vetpad » overload

Making the most of the summer

Kim — Mon, 21 May 2007 09:26:17 +0000

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.

Homozappiens

Kim — Fri, 04 May 2007 08:53:40 +0000

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?

“SLICE of LIFE” 2006

Kim — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 15:43:34 +0000

Another excellent Slice of Life conference – this year in Lausanne, Switzerland. I was first on after the keynote with “Building the perfect Medic or Veterinarian: From Directed Learning to Independent Learners?” (although until 30 seconds before it looked like I was giving the keynote as Kazem had not arrived – train problems in Switzerland?!) – programme is here [requires IE] and the sessions were all recorded so the audio/video should appear at some point. A pdf version of my slides is also available.

Essentially my paper was about how medical and veterinary students are approaching their studying and how the perception of the curriculum affects their approach. I gave some initial tentative analysis of data collected from the “Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students: ASSIST” questionnaire (developed by Noel Entwistle’s group at Edinburgh University) which seemed to be suggesting that students were more comfortable with surface approaches to learning.

Gerald Grow’s paper “Teaching learners to be self-directed” 1991 on matching the learner’s stageof self-direction with the teaching style also seemed relevant. He states several assumptions that he is aware of holding including:

The goal of the educational process is to produce self-directed, lifelong learners. Many current educational practices in public schools and universities, however, do more to perpetuate dependency that to create self-direction.

Just as dependency and helplessness can be learned, self-direction can be learned – and it can be taught.

Also worth a look at the “Concepts and Conceptual Frameworks Underpinning the ETL Project“ document [185kb] by Noel Entwistle as it talks about the influences on student learning.

Concerns

Kim — Tue, 02 May 2006 16:00:40 +0000

Over the past few years I have been concerned that vet and medical students are responding to the pressures of ‘course overload’ by becoming very strategic in their learning. The intensity of the courses and perceived competition amongst students can encourage a surface approach to their learning and discourage reflection, collaboration and creativity – thereby discouraging deep learning and professional development.

This edublog is a journey exploring these issues – determining if they are a reality, looking into how to develop educational practices and models that support the development of the independent lifelong learner.