Open-mindedness, working well on my own, accepting responsibility for meeting deadlines, being an adept reader, and possessing good writing skills are several personal strengths I bring to the online learning process. Procrastination and time-management stand out for me as areas I need to improve. Through this course I discovered new resources and strategies which will support my growth in these areas… term-at-a-glance planning and daily schedules which reflect my priorities will help me be more successful in future terms. I also appreciated the information we discovered about the library and making contact with advisors and instructors.

As a visual learner, I am going to attempt to hone my reading and annotation skills. I think becoming a more efficient reader will make my study time more beneficial. I will also incorporate some of the note taking systems we explored, particularly the Cornell Note Taking system and annotating texts.

I plan to take advantage of the Success Counselors available to Ecampus Students to continue and develop new strategies and fine-tune existing strategies for time management. I am particularly interested in this resource as I continue to juggle numerous personal and academic responsibilities. I am also excited to explore the possibility of working with Ecampus to develop a resource that would be available to all Ecampus students, facilitating their involvement with different campus activities, departments, or clubs. This project has sparked a bit of excitement for me that I haven’t felt in a term or two and it’s a great fit with my professional goals.

At this point, I’m trying to determine if I will enroll in Summer Term or Fall Term as my next term. I have about ten courses left to finish my degree, which should be easily attainable were I to take a course or two during Summer Term. However, I’ve been dedicating much time to a family issue this term, and I’m uncertain how life will look as Summer Term begins. My highest goal for my next enrolled term is to successfully complete each course I begin. I know I need to have a plan in place to reach that goal. Long-term goals include completing my degree, finding a job I love, and flourishing as a mother, employee, friend, and partner. I appreciated the SMART Goal Setting tools we explored this summer. Developing a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely goal is a fantastic skill to add to one’s toolbox. My personal challenge is trying to decide which goal to focus on now and which to delay. I believe the Success Counselors may be able to offer me some insight that will make this process feel more manageable. For now, I know that the more specific, realistic, and attainable a goal is, the more likely I will be to reach it.

Thank you, Brandi, for a fun term of great information and support.

First off I want to say that this term has definitely been a learning experiencing for me. If you would have asked me a year ago if I would be a full time online student I would have said no. This has been my first term at OSU and I have struggled but I also have had a lot of fun. The strengths that I naturally poss for an online learner is my dedication and commitment to learning. I know learning and getting a college degree  is important in my generation and I know in order to get a degree I will have to be very committed. Something else that has been a strength this term for me and in my life in general is I am good at asking for help or speaking up when I need to. I am learning from the other side of the country and I found that communicating with my fellow classmates and my professors is very important as a online learner. I have been put out of my comfort zone a little bit this term with communicating. Why I have been put out of my comfort level is because I have had to talk to so many people that  have actually never met before. At first this was hard for me, but after a week or two I found that it was’t so bad at all. What I ant to improve on as a online learner and as a student in general is that I don’t want to procrastinate and i want all my assignments to be on time. This class has helped me with procrastination and I know now how I can help myself or people or groups I can contact that can help me too. I also want to improve my time management in my school work. I work two jobs and have a bunch of things constantly going on in the week and I want to make sure I set the right amount of time aside to get my work done. The tools that I will use to help me is looking back at the work I have done in this class and my other class. I think this can be a great reminder of things for me. Some tips that I will use as a online learner is reaching out when I need to, knowing how to look up academic journals and research papers, and knowing where to find things on the Oregon state website. A resource that I found that will help me with communication is the Academic Success Group. I have not yet got involved but I plan on it throughout the summer. I am really glad I found this resource that can help me with some issues I may have or just having someone to talk to if I get overwhelmed with school stuff. I can not even begin to describe my goal for next term in the fall. I am glad I know how to use Canvas now so I think that should help me a lot and save me time and stress. I also know what it is like using a bunch of different discussion boards and I am very confident in my postings and communicating with my peers. A step I really took this term to help me in the next term is looking towards the future. I looked in advance at the term next year and i found there was a few things that were stopping me form being the best learner I can be. I think this goes back to the procrastination and not using my time the best that I can. I really have learned from the mistakes I have made this term and I am looking forward to the future to show I can improve the things i struggle with. I am really glad I took this class and it really has taught me a lot. I hope everyone had a great term not only in this class, but in all your other ones as well.

