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Entry 6 - Future strategies

Read back over your entries and your feedback. Think about your learning development over the semester. What surprised you? What was positive and what was negative? What strengths have you developed and what changes might you need to make? Use the subheadings: knowledge, skills, and attitudes/behaviours, to help you structure your discussion.

Knowledge

What surprised me about this semester was the difficulty of juggling 4 classes with multiple assignments due for each, there were 2 times (in week 7 and now) where I find myself stressing over the fact I am falling behind in work and have to catch up. What was positive over this semester were the study habits I was able to implement now fully into studying, where I feel like now, I am a lot more organized than before, and I am certainly not missing deadlines like I was last semester at Swinburne. Not a learning development but these are a sound group of people in these classes, and through group work and just other chatter, I have found many friends and people I can trust to work with and socialize with. A negative was the semester classes being online, no doubt I would have rathered it in person for learning and social reasons.

Skills

Some strengths I have gathered are certainly my writing ability and how to structure a perfect essay. Also add on referencing in this APA system which took a while to get used to, but I am now confident in using it and knowledge about it heading into the exam. Other skills gained would be how to work best in a group environment, the structure of introductions and conclusions, and the most efficient ways to study with pretty limited time due to work commitments.

Attitudes/Behaviours

My attitudes and study behaviours have been the biggest change coming out of this semester for my learning development. Creating and actually applying a weekly plan that I made as well as the assessment planner that was completed at the start of the semester has helped me feel on top of the work. Changes that need to be made are my procrastination outside of classes to get work done through distractions (mainly phone) and focusing more on class, not using online as an excuse but often times I would pay no attention to class with zero consequence and miss out on what we learnt. For certain essays, I have had to rewatch a couple of classes to gain some information I already should’ve known. This will be improved next year on campus.

Referencing:

Margdarshak Careerlinked Education. Good study habits. https://margdarshak.org/good-study-habits

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Entry 5 - 'Managing assessments'

Reflection on my assessments –what have I done well on so far? What should I be doing now to improve my assessments before submitting them? How am I feeling about assessments at this stage in the semester?

What I feel like I have done well is focus on the topic at hand with very little complaints about the content of my essays, but that is the only thing done well so far looking at results. As mentioned in the previous entry, my referencing was a room for improvement and still is for sure as I submit these final assessments, it is the thing on which I am mostly focusing. In recent classes, we have also discussed in detail what a good introduction and conclusion format looks like, which is something I need to implement since both Peter and Sharyn have commented on in previous essays. I have been feeling fine with assessments so far, it has not been overwhelming, but I know nearing the end of the semester, it will get a little bit harder in the final stretch. There is a large social media assignment in Davin’s class that will take a lot of time, 2 e-portfolios, and an exam amongst the essays. I fear that I could struggle with the workload along with the increasing hours of work.

Referencing: NPR Pins. School Stress Takes A Toll On Health, Teens And Parents Say. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/676384437763515059/

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Entry 4 - 'Understanding and utilising feedback'

Feedback and reflection are important aspects of learning and development. How have you used and responded to feedback you have received from your teachers and classmates? Comment on actual examples.

The first score back in this semester has been the group presentation in this class (A2) in which we were given an F for referencing and it no doubt was the main reason for the group being disappointed in the overall score. Also in Rolfe’s class, his A2 Research essay assignment also showed that I had an issue with referencing. He gave it a good (pictured below), but he suggested in his notes below that some information quotes in this essay was not properly attributed to its source and that I also need to adhere to correct quotation style.

In my next essay which was in Davin's class, I implemented in-text citation and proper referencing for quotes, so I showed improvement at least despite it not being perfect. In the second picture below is Noah’s review of my E-Portfolio in week nine which shows there is plenty of room for improvement with it. Despite there not being any criticism in the notes, during the review he mentioned the fact I have a lack of artifacts for each of the three posts as well as my Tumblr about me page being completed, which will be completed as I submit this.

