Reflective Essay on Academic Study Skills Development

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Reflective Essay

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Introduction
This course has helped me in developing the academic study skills for setting up for my higher
education. It has also taught me to get organised and create an attitude of 'can do'. Effective study
skills are important elements to achieve academic success. All through the duration of my
course, there are various courses followed by examinations to judge my understanding. This
report is the reflection of the course.
Analysis of course
In this course the understanding of managing oneself was there in which I was taught about
managing my time and managing problems. For capitalising on the usage of my time and
reaching my educational objectives, I will carry out the particular time management strategies.
As per the course, I have learnt to plan the the schedule and make adjustments to my schedule
for managing time in a proper way. I will use the knowledge of this chapter for maximizing the
usage of my time and reaching the the final educational goals. By maintaining an excellent
schedule, the proper usage of time would be there. It would assist me in prioritising the activities
and tasks and better forecasting. This way I have learnt to be punctual and disciplined, finally
boosting my confidence and morale.
During this course I designed a spreadsheet with the weekly schedule and while the end of the
course, I evaluated how I learnt and manage myself. It is obviously not simple goal to attain
because running out of time is usual issue. The great importance is given to limiting the
resources usage in lesser time (Varga, 2011). By this course I was able to apply time
management techniques with the most optimum outcomes. Time management is the capacity of
planning and controlling the way I spend hours in a day to achieve my educational goals.
Personally, I have tough time with time management. I do not like people who waste time
because this people keep me away from effective usage of time. Like ok I could be working on
my assignments and my cell phone causes interruptions therefore for managing time, I put my
mobile on silent mode when I am doing some valuable task.
Throughout this course, I also learnt the way of getting most from my lectures. I realise that it is
not necessary that everything has to be written while taking lecture notes. It is almost impossible
to write each and every word however listening carefully was more important. I learnt to strike a

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balance between listening and jotting down specific phrases which were important. Later I
started using those with the lecture slides. Even though we can use the Dictaphones to record the
lectures however I never used them in class because I always try to listen carefully and wrote
only the important words and terms which I could use letter for recalling what was done in the
class. Paying attention is the key to learn. During a lecture I tried to be focused because I knew
then I would not have to catch up later on. To get the most out of my lectures, underlined and
used capital words true stress on something important. This way attention could be drawn to
specific words and phrases which required to be remembered in future. During the coffee breaks
I discussed all the important points of the lecture with my friends and classmates so that I could
recall the important points and note down whatever was missed. Even I learnt using
abbreviations or any shorthand codes which I was comfortable with so that I could get lot of Idea
from the lectures.
There was a group task where in I had to write on the topic whether money can buy happiness or
not. When we all work in group then there is an opportunity to work as a team. Some roles were
allocated to each and every team member. Before writing, it was important that proper research
was carried out and we all collaborated for sharing ideas. Before writing the final piece, we made
a plan and then note down the important points shared by every individual (Colbert, 2010). By
the tasks, the teamwork was possible and I understood that there are five skills which are
necessary for or carrying out group tasks. These are communication, research, planning, taking
responsibility and accountability, and collaboration. It is important to maintain good relations
with team members and initiative has to be taken after analysis of all the available resources so
that Idea generation can be there.
When we prepared and delivered the presentations in groups, the creativity was displayed.
Working in a group is usually extremely challenging in college. However learning to work well
with others is significant who wants to pursue higher studies and become part of a business
environment in future. One of the key things that my group did well was working together. The
meetings are highly effective (Sedano and Péraire, 2015), and each group member could
complete the allotted tasks in a timely way. We also weather information in an effective manner
making the presentation to be informative. For making it a great presentation, some of the
significant facts were included and the other areas which were not persuasive were left out. With
this type of presentations, I have got improvement in public speaking. Area, in the initial weeks

