20150109

Reflective Essay about a Learning Challenge

This blog was an assignment of an online course, which is Learning How to Learn.

Assignment 1: "Reflective Essay about a Learning Challenge"
This assignment will ultimately be about 1 page long--there are five parts:
Briefly describe your current learning career and trajectory (College sophomore aiming for a degree in language?  High school student unsure of you future major but enjoying math and physics? Retired, In your mid-sixties and exploring the idea of learning something completely new?).
Briefly describe the learning aim that is of importance to you (it may be passing a particular class, excelling in a particular degree program, or something outside school, such as mastering culinary expertise.
Describe your biggest mental challenges in achieving your learning aim.
Outline existing research or learning techniques that are relevant to your challenges.
Propose how you will apply knowledge of research findings or learning techniques to help you overcome your challenges.

I am now an international student studying electrical and electronics engineering in The University of Adelaide, in the middle of the third year of a 4-year bachelor program. As I had been granted 2 years transfer credits, I directly started the program with the third year courses. So one may have been aware that I just finish my first semester here.

Obviously, as a student I should pass all the courses in the future study to obtain the degree. By saying “pass”, I mean passing each course with a grade better than “Pass”, which requires a mark not less than 65 out of 100.

At the right beginning of last semester, I had realized that the content of the courses were quite harder than I expected. Admittedly, there is a big gap between my previous education and work experience and the granted transfer credits, which means I am not totally prepared for the third year.

Additionally, because English is not my native language, I could not follow the lectures all the time, be afraid of asking questions, and consume more time on reading and writing than local students. These problems caused the study even more difficult.

Pomodoro - When I realized that I need more time for study, I soon found the Pomodoro technique. It helps people to be more effective to work and manage time.

Project management - Yet pomodoro is not good at managing time in a long term, I studied about project management. It provides some techniques of time management (and it is related to engineering). The most important ones for me are work-break-down (WBD) and Gantt Chart.

Pomodoro - It helps me to be used to the state of being focus, by ignoring the interruptions. Tuning off the notifications on my smartphone is easy to set and it does help. So now I could concentrate on studying easily. Moreover, sometimes I think 25 minutes is too short for a period of concentration and I do not want the 5-minute break to break my working, so I would change the rule from 25+5 to 50+10. I hope this change would not harm the effects of the technique.

WBD - A common cause of procrastination and bad time management is that a big job is hard to be executed. So a big job should be broken down to small tasks, until a task is fit to a 25-minute pomodoro. Then my pomodoros become more clear with aims. Similarly, a huge project should be WBD to jobs, then to small tasks. By doing this, I am not afraid of starting a huge assignment.

Gantt Chart - I reorganized my courses to projects and WBD them, so that I could apply Gantt Chart to manage my progress. I use a software which is simple but perfectly designed for this technique. What I need to do is to input the tasks, set up Gantt Chart network, reflect the progress of tasks, monitor the progress and, most importantly, make sure everything is done in time.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, great post.

Unknown said...

The reflective essay is really a challenging topic. You details talk about the Reflective Essay. I see that you are electrical and electronic students. I told that my blog is also relevant this type post.

Christopher Blevins said...

The actual reflective composition is often a difficult subject. A person particulars discuss the actual Reflective Composition. We observe that you're electric as well as digital college students. We informed which you can also visit my blog http://www.dnpcapstoneproject.com/proffesional-examples-of-dnp-capstone-projects/.

udu said...

Make your LinkedIn account and grab the better challenge in this perfect field. with the link of https://www.bachelorthesis.biz/essay-summarizer/ you can find the learning perspective and get the proper field. Manage your time with this great field of the invention.

Jared Freeman said...

Many students suffer through writing challenges but the way you guided people is very professional and easy to absorb.For professional editing and writing http://www.bibhelper.net/professional-bibliography-editor-and-writer/ is really helpful link.Thanks for posting.

Unknown said...

Yes, you can learn a lot from those reflective eassy as there has a lot of things which related with a writers life and surrounding. website to know about the quality of writing.

Anonymous said...

Owo good 👍

Academic Write Assist said...

Outstanding resource for electrical engineering assignment help. MyAssignmentServices.co.uk offers expert guidance and support to help students excel in their electrical engineering studies. Highly recommend checking them out for top-notch assistance. Their dedication to excellence and commitment to delivering timely results make them a trusted choice for academic success. Explore their services today and take your electrical engineering assignments to the next level.