The struggles of college students are real and its an entirely different struggle for online students. I have learned a lot about myself and how to be a more successful student in an online learning education.

Strengths I currently possess are good organization and time-management. Some things that I need to work on to better my future education is not procrastinating and my self-motivation. Throughout the term I had multiple times where I was not motivated to study and it would have been easy for me to just forget my studies. In class I learned to use the time budgeting calendar during busy days so that I can keep on track. I noticed that I had a hard time keeping on the schedule but if I physically see it reminding me when I planned to study then I would most likely do it, or at least a little. I need to work on planning it out better and recognizing how much time I will need for my studies and work it around my other commitments.

After more research on my learning style (kinesthetic/tactile) I realized how important it is for me to take notes. I used Microsoft OneNote almost every day and it has been very useful. I was not only able to learn how to study better by taking more time to understand topics but I also have notes and proof that I read and understood the notes. Taking notes and making physical connections with topics I am studying will greatly benefit me when I am trying to understand materials because it is part of what works well with my learning style. Even if I am typing out notes and not physically writing them I usually need extra time to type out the notes and it is repeated in lectures or readings instead of just hearing/reading it once and it not being comprehended (which can happen since I am not an auditory learner).

Some of the OSU resources I plan on using more is the student success counselor / success blog, career services, the library online, and finding more student organizations to be involved in. I am more focused on my learning more than student organizations because I have already been involved with OSU while I was an on-campus student and now I am concentrating on completing my undergraduate degree. The student success counselor/success blog will help me to get tips and learn more about ways that I can be more efficient in my studies and have an easier time succeeding.

For the upcoming term I plan to meet all requirements for pro-school by completing 16 credits with a C or higher. My longer term goal is to complete my undergraduate degree requirements by Spring of 2017 by taking at least 15 credits a term passing with a C or higher for each course. These are my educational goals that I need to be successful. I know that I want to graduate by spring of 2017 because that would be the end of my 5th year as an OSU student. I have 16 credits left until I can apply to pro-school and then about 2 years’ worth of pro-school courses until I have completed all of the required upper division courses.

After taking this course I feel that I am better prepared for what is to come as I complete my OSU education online. I was skeptical at first if I could handle it, but I have had such a difficult term dealing with a lot in my personal life that I know that I can handle the changes that will come when the fall term starts up until I graduate in a couple years. I now look forward to work on improving my studying skills and matching them with my learning style. The struggles are real and I am one step closer to being highly successful as an online student because of this course.

This semester has been interesting. I realized early on that even the best-laid plans could get thrown to the curb. That just having a game plan for my academic success wasn’t enough. I needed to stay the course even in rocky waters. Unfortunately, I did not in this instance, but I feel I have learned from this semester and will be better suited for online learning and continuing my success going forward.

The strength that I bring to online learning is now and always has been my ability to learn independently. I am the guy who works tirelessly until I figure something out. However, and as I learned, there is a cost to this approach. Time is not of infinite supply, and sometimes you need to just throw in the towel and ask for help if a certain concept is taking longer to grasp. Numerous times this semester I spent too much time on a concept and didn’t ask for help. This was not the best approach to maximizing my already limited time. In the future, when I find that concept is taking too long to grasp, I plan on utilizing the tutoring services provided by school of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (“EECS”) to assist. The EECS program has several different options for tutoring in real-time. This will be invaluable to my studies going forward, and to assist in ensuring my time is being well spent.

My weakness in online learning, and, arguably, life in general, is my time management skills. I can easily underestimate how long something will take me, and it invariably can put me behind schedule. However, my biggest issue this semester was not starting to address work earlier in the week. I frequently left myself to address homework at the very last minute. Not only did this increase my stress level, but also it lowered the quality of my work product. This point was further hit home when I became ill mid-semester and fell behind in my work. This class taught me that I needed to be more diligent about treating online learning with more structure. Just because I can study whenever I want, does not mean I can just wait until this last minute to get everything done. I learned I needed to approach online classes the same way I would approach a more traditional class: blocking out time during the week for lectures and studying. It really is that simple. Putting myself in a position to succeed is something I did not do this semester. Thankfully, I am a fairly fast learner and will not make the same mistake twice.

