is easy to be enthusiastic about the prospect of not having to physically show up in class, there definitely are some trade-offs for that point. The student's own responsibility for driving the learning process is much more heavy in online learning, and that's not something that every student can accomplish successfully.

I just came across a great straight-to-the-point list to help students determine whether online classes are the right choice for them and wanted to share it. Here it is:

Is Online Learning Right For You?

Online learning is not for everyone. Successful online learners generally fit most or all of these characteristics--see if you fit the mold:

• Motivated and disciplined self-starter

Since you are essentially working on your own time and setting your own study schedule, it's essential that you are responsible and able to work independently.

• Comfortable expressing thoughts in writing

Online classes rely almost entirely on written communication, so you should be well-versed in using email, online discussion boards, and word processing software to produce essays and other written assignments.

• Have access to a computer and know how to perform basic computer functions

Virtual learning requires a computer with a reliable internet connection, in order to ensure timely delivery of information. As for personal skills, you should have experience navigating the internet, saving/uploading/downloading files and using word processing software.

• Strong time management skills

With soft deadlines, it's easy to procrastinate and get behind. It's important to keep a checklist and set reminders for yourself to ensure you stay on task throughout the class, and not leave everything for the last minute.

From https://www.extension.ucr.edu/resources/resource/Take_a_Seat_in_Our_Virtual_Classroom

(4-07-2016)

Communicating Effectively With Professors: Email

The professors who teach your college or university classes are almost guaranteed to be very busy people who often wish they could clone themselves to get everything they need to get done accomplished. That's why it is sometimes best to communicate with your professors via email. They are more likely to have the time to give you a well-thought out answer to your question while sitting in front of their computer in their offices or at home than when they are flying out the door to get to their next class or meeting. Keep in mind that it's quite common for higher education classes to be taught by adjunct faculty who often have teaching obligations at multiple colleges and universities and often have to be at multiple campuses on the same day, so giving them a little more breathing room to answer your questions or address your concerns via email is an appreciated courtesy you can extend to them.

Here's a few common sense tips I give to my students to make communicating with your professors by email more effective.

• Please make sure that each email includes your name, the class name, and the days and time your class meets. We often teach multiple sections of the same class at the same time. For instance, if I received an email from a student who only told me "I'm in your general psychology class," that could be someone from any of four different classes at three different campuses. 
• It's a good idea to use your campus email account for contacting faculty because it's pretty common for accounts from Yahoo, Gmail, etc. to be automatically sorted into the spam folder by campus computing systems.
• The more specific you are about who you are and what help you need from us, the better we can help you.
• Please do, however, check the syllabus, assignment instructions, or any other resources before emailing us. You will often find that your answer is already available to you. 

Here's also another set of tips about sending effective emails to professors written by a college student.

8 Tips on Writing a Professional Email

I hope you find this information helpful. Happy communicating!

Professors' Pet Peeves - Sociological Images

The wonderful folks at Sociological Images do an outstanding job in making contemporary societal issues accessible and understandable to a wide Internet audience. I find their approach to presenting statistics and criticizing how statistics are presented especially refreshing.  I'm planning to incorporate quite a few of their articles into my upcoming social psychology class.

In browsing their website, I came across a truly golden nugget of advice that applies to all students, not just sociology students. Whether you're deep in the midst of summer classes or kicking back academically until fall, it's well worth your time to read Professors' Pet Peeves to make your interactions with your instructors and professors more pleasant and productive all around. 

Taking Notes By Hand: Low Tech, High Efficiency

In the 21st century, we are surrounded by technology designed to help us accomplish a multitude of tasks.  While this is beneficial in many ways, we should not assume that going high tech is always best.  Sometimes a low tech, time tested approach is still the best way to approach a situation. 

Recent research conducted by Pam Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of UCLA revealed that using a laptop to take notes in class may not be the best thing to do in order to truly learn the material.  While several prior studies have indicated laptops can be problematic in the classroom because they present opportunities for distraction, Mueller and Oppenheimer found that even when laptop users stayed on task, their notes tended to be close to word-for-word transcriptions of lectures rather than the students' own processing of the material.  This quasi-transcription phenomenon even persisted when students using laptops were advised ahead of time to put their notes in their own words. 

