productivity

How To Make the Most of YOUR Student Experience

Q: What is ‘the student experience’?
A: It’s what you make it!

This week, I held a workshop at the University of Glamorgan about ‘the student experience’.

I’ve mentioned Glamorgan in the past for their brilliant Glam Insight, where students write about their time at the university and their experiences while they study.

The students make clear how different their lives are, how varied their experiences are, and how wide-ranging their opportunities are.

In the workshop, I asked four questions. They are covered in the presentation below. But if I could sum things up as briefly as possible, here’s what I’d say in a nutshell:

  1. What IS ‘the student experience’?
    Nothing in particular. Reclaim it as your own. Ask what you want and why you want it.
  2. What should young people consider when applying?
    The bigger picture first, and only then the fact that they would like to live in nice halls.
  3. Why do students leave?
    Not enough subject research and not enough knowledge of what’s on offer.
  4. How do students make ‘the student experience’ work for them?
    Be selfish, open up to change, and be prepared to fail.

Question 4 is the big one here. If you want to skip the Prezi presentation itself and get straight to the good stuff in the archives, I’ve got the top 10 tips on making the most of your experience underneath.

“The Student Experience” on Prezi

How do you make the most of
‘the student experience’? 10 Tips

  1. Don’t compare yourself to others. The Student Experience is YOUR experience.
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2010/03/30/you-or-everyone-else/
  2. Be involved!
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2011/08/11/why-being-involved-is-so-important-to-learning/
  3. Seek out new opportunities and experiences rather than waiting for them to come to you.
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2010/05/28/act-on-ideas-or-fade-away/
  4. Embrace failure.
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2011/05/03/how-to-fail-brilliantly/
  5. Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, keep going.
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2008/02/25/10-tips-to-pick-yourself-up-after-a-fall/
  6. Take your experience seriously, even when you’re having fun.
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2010/02/04/get-serious-about-university/
  7. Enjoy the benefits, but do remember you can have too much of a good thing…
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2008/01/11/10-reasons-why-the-benefits-of-university-can-lead-to-downfall/
  8. Embrace the unknown. Prepare for the unknown. But don’t fear the unknown.
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2011/06/02/fearing-the-unknown/
  9. Look beyond employability. Look beyond the piece of paper you get at the end of those years.
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2011/05/17/looking-beyond-employability/
  10. Focus more on yourself, less on the degree. “Your degree isn’t the source of awesome. You are.”
    https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2011/10/27/grad-employability/

Take a Different Approach to New Year Resolutions

I’m not a fan of New Year Resolutions. I don’t make them.

The start of another year doesn’t automatically make for a great starting point to change your life. I’ve heard countless people say they want to start the new year as they mean to go on. Unfortunately, they usually start the year with a sore head and a desire to ignore the world around them until their hangover has disappeared…

photo by Charlie P Barker

photo by Charlie P Barker

Instead of a New Year Resolution that you’re more likely than not to break, would you be willing to try something new and/or limiting to push you further and help you discover things you may not have found otherwise?

This year, I’m trying out something that’s more a cross between a resolution and an information diet.

While an information diet is usually about reassessing the content you read and view, I want to do something similar that focuses on the music I listen to.

Music is one of my weaknesses. I listen so much of the stuff that I don’t have enough time to listen to it all. My Spotify playlists grow, I continue to go oldskool and buy CDs, and I even buy high-quality FLAC files for some classical music.

If I didn’t listen to so many different genres, the situation may not be so difficult. But my range is too eclectic for my own good and I’m always on the lookout for more, not less. In terms of keeping an open mind, musical diversity is great. In terms of my attention and my time, it’s not so wonderful.

So I’m going to try something new with my listening this year. Like an information diet, I’ll limit and prioritise my intake of music to assess where I can save time while appreciating the music even more.

The big difference is that I’ll listen only to music that is released in 2012. That way, I intend to get more out of my listening rather than face an overwhelming mass of stuff that I can’t properly appreciate.

There will still be plenty of time for older music, because music is everywhere. My friends and family listen to all sorts when I’m around, I hear it on the radio, it’s played at pubs and clubs, people send me recommendations (old and new) that I’ll still happily spend time on.

And the variation of older music needn’t stop there. What about bands releasing ‘best of’ albums in 2012? That counts. And there’s no end to the classical music releases every month. Take Beethoven, for instance. When I searched Spotify on January 4th 2012 for Beethoven CDs released in the first few days of the new year, I wasn’t left wanting. Already available are recordings of most of Beethoven’s symphonies, his late piano works, some earlier piano sonatas, a violin concerto, and a selection of cello works. That’s around 10 hours of Beethoven in the first few days of the new year. I’m unlikely to get bored through lack of choice…

I’ve already earmarked over 30 hours of music on Spotify to check out. Some, perhaps most of it, will get removed from my Spotify playlists. But there will be some keepers. And as the year moves on, I should have a more reasonable stock to work from, yet still not feel any type of overwhelm.

More importantly, I won’t end up spending too much time working through gargantuan amounts of music instead of spending my time more fruitfully elsewhere.