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Entry 3 - 'Self-management: motivation and resilience'

Developing self-management strategies: how have you balanced your study and any external interests?

Currently at work we are fairly short staffed which is the only external activity that is taking time away from university right now. It has been hard balancing it all, but I have set a weekly study plan which gives me 2 or 3 hours (depending on what I set) that helps me keep up with the many assignments that are due. Most of the times set are at night where I feel like I study best, this is another strategy that I am trying to implement into my learning to stay motivated and use the time most effectively. In this week’s class, we completed and submitted a mid-semester study plan, where I listed 4 points of improvement I have to focus on in order of importance (pictured below).

How have you remained motivated and dealt with any issues that have appeared? (Comment on the strategies you use, new strategies you learned and are developing and suggest additional skills you might need in your future study or career).

I have remained motivated through my poor results last semester in Swinburne, where both my Mum and I were disappointed with the results and accepted that it could not happen again. The strategies I have learnt and implemented so far this year are using the assessment planner made at the start of the year, setting a weekly plan around work, and having a new study environment away from distractions so I focus more. These strategies are slowly building a better study habit that I definitely did not have before and will use in future years of education and work.

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Entry 2 - 'Teamwork'

Use the teamwork survey to write a summary of your experience of developing and delivering the group presentation.

A glaring positive in this group presentation was the way we all communicated with each other. We were in a group chat together and every day there was chatter about who was to do what, updates on how we were going or questions to help each other. I felt like I was falling behind a little bit and these guys helped motivated me and each other to ensure all the work was done as early as possible. Planning what each other was going to do was done within the first day and we agreed to get it done so we could start as soon as possible, we split the group in half and the people with the same topic collaborated with each other to decide who would write about what. We had a major setback that was not fixed by final submission, which was the layout of the slides, many of them had white highlighted over the top of certain sentences, it was very messy. We agreed in future that Canva would be used for any presentation. The teamwork survey above shows you how I marked our team relationship and contribution for A2.

In this academic article, its quoted "Undoubtedly collaborative group work provides an essential facilitating environment but does not automatically lead to development of these skills, with problems including social loafing and free riding. (Davies 2009, as cited in Sridharan, B. & Boud, D., 2019). In short term group activities like our presentation, it is stated that the transferability of skills is limited, and it relies on other team members motivating and influencing you to present them. (Sridharan, B. & Boud, D., 2019) It shows that motivation is a key element in progressing group or collaborative work, especially when the group don’t know each other or are left with a short amount of time as we were.

Peer feedback was very minimal, but what we received was speaking a little too fast, almost rushing through the presentation. For future assignments where talking is necessary i.e., the debate, I will make an effort to slow down a little bit, so it is clearer to understand.

Referencing:

Sridharan, B. & Boud, D. 2019. The effects of peer judgements on teamwork and self-assessment ability in collaborative group work. Middlesex University Research Repository.

doi:10.1080/02602938.2018.1545898

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Entry 1 - 'Starting out'

Reflection on my first week - what I found out about and how I intend to approach this year

It was a very easy week transitioning into this course, I met more new people and hopefully a lot of future friends as I get to know these guys more. I found out mostly about what this course and each particular subject and assessment will be about through the teachers spending the lessons going through the subject guide. My first impressions are that I feel like I will really enjoy this subject and semester, as it is solely around sport. In the very first class with Peter Rolfe, we introduced ourselves by answering basic questions about sport and our personal lives when I noticed that Ben and Noah, who I knew through Cricket and footy were also in this class. I intend to approach the year much differently than my first semester at Swinburne, where I was extremely lazy and unorganized, even missing a couple of big deadlines which is unacceptable. This class in particular seems to be talking about how you can apply yourself to give yourself the best chance to succeed, and I have completed an assessment planner using Sharyn’s template (pictured below) to help me understand what needs to be achieved each week per subject for the assignments.