My goal for this semester is a simple one: never wait until the weekend to start working on assignments for a class. My goal will be to sit down every Sunday night and get a head start on the week. I feel this will get me going in the right direction and allow me to put my best work product forward. This will sever me well going forward to allow me to better succeed in an online learning environment, and to decrease my stress level that comes with school. It all comes down to getting started early. Luckily, I usually don’t make the same mistakes twice. Let’s see if I really learned anything from this semester and can start putting my best foot forward.

Over the course of this term, I have learned so many different things. In this class alone, I learned about my learning styles, time management, and goal setting. All of these skills will assist me with continuing to be successful in my  online education. I am naturally an independent learner that prefers to figure out and solve problems on my own. This natural skill improves my ability to succeed in an online environment. That doesn’t mean online learning is something that just comes easy to me, though. Throughout this term, I’ve faced numerous difficulties. I’ve dealt with poor time management and unsatisfactory organization skills. Luckily, this class has provided lessons that assist me with overcoming these problems. I have learned many time management tips that help me to stay on top of my work better. I’ve also been using notebooks and planners to help keep me organized, too. If I didn’t have this class to help me, I would have probably had a stress-induced freak out. In this class, I also learned that I learn through a multitude of styles. Now that I am aware of that, I make sure to supplement my studying with tricks that will help me better retain the information. Instead of just reading my textbook, I will also play the audio that corresponds to it, or watch a supplemental video. Knowing what works specifically for me will greatly benefit my learning experience over the course of my educational career. Throughout this class, I’ve also learned a lot about the resources OSU has to offer. One of the ones that stood out to me was their study abroad programs. I am really interested in traveling and studying all around the world. At some point during my time with OSU, I hope to be able to complete a study abroad program. I am deliberating all of the possibilities of the places I can go and it is very exciting. The long-term goal that I have set goes along with my desire to travel and experience the world. By the end of my sophomore year, I hope to be in a different place doing exciting things. This class has taught me that you can only accomplish goals when they align with what you value most. This made me reevaluate the goals I had previously and come up with new, improved goals. For next term, I plan to finish researching the study abroad programs I am interested in and start contacting the Office of Global Opportunities. I am very excited about my goals and that is what will give me the motivation to complete them. Overall, I am very happy with everything I have learned from this class. I feel much more confident in my ability to succeed in an online learning environment than I did before.

Like a pelican, there was much to take in: all the water and fish my beak could handle…and more.  Whew!  And, like the pelican, some of that weight had to go periodically….just spew out the unneeded water and keep the fish.

That’s what this class has done for me.  At first, I took in everything and that was too much.  But as the class has gone along, I have learned to be discerning and not take in as much water with the fish (the good information).  Because I learned what my natural learning style is all about, I can do that.  Yes, I take notes as I read and my kinesthetic need for examples is fulfilled with the natural design of on-line learning.  Instructors, of necessity since they are not looking you in the eye in the classroom, have to give examples so you can figure out what they are talking about.  That works so very well with me.  And it will continue to do so: that’s one of the fish to keep and to recognize that it is not a prickly rockfish.  My prickly rockfish is my procrastination tendencies.  It is prickly but I am working around the prickly with sticking to my goals and writing down my to-do lists and utilizing all the resources provided here at OSU to handle procrastination.  There are the weekly study guides and the ‘zero to success in 77 days’ and the four square of importance picture.  Wow!  The memories of everything we covered!  And now trying to regurgitate it so the good comes to mind more easily.  Whew!

The tools, downloads, in the Academic Success Center are keepers and I will continue to use them to track my progress and keep myself on track.  I just have to keep at it on a daily basis until it becomes so ingrained that it is a part of me.  It’s getting easier.