The impact of this approach was clear: students who had taken notes on laptops performed significantly worse on conceptual test questions than students who had taken notes by hand.  In one part of their study, while students' performance on factual questions was similar regardless of notetaking method, the laptop users were unable to apply those facts to solve more complex questions.  The act of handwriting combines recording of information with simultaneously processing the information, thereby jumpstarting the learning process.

Since many of my students report never having been taught anything about how to take notes, I am planning a future post on the art and science of effective notetaking.  Keep an eye out for it.

Playing to Learn Can Work for College, Too

As children, most college students of today grew up with access to computers and to educational games.  Playing learning-focused games is a widely accepted activity for children because it helps develop children’s basic academic skills while engaging them in fun activities.  Now that you’re in college or about to go to college, the fun and learning games are over, right?  Not necessarily.

Websites such as Eduxtive, which is mostly geared toward younger learners, also can contain games suitable for the post-high school audience.  For example, I was very challenged by The World History Game and played it several times to try to increase my score.  I found myself recalling information from my community college history courses (over 20 years ago!) and taking in some new knowledge along the way.  The game is divided into seven sections to test a broad array of history knowledge.  The chronology section calls on the player to arrange several important world events in the order in which they occurred.  The fact checker section is much like a traditional multiple choice quiz, and the geo skills directs the player to match up historical hallmarks with the region in which they occurred.  The important people, key terms, and culture and lands sections complete the game, and the player is given a report card showing his or her score on each section and an overall letter grade.  (No, I’m not saying what my letter grade was.)  This scoring method will help a student to track improvements over time and to identify what areas of knowledge need further study and attention.  This would be a nice tool for students wishing to refresh their world history background before taking college history classes.  I did find the game sounds a trifle annoying, but they are easy to turn off if you wish.  I was also pleased to find helpful math and science games on the Eduxtive site as well.  

While this is a sponsored post for which I am being paid a nominal amount, I have long used game and study websites, both those geared for K-12 and college audiences, as support material for my classes.  There is a ton of good teaching resources out there just for the googling of them.  For that matter, savvy students can support their own learning by searching for game and study websites related to class subjects.  Sometimes having a little fun with the learning makes it stick all that much better.

Take Home Tests: They're Not What You Might Think

So you're excited to learn that you will be having a take home test for your final exam in one of your classes.  "Piece of cake," you say.  "How much more simple can it be, taking the test with my textbooks and notes on hand?  Sweet!"

Hold on there.  Take home tests are definitely not the easy A experience many students assume them to be.  When a professor would assign a take home exam when I was a student, I would have to do everything I could to stop myself from groaning out loud while many other students were smiling and happy about it.  Here's the inside scoop about take home tests.

Take home tests tend to be harder, longer, and more detailed than in class tests.  The grading standards tend to be much higher for essay and short answer tests in particular because of the amount of time you've had to prepare them.  Because of these factors, avoid the procrastination temptation.  You do not want to have the horrified feeling of sitting down to throw together your take home exam the night before it's due only to realize there's far more work to do there than you thought.

Treat essay questions as seriously as you would a research paper.  Once you've read each question, go through your textbook and notes to flag the material that will help you write your answer.  If you have multiple essay questions on your exam, multicolored sticky notes are helpful.  Outline the answers to essay questions before you start writing them.  Proofread your answers several times and make the writing as clear and concise as possible.

Do not collaborate with other students unless your professor or instructor specifically tells you it is okay to do so.  To do otherwise is academic dishonesty, which has dire consequences, not only for your grade on the test or in the class, but possibly for your educational record as a whole.  I think many students would be surprised at how readily those of us who teach can detect when students have been working together on something when they should not have been.  Even if you are given the okay to consult other students on your take home exam, don't assume that means it's fine to submit the same or substantially the same answers.  That is the specific form of academic dishonesty called plagiarism, which also carries serious consequences.

If you put enough time and effort into completing a take home test, you're more likely to get good results.  Be ready for it to be tougher than the average test and you'll be ahead of the game.

Final Exams? Don't Be Tempted to Cram!