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of the semester, I was little bit uncomfortable to speak in front of the class. Therefore I had a
tendency of brushing my speech and at some instances I used to forget what I was saying. But it
with the teamwork and this group presentation, I was more confident and did a better job with a
persuasive speech. I plan to learn from past mistakes and make improvements in my public
speaking by speaking in front of large groups as much as possible.
I have been able to provide great presentation with my partners due to our team work. With the
assignment of topic, we immediately started brainstorming. After getting the topic from RRB
organised a meeting and there was allocation of tasks amongst us. Because of the great
collaboration we had lot of information. By this experience, we could get benefited of individual
strengths of every team member trauma while working as a team. Like for making of the
presentation, the task was given to the individual who is highly proficient in PowerPoint. Even
the whole group was involved in collecting and organising the details to be added to the
presentation. By making choice of what is important, I did a good job of keeping the audience is
engaged. Why completion of this project, I could learn the way of giving effective presentation. I
also learnt how to share the information. Being a great presenter needs that one prepare well
prior to every speech and there has to be practice of speaking in front of audience.
One more approach of learning was the gathering of different sources and preparing critics for
these sources. In this we shared our views and there was comparison made regarding the
answers. In this the learning was done in pairs (Tint and Nyunt, 2015). This type of learning is
known as pair share. It is a classic learning method when the students are paired together and
they verbally share their views. This way they can learn new content with better understanding.
In this case we were also capable of reviewing what we already knew. This was an approach of
collaborative learning where discuss with my partner and afterwards we discussed with the larger
group for the entire class (Uska, 2017). This technique was utilised for warming up the class and
this we all students got chance to hear the knowledge restated from peer group rather than our
instructor. This led to chance of more interaction with one another. By this I was able to express
my idea which was not possible in the lecturer lead classroom. This kind of active discussion is
useful in effective learning with independent thinking. This brought improve involvement in the
class and positive impacts on the learning outcomes. The research shows that peer discussion
improves understanding even if no student in the group actually knows the right answer. This
technique has been seen to be school in increasing students participation, generating longer

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clarifications to questions, along with instilling of additional confidence and comfort among
students as they participate in the class discussions.
During the course the handouts are provided to evaluate an article and creation of critical notes.
Various handouts for utilised for group referencing, referencing exercises, evaluation of articles
and completion of the template and handouts are highly valuable for preparing students and
making them revise the course. Since the handouts can be of various formats and there can be
different content, these covered the summary of the lectures (Bischoff, 2011). There were some
questions and exercises to see how much we had learnt. When we were provided with handouts
prior to the class, it made us to prepare for the lecture in advance and go through the proprietary
readings. Even by these handouts, the requirement of taking down the notes was eliminated. This
way I was able to engage at a higher cognitive level with the material as I was free from the
mechanical task of writing. I like this idea of using handouts because almost everything was
available in the handouts however I also added little notes to it and I could familiarise myself in
advance with the structure of the lecture. These handouts were useful for me because these acted
as the study resource for recording the lecture and going through them later on.
With the group presentation, an effective team was made and Tuckman team development theory
was utilised. As stated above, we held a meeting for the team members and had proper
understanding regarding the task. All the opportunities and threats were analysed and discussions
where there where everybody shared his opinion. This sharing opinion was a team development
stage, after which a particular task was allotted to every team member. For proper achievement
of the task there was a need for assigning a leader for the team and this leader was responsible
for monitoring everybody performed the allotted task in a timely manner and in the right way.
With the completion of course, there have been lot of skills developed which includes:
- proper time management,
- self-management,
- understanding of the academic tasks,
- gathering and presenting information,
- teamwork,
- use of academic resources and referencing them appropriately,
- group discussions,
- Pair and share method, etc.

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Conclusion
This course was highly significant for us because was lot of gathering of data, along with use of
attention and focus during the lectures which is necessary for higher education. In this course, I
learnt various skills and enjoyed myself attending it. By writing this reflective essay also all hope
is into the prospective.
Now as I have to write a reflective essay, this is also show the outcome of the course followed.
In this reflective essay also I had to choose the topic, gathered information from define the
informative resources from I write a draught and then write major parts of the project. Finally I
had to put references also fine so I think all the elements of the course were utilised in this essay
where I could describe my experience regarding the course. This essay is also a way of showing
the level of understanding which I have been.
References
Bischoff, R., 2011. Who Would Like a Handout?. PsycCRITIQUES, 56(38).
Colbert, P., 2010. Developing A Culturally Responsive Classroom Collaborative Of Faculty,
Students, And Institution. Journal of College Teaching & Learning (TLC), 7(11).
Sedano, T. and Péraire, C., 2015. Using Essence Reflection Meetings in Team-based Project
Courses. Procedia Computer Science, 62, pp.15-16.
Tint, S. and Nyunt, E., 2015. Collaborative Learning with Think-Pair -Share
Technique. Computer Applications: An International Journal, 2(1), pp.1-11.
Uska, M., 2017. The Application of Practice Rehearsal Pairs Learning Model toward Basic
Programming Learning Outcomes. EDUMATIC: Jurnal Pendidikan Informatika, 1(2), p.44.
Varga, A., 2011. Time Management. New York: Nova Science Publishers.