I was so glad to get to know our library resources so much better and that is definitely a keeper…..  hmmmm, I have to research and find what kinds of fish pelicans like better than others.  Although my learning styles (I have two main ones) do not include the visual so much, I am thinking that pictures of pelican-favored fish would be a good reminder of where to place my focus each and every day….much like a to-do list.  That sounds good.  So, with my fisheries and wildlife degree in mind, I would say that utilizing the library research tools is high on my list of OSU resources to name one of those fishes.

Goals: Goals: Goals: what do pelicans think of goals?  At dawn, do pelicans think about where they will be come sundown?  Do they calculate how many fish they must or will get during the day?  At the end of the day, do they sit back and pull one foot up and think to themselves how good or bad the day was? The answer is “no.”  But that is what I have been doing and will continue to do each and every day.  It is how I figure the success of my day and approach the next.  I’m an optimist and do not count a poor choice as making a bad day.  I just move on: I suppose a pelican does that too.  If the pelican missed the fish on that swoop into the water, he or she does not go mope on the beach and bemoan its bad day.  That’s me…..just pick back up and go again.  That’s my goal: to keep going back in and succeed the next time.  That’s where I am at with it all: daily goals to reach the end of the term and go on to the next term.

It’s not easy overcoming the bad habit of never having set major goals for my life.  I never saw it exemplified nor did I understand the need.  But now I understand and I have seen the successful examples of others like Randy Pausch and my classmates (and myself) who are completing this class.  One major goal accomplished!

Anyway, I have gone on a long time.  So I thank you for continuing to read what I’m saying.  So as a final note, I have set a long-term goal of losing weight with smaller goals set to check my progress at 2, 3 and 6 months and daily goals of exercise (with a day off on Sunday).  These are the things I have learned to do in order to accomplish my goals: especially my big fish named post-bac degree in Fisheries and Wildlife at OSU.

Starting out this term, I was not very comfortable with participating in online discussions or forums. I can write well enough, it’s just the process of opening up and sharing thoughts and ideas that was problematic for me. Well, with feedback from Brandi and many of you, I think I have been able to find a way to do this – I take on another version of me, someone I imagine who’d be open to sharing, and let them participate. I still have to work at it and I find it difficult to be spontaneous – everything must be proofed and reread! But this is something that will be more and more important the further I get into my degree. The ability to, not just communicate, but to openly communicate in a casual, open manner will be very important as my classes begin to involve more group-work (which, I understand from the computer science TAs, is going to happen!). So, participating in this class’s back-and-forth in discussions and blogs has been very instructive and helped me realize how to still set boundaries without being closed off.

I consider myself fairly organized, but have had some serious challenges (especially in May)! I learned that all the planning and scheduling doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t get online. Being able to complete assignments and access online resources has been a huge challenge for me – not just in this class, but also in my computer science class, in which we have to write and compile programs on an OSU server. (That’s very hard to do with weak/no internet!). I’ve worked to resolve this a number of ways, but finally had to break down and pay for a premium internet package (over $2k a year for internet). I’ve arrived at the conclusion that this is just another expense of going back to school…an unexpected but, nevertheless, necessary one!

All that to say, I haven’t been as focused on my learning style lately as I would have liked. It’s been more about finding internet access, getting things downloaded to work at home, and then finding time to steal back out and upload assignments. Not so easy in Cambodia!

A new strategy I learned in class and started implementing is to start the week with a planning session. I use the first part of the hour to review and update “to do” lists and calendars. Of course, there are constant changes happening throughout the week to these two items, but my Monday morning session helps me get in my mind what schoolwork is coming up and to give it the necessary time it needs during the week. I find this very useful!

I have also adopted the use of the “priority to do list” that we heard about in Randy Pausch Lecture back in week 4. It is so obvious and so simple. Sometimes it takes a little time to determine what is important and what is not, but I find thinking through that a useful exercise in understanding what my tasks are. I have found this to be super useful and will continue to use this for everything in my life.

I am quite excited at the prospet of participating in some undergrad research, especially in the end-user software engineering field. I plan to use the next term or two to find some research money and become acquainted with my the professor I want to be my mentor. I can see applying for that in the next several terms, so I have that to work toward.

