INTRODUCTION
With the help of Axia College, I have gained an exceptional amount of knowledge and several new tools that will help me throughout my academic career. This is my survival guide, designed to help me achieve success while attending Axia College and covers six main areas of information covered in this class. This student survival guide will help me get the most out of my distance learning education.
USING AXIA’S EDUCATION RESOURCES
Axia College provides wonderful resources to help students keep up with the continuous advancements in distance learning. The University Library is one of the most important resources that are available to the students. This library has numerous search engines, databases, and multiple help features that make researching easy.
In The Center for Writing Excellence, there are two vital tools, Plagiarism Checker and Writepoint, which are very valuable and help students in every aspect of their college career. In addition to these exceptional tools are the online books that accompany each class. These items can be easily downloaded to any home computer, laptop, or even a Blackberry. This allows students to access their course documents virtually anywhere, giving them the ability to study whenever and wherever they feel the most productive.
Even though Axia College is an online learning environment, and all items are readily available, sometimes students like to have a printed copy of certain information like the course calendars and the course syllabus.
UPHOLDING ACADEMIC HONESTY
Upholding academic honesty is not difficult at all to understand and do here at Axia College. Simply put, do not submit work written by anyone else as your own, including web-based information. If you need to use someone else’s words within the text of any of your assignments you must properly cite the work that you are directly quoting or even paraphrasing. The Center for Writing Excellence offers the ability to check writing assignments for plagiarism, helping you to avoid turning in assignments that may contain unintentional plagiarism. If you do not properly cite the information, you run the risk of having part or all of that assignment thrown out and receiving a zero. Consequences for plagiarism are severe and can lead to expulsion from Axia College. Therefore, it is extremely important that you cite all your references and any text or thoughts that are not your own.
SETTING AND ACHIEVING GOALS
Setting and achieving goals will be important throughout any students’ online learning experience. You should try to make sure your goals are attainable and realistic. It is easy to set them according to hopes, but if they are not met, they can cause feelings of depression or loss of your self-esteem or both. It is important to set short-term goals that contribute to the success of your long-term goals. Long-term goals are goals that will take some time and perseverance to accomplish. This may include anything from graduating, to obtaining the position you want at work, or buying a home and starting a family. If you are able to, write down each long-term goal, and then break them into smaller short-term goals so that you can easily track your progress and to help keep you focused on the goal. This will also help you to maintain your path to your ultimate long-term goal, even if a problem should arise.
It is also helpful to have some one around who supports and encourages you to keep going, and even occasionally reminds you of your goal to help keep you focused. I personally try to keep in mind the reason I set my goals in the first place. Whatever the reason, you can use as a motivator to help you achieve your goals. One of my long-term educational goals is get my associates in Psychology and Axia College helps break that down into classes and weeks which can be viewed as short-term goals.
MANAGING TIME WISELY
It is important to learn the skill of time management so that there can be an equal balance of school, work, and personal life. Managing time wisely is important to all students, but especially to a student in an online learning environment. There is no one to remind you of an assignment or to make sure you complete your schoolwork. In addition to attending online classes, some students are also full-time parents and full-time workers. This means that it is imperative for us to plan time in our day to ensure our schoolwork will be completed on time. As an online student, I find that managing my time can be difficult at times. I try to map out my days or weeks in order to cover all of the posts, reading materials, participation and attendance posting requirements. However, this is something that I struggled with in my first two classes, missing a few posts for discussion questions and turning in a few assignments late. Now I know that I will have a better understanding of how to manage my time more wisely than before. One of the biggest lessons I had to learn is to enjoy a reward after completing a task instead of rewarding myself before a task is completed.
FOSTERING READING COMPREHENSION AND RETENTION
When it comes to reading, you can look for key words, take notes, or scan depending on how you interpret the information. The point of reading is to understand what you have read when you are finished. One way of doing this is the SQ3R method, which stands for survey, question, read, recite, review. This can help save time for some people by not having to reread information they do not understand, and help them to have better understanding of the information they have just read. Personally, I do not use the exact technique while reading but a variation on it. I do not survey the text because I find that I would rather read some parts of the text and not others, so I read, sometimes recite and then ask myself questions about what I just read to have an understanding of it. I also only really become emotionally involved with the reading if it pertains to something in my life that I can relate to personally.
APPLYING PERSONALITY AND LEARNING STYLES
Knowing your personality type and learning style is necessary in any learning environment. Because my main intelligence is Visual Spatial, I can more easily remember information if I relate it to a picture instead of words and color helps me remember information as well. I try to keep this in mind when I approach new information, projects, and homework.
In my personality assessments, I fit in to the Giver category, which means I am a people-focused individual and I deal with things according to how I feel about them. When relating to others who have different personality or learning styles being able to stay open minded in very important. You never know when you can learn something new or have someone teach you a different perspective on how to learn something. Taking part in Discussion Questions and communicating helps each student determine which learning style is best for them. Knowing my personality and learning styles will allow me to take everything I need to learn and mold it into ways that will be most effective for me. This was and will be helpful in my exchanges with fellow students and in the workplace.
CONCLUSION
Looking back on all the information that I have learned over this first block of classes I can see a difference in my study habits, time management and goal setting. In addition, in taking the first two classes here at Axia College, I have a better understanding of the importance of taking input from other classmates and instructors. In developing this guide, I have outlined things that will help me throughout my academic career, from being able to manage my time effectively, taking time to developing goals, upholding academic honesty, and fostering reading comprehension and retention these new and improved skills will help me in getting through school and life successfully.