Archive forMay, 2007

Making the most of the summer

May 21, 2007 @ 10:26 am · Filed under overload

Another TP blog entry - this time by Mary McKinney, Ph.D. of Successful Academic Coaching

So, based on extensive reading, and years of trying to become more productive, here are a few of my suggestions for making the best use of your summer. Ask yourself the following questions:

1) What is your number one priority for the summer?

The first key to using your time wisely is setting goals. Therefore, stop scattering your efforts without a clear focus and make sure that you accomplish the most important tasks to further your career.

If you are having trouble choosing your number one priority, there are two helpful questions to ask:

What will make you feel the best when you complete it?

What are you most anxious about?

Follow your instincts as well as your intellect. Focusing on your wishes and anxieties to determine your goals will keep you from spending hours preparing the syllabus for your fall class when you should be writing an article for publication.

2) How are you going to carve out time?

To accomplish your top priority, you need to free up hours that may not be available during the rest of the year. Except for those of us who are teaching summer classes, and trying to cram six months worth of material into six weeks, most of us have more flexibility in our schedules during the summer.

To make sure that you avoid over-commitments and unfocused business, ask these questions:

What are you going to let go to make more time for your number one project?

Are there less pressing projects and tasks that you can put on hold to gain hours, and mental space, for your top priority?

3) How can you increase your motivation?

When your summer deadline is only in your own mind, it is easy to shift your schedule and end up with a personal “incomplete” in August. Therefore, I tell the faculty and students I work with to “go public” to increase their sense of accountability. When you announce your goals and timeline to other people, you increase the likelihood that you’ll follow through (if only to avoid embarrassment.)

Who are you going to promise that you’ll meet your goals?

Tell your partner, your friends, your colleagues, your advisor that you’ll have a draft of your project complete before the fall semester begins.

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A Baker’s Dozen ideas to foster engagement

May 14, 2007 @ 11:03 am · Filed under curriculum, engagement

Posting on the Tomorrow’s Profeesor Blog by James L. Cooper, Graduate Education Department at California State University to support faculty and administrators in fostering student engagment including findings from “What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited (Austin, 1997)”:

Curriculum played little role in student success. It was student involvement, fostered by student/student interaction and student/faculty interaction that predicted student success. These findings should guide course and program planning.

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Homozappiens

May 4, 2007 @ 9:53 am · Filed under approach, engagement, overload

I’ve been involved in a JISC webinar all this week (an online seminar for an hour each lunchtime – see Peter’s Informaticopia blog for session details) and have been surprised how difficult it has been to concentrate. If you put aside the inevitable interruptions from people thinking you are just listening to music, and the phone calls, there’s still something about it which distracts me.

I think the main problem is having the text chat facility – I’m not so good at listening, thinking and typing at the same time (or listening, thinking and reading) – one of them gets lost, so I tend to miss what the speaker is saying while I’m ‘asking a question’ or ‘listening’ to another audience member comment.

This leads me on to conlclude that I’m clearly not a digital native/net generation/homozappien and, perhaps contrary to what David White mentioned in Thursday’s session, this multi-multi-tasking ability in “today’s youf” is a significant ability. It also made me wonder if a study has been done on accidents caused by use of mobile phones while driving, separated into age-groups – perhaps we will see an increased ability of young drivers to multi-task at the wheel without increasing their likelihood of having a crash. Or perhaps homozappiens are just good at spreading concentration evenly over many tasks, so in the end none get what they deserve?

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