Many of the goals I have developed over the past several months are still valid – I want to finish this degree in at least 1.5 years, I want to find a mentor, I want to participate in research, I want to maintain a 4.0. However, this term has proven to be a lot more difficult than I anticipated. This is primarily due to the internet situation. But even still, I have found that not being able to check in on the class (or look at assignments) has really taken a toll on me – it’s really exausting being so anxious all the time. So I am going to try and roll with it a little more and be a little more relaxed – this is something my wife and kids have mentioned and I think they’re right. I’m still going to be doing my best, but will try to also recognize what I can and cannot control.

Anyway, I wish you all good luck and maybe we’ll meet (virtually) again.

I have had the opportunity in the past to get involved with chat rooms and using sites like Myspace to explore what I can do with the online world. Neither of those really has anything to do with school, but it did help me learn how to navigate sites and how to connect with people online rather than face to face. When I attended UNL years ago, we had to use Blackboard for some assignments and lectures which were not much different than what I have used this term through Canvas for OSU. So I feel like I had a lot of things going for me when it came time to begin my online education. I felt confident in the beginning with only a little fear, but now most of that fear is gone and I’m ready for next term! One of the major things from this class that helped was to learn what kind of learner I really am and ways to use those tools to help me understand information for a class from only a lecture that the instructor has posted. Being able to read the lecture out loud on my own as well as listening to the instructors recorded audio for slide shows helps me retain more information along with note taking. A traditional classroom would hinder you reciting the information aloud to yourself. I plan to use the online library tools a lot more and keeping up with my professional contact I made through my FW255 class. Having someone there that has been through this kind of work already is a great help. I created goals to get my work done early each week for school. I found that between home life and work that it was difficult to do so. I plan to keep up with my calendar for each term so that I have a visual aid in front of me all term long so that I am prepared for what work I have to look forward to before the deadlines fall upon me. I am very excited to move forward!

As I continue through my second degree, this time in Computer Science, I keep in mind the different opportunities that this degree is suppose to bring. One in particular was to one day go to law school and become a patent lawyer, patent lawyers need to have some science/engineering degree that’s why I am majoring in Computer Science. Apart from this I also just want to explore what jobs I can do as a computer scientist. However, I am not thinking more and more about the “online” experience. And while it does feel overwhelming right now I think that the experience can provide a wealth of knowledge and experience that can get me those computer science jobs. However, can I sustain this high level of work is a different question.

In order for me to continue to work as an employee and as a student I will have really sharpen my skill set as someone who is a good planner. While I did an o.k. job of planning this past semester I can definitely do better. And not just planning but also executing and re-evaluating what I planned. I am realizing now that while I thought this was a strength in the online/work context I can improve. I am going to keep a planner and I will continue to use the goal setting strategies that I picked up in this class and apply them to each of my classes, in what goals do I want to have for my assignments for each class.

Another point of reflection is in my communication skills. I always saw myself as a good communicator however I am seeing that I can be a better one. One particular way of communicating through email or canvas mail I need to get better at. Specifically, I need to do a better job of aligning my communicating with my planning. What has been a reoccurring theme in my computer science class is that I start working on an assignment late into the week so late that I feel bad reaching out to my TA or my professor. Luckily they have been really understanding and have communicated back in a timely manner. However, I should start working on my assignments earlier in the week so that I can communicate with them earlier instead of me struggling and worrying later in the week.

As well, I want to start getting tutoring help that OSU provides for these computer science classes. While I never made the time for myself to do this I need to for next semester. This tutoring can possibly go a long way to prevent headaches and missed assignments but like all other things it needs to be planned and accounted for. Coupled from the help I get from my TA I should end up with a better grade and less stress.

My long term goal again is complete my degree but in all that I want to also start exploring now. I plan to expand my knowledge through a project outside of class. I have started on that project and I hope with the summer I have time to focus on that. I plan to also use some of the help I get for my classes to guide this project as well.  As well, I hope to use my planner to integrate working on this project on a weekly basis. As far as next steps goes I will start pseudo coding, which essentially is blue printing, the code for this project next week and from their start writing the code and finally fixing any bugs/testing. Each of those steps are going to require that accurately and consistently plan what I am doing and that I have others help me along the way.