The words "final exam" inspire panic in quite a few students and trigger massive last-minute studying binges.  However, studying for classes is something a wise student does regularly throughout the semester or quarter.  He or she knows that true learning takes place over an extended period of time, built in little chunks at a time on a strong foundation of knowledge.  What's that you're saying?  You're not that kind of student?  Well, you can be.  It just takes a bit of planning and a strong commitment to your education and yourself.  You should give it a try next time around.  Here's how.

Start your plan for success at the very beginning of classes.  One of the first things you should do when starting a new semester or quarter is to gather the syllabi for all your classes together along with your planner.  Begin by highlighting exam dates and important deadlines for each of your classes, and then enter that information for all classes into your planner.  This will give you an accurate view of the "big picture" and help you plan ahead to have plenty of time to prepare for important tests and projects.

For each exam you have in your classes, make a study plan.  For instance, if you are taking a 16 week course and have a cumulative midterm in week 8, you might want to start adding some extra study time for that class in about week 6.  Consider the length and point value of each exam and/or project when planning preparation time.  A 20 point multiple choice quiz over two text chapters should take less study time than a 200 point final exam over the entire course.

Good class preparation and follow up is half the battle.  If you keep up with assigned readings, take good notes during lecture, and review your notes and text on a regular basis, you are building that strong foundation of knowledge upon which your test preparation efforts will firmly rest.  Reading and reviewing your notes and the text are best done in small, manageable chunks that allow your brain to fully integrate the information well before the day of that important test.

Do some concentrated studying the night before.   Even if you are well-prepared, there's something about really cracking down for a couple hours the night before a final exam that boosts your confidence.  Don't overdo it though, and be sure to get a good night's sleep.

BUT -- if you find yourself in a tough spot and you need to cram, do it strategically.

• Concentrate on one class at a time if at all possible.
• Remove all distractions of any kind from your environment so you can focus.
• Use the study aids contained in your textbook (summaries, highlighted terms, definitions, and so on) and skim chapters for highlights and main ideas.
• Make sure you have all the supplies you need for studying on hand.
• Do not pull an all-nighter; your brain will not operate at its best without sleep!
• Plan not to put yourself in this stressful cramming situation ever again.

Want more final exam tips?  Check out The Day of the Final Exam for extra advice.

Second Chances: Retaking Classes

If you earned a failing grade in a class, it is a good idea to retake the class if you can.  Grades that are lower than a C might not eligible for transfer to a different college or university and they may not count towards graduation requirements.  While those rules will vary, one thing is for certain:  a failed class significantly lowers your GPA and leaves a blemish on your transcript.  Retaking a failed class is your best shot at limiting the negative effects on your record.  Here are some things to consider if you need to retake a class.

• Be aware of your college’s rules on retakes.  Depending on your college’s policies, the grade for the new attempt at the class may replace the old grade or be averaged with the old grade.  You will not have an unlimited number of times to retake the class.  Colleges have become much more strict about how many times students can retake classes for credit.  
• It is a good idea to retake a failed class as soon as possible.  Even though you did poorly in the class, the overall knowledge is still fresh in your mind and you can maximize your chances of doing well if you take advantage of that.
• If you are retaking the class with the same instructor, you certainly should review old materials and notes thoroughly, but don’t rely solely on them.  Remember, when you used them before, the results were not good, so taking additional notes and approaching the material from a different angle is necessary.  Do not assume that all the rules and requirements are the same as the last time you took the class.  Instructors do change their syllabi frequently, so make sure you are up to date as well.
• If you are retaking the class with a different instructor, your old materials and notes may or may not be helpful.  Instructors often use different textbooks and teach classes using quite different methods.  If you found the prior instructor’s teaching style not a good match for your learning style, taking the class with someone else is a good idea if you can possibly do so.  
• Take a detailed and honest look at what went wrong the last time you took the class and commit to correcting all of the factors you can possibly control.  If you failed the class because you did not read the text, study enough, or have good class attendance, those are relatively easy to work on.  If there were class assignments or tests that puzzled you, talk to your instructor and/or seek tutoring help.  Be proactive as possible to help assure your success in the class this time around so you can continue advancing toward your educational goals.