learning profile

The overall common themes that I read in the text this semester were helpful. They were all things that I had covered before in high school but it was a good refresher to go over them again. The themes we had to read were Engage, Persist, Prioritize, read, learn, record, remember, assess, and think. I think one of the most important ones is persist. I think that in high school and even college it is important for one to persist. A lot of times when students get discouraged in homework assignments and even tests they want to quit. Persisting through that and trying to do your best even when it is hard is key to success I believe. Another good theme I thought was helpful was engage. I think if a student wants to learn and tries to engage in what they are doing, they are going to have better results than someone just trying to get through it. Teachers will more likely want to help a student who is engaged also. If a teacher sees a student just trying to get by with doing nothing and compares that to a kid who is making an effort to understand the material but is struggling, they are going to help them more.
I feel my strengths as a learner are ability to want to learn. When I go to a class I usually have a pretty open mind to what we are going to do that day. I think this helps my ability to learn as opposed to going in with a negative mindset. I am also a good listener. A lot of times students just want to get the class over with. I make sure I listen to everything the teacher has to say because that way I am able to get my homework done faster and more accurate. I think I could help a new student to this class learn good study habits. Ever since my parents switched me to a private school, good work and study habits were drilled into me. I think I would be a good person to help someone out in this aspect. I could help the student make a blog too, because I have made two in my day.
My weaknesses as a learner are probably a struggle to pay attention over a long period of time. If a class is long and drawn out, I tend to loose focus and show a lack of interest. Another weakness I think I have is test taking. When we are taking notes in class and doing homework I do almost perfect. When we transition from homework to tests is when I tend to struggle. I notice some other learners taking more detailed notes and I wonder what I would accomplish with those type of notes. My math homework seems to take up the most time when I am doing homework. It is so detailed in every aspect that I seem to take the most time on that when I am learning and doing homework. I am going to be taking intro to calculus next semester and I think it will be a struggle for me. Towards the end of my semester in College algebra I struggled more and things became more complex. I think this is just a foreshadowing of how Calculus will go, which is scary. I need to work on taking better notes and asking more questions when I do not understand something if I want to pass that class.
When I am analyzing what I have learned in this class it is hard to find a lot of things. I do not want to say that I have not learned anything, but to summarize a list of things is very difficult. I can say that I have learned things such as what type of community service my classmates have donated their time to. I can also say I have met new people I may not have taking my ordinary classes. I have also learned how to look up different job opportunities from the discovery website we did. That may be the most beneficial assignment, in my eyes, that we did all semester. The most important realization I had concerning student connect was when we had the quest speaker who showed us how to look up books from the library. It was then that I realized what this class was really made for, for us as freshmen. I thought this was important because in college there are a lot of papers assigned and you need to look up books for research, so I found that beneficial. If we did not know how to look up a book of a particular genre, we now know how because of student connect class.
The merits and relevance of the assignments we did in this class were different in relevance. Some assignments we did I found more important than others. At the beginning of the year, I thought the class would be pointless because of the quiz we did on the electric quizzers. For some reason, it just seemed kind of corny to me. I think the blogs we did were kind of time consuming. I understand we have to have some kind of material to make up our grade, but the blogs just seemed like busy work to me. Don’t get me wrong, the assignments we had to do were of good meaning and had a good reason behind them, it just seemed really repetitive to me from what I had to do in high school. We always did assignments like the blogs so when I knew we had to do those same types of things it was kind of like “here we go again.” I also did not find the rubrics of any relevance either. I know that was probably your way of taking attendance, I just didn’t like the questions we had to answer on the back every day. I think some assignments were meaningful like the Butler resources blog. That could be very useful if you ever find yourself in one of those situations.
Having to do an analysis of the course work from my viewpoint as a learner is kind of easy. As a learner, I catch on pretty quick and there was nothing to ever catch onto in this class. As a learner, this class is more kind of you have to take it. In that case I think the teachers try to make it as “fun” as possible, yet still try to teach important concepts at the same time. I don’t think we can drop the blogs because they make up the greatest chunk of our grade. That seems to be the biggest hassle to me. If we could just show up to class and learn material and show we know our way around the library and campus I think we should be able to test out. I think the goal of the class is to make sure we are connected to the campus through different ways and if we can master them I think we should be able to test out. I think the movie we watched over drinking should be kept because as many times as you watch movies like that, they always put you in check and make you think about your actions.
If I were to help students who take this class in the future to survive I would start out by telling them it is only about eight weeks of class. I did not get this class until after the first quarter of the semester. I think this was a blessing in disguise because in taking this class then, you get a built in week off because of Thanksgiving break. What I know now that I wish I knew when I came in to this class were that most classes are very time consuming. It seemed like every class we were doing something whether it be group discussions or a reading assignment we were always busy. I thought that we wouldn’t ever be in class much because I thought we could just get by with doing the blogs online and get out of class early or not have to come at all. The three things to keep your sanity in this class are 1. Patience , 2. Persistence , and 3. Dedication. If you can bring those three things consistently, you will survive student connect.
Unfortunately, my experiences as a learner in this class will not have that big of an impact on the way I live and work. I am almost certain that this eight week class has not altered my life that much that it affects the way I live and work. I might be looking at this question or even this whole assignment a bit pessimistic. I just really feel I should be honest while I’m doing this assessment of this class. I believe that I might take away acceptance of a wide variety of things from this class. That may be the greatest way that it would affect my life and the way I live because I know I’ve gotten through something where I didn’t really want to be there, but I got through it and that could be beneficial to look back upon. The instructor was really resourceful and was available at all times. I had nothing bad to say about the instructor because I know she isn’t the reason I have to take this class. Every freshmen has to go through a class like this sometime in their life. The end.