Music is for enjoyment, but I don’t want to end up enjoying it too much and forget about my responsibilities and the rest of the world around me. Adapting the way I listen to music and limiting the content to music released in 2012 may well add to my enjoyment, rather than take enjoyment away.

And if I am desperate to listen to a specific track for sentimental reasons…well, I won’t deny myself. After all, I’m trying to enhance my experience, not punish myself and force unhappiness. Information diets and other limitation exercises are meant to free you and give you greater scope.

Like I say, this isn’t a New Year Resolution. I’m not pledging to ignore all other music outside the 2012 publication period. That would be nuts. However, it is a reasonable boundary to focus on.

I have no set date to finish the exercise. I may find it works amazingly well if I’m disciplined enough about it and I could continue indefinitely. Alternatively, I may learn a few time-saving tricks here and there, but quickly change plans to something more agreeable.

Have you made any resolutions for 2012? Or will you be taking a different approach? Have you found a better time to make particular resolutions?

photo by jaxxon

photo by jaxxon

10 Ways to Give Procrastination a Bypass

Forget fear. Toss out time constraints. When you put things off, it’s rarely about these things.

You’re much more likely to procrastinate when your assignment isn’t interesting, when it’s limited in scope, and when you don’t have clear instructions.

Even group work changes your attitude. You’re more likely to stall for time over collaborative tasks compared with working on your own.

photo by mar.al

photo by mar.al

Procrastination isn’t a simple beast. There are many reasons behind it. Even when you know you’re doing it, the way to recover from procrastination isn’t always obvious.

But don’t panic, there is hope! Check out these ten tips to turn procrastination into productivity. Don’t take any more risks, act now!

  1. Find an angle to suit you – There were times when I was trudging through the most boring texts, so I tried to find ways to make it more exciting. True, that can be difficult at times and I didn’t always manage it. But when I did, I was much happier putting the work in. If you can pull something out the bag, do it and watch everything fall into place more easily.
  2. Beat the bore – When you simply can’t find an interesting angle, move past the yawn by forcing yourself to work for a really short time.
    Promise yourself 10 – 15 minutes. Just get started and see where it takes you. When you begin, it’s easier to keep going. You never know, you may even find something that takes your interest by then!
  3. Don’t look at what is necessary. Look at what is possible! – Working out the bare minimum you can get away with is actually a recipe for procrastination. The moment you artificially restrict yourself, you’re telling yourself to work less. No wonder it feels easier to put things off.
    Instead of closing down your options, stretch yourself further. By framing the task this way, you’ll do yourself a massive favour.
  4. Keep trying to understand the task until you really do – We’ve all had that moment of doom when we don’t have a clue what’s expected of us. The temptation to put it off is strong, because it’s easier to bury your head in the sand than to attempt what you don’t understand.
    Better than either tactic, however, is to ask for clarification. If nobody on your course is sure (or you don’t understand/trust their explanations), explain to your tutor what you’re struggling with. Don’t leave it at “I don’t understand what you want”, but try to explain what you think is expected and ask them to clarify where you’re uncertain. The sooner you know where you’re headed, the sooner you’re likely to move in that direction.
  5. Clear your head – With too much going on around you, it’s not the best environment to work in. Even locked in your own room, a smart phone is a gateway to the world and untold treasures. An Internet connection takes you wherever you want. Music can consume you.
    Sometimes you just need to breathe.
    Short bursts of meditation can help you work on tasks with more focus and clarity of mind. If you set aside an hour to work and find the hour slips away with nothing done, schedule another hour and meditate for 20 minutes first. Work for the remaining 40 minutes. Do this meditation two or three times a week. A smart phone may be a gateway to the world, but meditation may be a gateway to your mind.
  6. Clear your social calendar – Some deadlines may feel reasonable, but they are very rarely unworkable. If time is strapped to the point that you even cannot schedule time to study, you’re doing too much. This isn’t procrastination (unless you deliberately over-scheduled!). This is trying to do too many things.
    You’re at uni for many reasons. One of those reasons is to complete your degree. If you’re not in the right position to do that, you may have to change your position and give up on some of your other commitments.
  7. Be wary of ‘unequal’ task setting in long-term assignments – O’Donoghue and Rabin argue:
    “When the costs of completing different stages [of a project] are more unequal, procrastination is more likely, and it is when later stages are more costly that people start but don’t finish projects.”
    Dissertations have unequal elements, because some areas will require more time than others. However, by boxing those elements as if they are a ‘task’ to complete, you may dread the time when longer ‘tasks’ arrive. Instead, set time out differently.
    Break things down further. Find an equality to the tasks you are dishing out within the overall project. You may need to write Chapter 3, but it’s not helpful putting ‘Write Chapter 3’ on your to-do list. Keep breaking it down until you can visualise the tasks at hand and have a grasp on what you need to do to complete them.
  8. See the difference between team assignments and individual projects – Gafni and Geri studied 160 MBA students and found that individual deadlines were more likely to be less problematic than group deadlines. Even when an individual task was voluntary, students were punctual. With group deadlines, tasks were more likely to be left until much nearer the last minute. If the group task was voluntary, it was often not completed at all.
    Is collective procrastination easier to fall into? Next time you’re faced with a group assignment, take individual responsibility. Make it about you first and make it about the group once you get into gear.
  9. Set your own deadlines – Your assignment may not be due for a couple of months. The procrastinator in you may tell you, “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time to do that. Forget about it. Even when there’s just a fortnight left, you’ll have enough time. Go on, you already have enough on your plate”.
    Simply leaving everything until later is not best practice for effective work. And you can manage your time far better than that.
    Keep a rough schedule diary for the semester/term at the very least. Then give yourself your own deadlines for work, much earlier than that official date.
  10. Ask “Why am I doing this?” – When the work becomes a blur of pointlessness, you’re likely to procrastinate just the same as when you’re bored. Find a reference point to help you hold on to why you’re working on this assignment. It may be a long-term reason, it may be a short-term reason, but whatever you make of it, your aim is to give clear reason behind your study.
    “If the process isn’t getting you the outcome you want, you need to change the process.” – Mike Reeves-McMillan

