FINAL BLOG ENTRY FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES
Follow-up to 3rd FOLLOW UP BLOG FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES from Yentl's WSPA blog
In previous blogs, I mentioned different strategies to improve my learning and working. For the current entry, I will be focusing on how these strategies have been useful to my study at Warwick. The strategies are to set realistic goals, set deadlines to start a task and to reward myself when goal is achieved.
I am currently collecting data for my dissertation, and recruiting participants is one of the tasks. As undergraduates are not allowed to pay for participants, recruiting participants is very difficult. I need to recruit a certain number of participants in two weeks, to cope with this; I planned a deadline to start recruiting participants. At the moment, I am 2 participants away from the goal and it has only been a week. I feel very satisfied with it and with the fact that I did not wait till the last minute to recruit participants like I used to do.
Apart from my dissertation, my workload is very high, and as mentioned before, I found it very difficult to focus on one task. One of the reasons why I could not focus was because I always watch TV series online and check facebook constantly, therefore, I have limited myself to one episode per day and that if I do not achieve the goal that I set every day, I will not allow myself to check facebook. However, when I do achieve target set, I will award myself, such as letting myself play “candy crush saga” on facebook. Also, I mentioned that in Hong Kong, I would go library to work and I could focus better. At Warwick, I am doing the same; I usually work in the library in the evening when it is not crowded. Moreover, afternoon and the evening are the times that I work and learn best, therefore I normally work during these times.
My action points from now on are to set myself deadlines to start doing certain tasks, such as an assignment, and work in the afternoon and the evening.