Want to look a bit further into combating procrastination? Here are a couple more related links:

10 ways to get better Google search results

Google is no stranger to us, right? You may even think Google is a bit too familiar…

Google is probably a big part of your life, one way or another. But when it comes to that single box on the home page, waiting for your keyword input, what do you type in? A recent US study suggested that many Google searches don’t dig deep enough.

“Throughout the interviews, students mentioned Google 115 times — more than twice as many times as any other database. The prevalence of Google in student research is well-documented, but the Illinois researchers found something they did not expect: students were not very good at using Google. They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources.”

Rather than type a word or two in the search box and hope for the best, there’s a whole host of ways you can make Google find you far better results to suit exactly what you’re looking for. Here are 10 simple ideas to get Google working even harder for you:

1. Go beyond the first page of results

When Google returns about a billion results, you’re not even skimming the surface if you stay on Page One. Dig deeper. You may be surprised at what you find. Used with the tips below, it works especially well, because you’ll be getting more targeted results. What used to return a billion hits may now produce a million. Or a thousand. Or a hundred.
But even if you get a hundred results back, that’s still ten pages of Google goodness going on. If you ignore Page Two and beyond, who’s to say you weren’t amazingly close to finding exactly what you wanted?

2. Find similar words with a tilde (~)

With a WHAT!? The tilde looks like this:

~

Yes, a tilde looks a bit like a curly moustache.
But wait, its powers don’t stop at imitating facial hair. A tilde also tells Google to put a thesaurus to your word. For instance, if you search for “study tips”, you get one set of results. But search for “study ~tips” and you get results for study tips, study skills, study techniques, study guides, and so on.

3. “Use quotes”

When you’re looking for an exact set of words together, put them inside quotes so Google searches for the phrase in its entirety rather than as separate words. You can still add other words outside quotes.

4. Use ‘OR’ in your search

With a few interchangeable words in mind, the ‘OR’ operator lets you search for one or more of the words you choose. Sometimes you want to search a core topic, but with several separate sub-topics. By using OR between each of the sub-topics, you don’t need to bother with multiple searches. [Make sure OR is in capital letters, otherwise Google considers it as the word ‘or’.]

5. Use Google Scholar, Books, and News

Google offers other services that give entirely different results, which can be especially useful when you do academic research.
Google Scholar searches for scholarly papers. You can search within a timeframe, limiting the search to just the recent academic papers if you wish.
Google Books looks at content inside, you guessed it, books. When you need a juicy quote or want to read more about a technical detail, this type of search is great. You can also study a book before you even have the physical copy in your hands.
Google News looks at current events, making it great for relevant links about what’s happening right now in your area of interest. You can even set up email alerts every time new articles are published.

6. Search over a particular time

On the left hand side of your search, click on the text that says ‘More search tools‘. New options will appear to let you search the past year, the past month, the past day, even the past hour. You can also search a specific date range if you like.

7. Filter more

Also on the left hand side of your search, you can select various filtering options on your results. One good (though not perfect) option is to search by reading level (basic, intermediate, expert). You can also look at a search timeline, which can be hit and miss, but arranged differently to the standard search results.

8. allintitle:

Want to search for words that are so important they have to be in the page title? Just add ‘allintitle:’ before your search.

9. intitle:

If you want to search for a specific word in the title, but also drill down further with words that’ll only show up elsewhere on the page, add ‘intitle:’ before the word you require in the title of the page. Type the other words as usual. Google will do the rest of the magic.

10. filetype:

What if you only want to search for Word documents or Adobe Acrobat files? No problem. For Word files, add your search terms and include ‘filetype:doc OR filetype:docx’. For Acrobat files, add your search terms and include ‘filetype:pdf’.

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These search tips are quick and easy, especially after you’ve used them a couple of times. But Google search goes further than that. If these examples have got you hooked, check out Google Guide for a complete overview of everything available at your fingertips.

Happy searching!