Evaluation

At the end of the year, it is a good practice to stop and evaluate our performance before we head into the New Year. Evaluation allows us to be able to know where we want to go in the future and to learn from past mistakes. Evaluation, the highest step in critical thinking, thus allows us to have vision of the future and knowledge of the past. Having these qualities, provides us with inner clarity.

Students often think like this "But I don't want to make any mistakes, I want my performance to be perfect." Thus, they undervalue the function of evaluation. In reality, without errors there can be real understanding of any subject. After all, what does it value a student to retake a subject they already understand? Real learning comes with the difficult realization that knowledge must be acquired.

Then when we look back, we can evaluate our performance before moving forward to the future. This makes real learning possible.

KB

Stress Reduction - A new approach

This fall, I have spent a good deal of time meditating and trying to stay in the moment. This is not new for me; I was introduced to mindfulness meditation by my psychologist in Winnipeg. I had made a stab at it, and found it very difficult. My mind wandered all over the place and although I'd read the book "Wherever you are, there you are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn; it didn't make it easier for me to meditate.

Below I have a place where you can buy Kabat-Zinn's meditations if you are interested:

http://www.nightingale.com/prod_detail.aspx?product=Mindfulness_Meditation&promo=intgooga430&ORG=intgooga430&gclid=COHToKLx1KwCFUKo4AodMVk-rw

These are the meditations I use now and I find them helpful. Okay, what is changed? Why did I try it again? Well, I wanted to restore balance to my life & I heard that through these simple exercises I could do that very thing. I read Jack Kornfield who said: "Training with the breath is a bit like training a small puppy" (Meditation for Beginners, 21). So, I'm finding that I'm staying in the here and now more and feeling less distracted.

That's me for today.

KB

English vs. American vs. Canadian spelling

I was raised and educated in Canada. When it came to spelling and grammar, sometimes we did it the English way and sometimes we did it the American way. In fact, the word "spell" is a perfect example of this conundrum. My Oxford Dictionary assures me that "spelt" is the past tense of "spell" as does my copy of "Advanced Grammar in Use". To further complicate the matter, my Canadian grammar books do not list "spell" as an irregular verb. Thus, I should spell the past tense of spell, spelled.

Readers of this blog should be aware that at the University of Leicester, we use English spelling throughout our work. Thus, you should be aware of these differences:

Can-American/English
tire/tyre
traveled/travelled
colour/color/colour
aluminum/aluminium
cancelled/canceled/cancelled
judgment/judgement
civilization civilisation/civilization
mold/mould
licorice/liquorice
dreamed dreamt
cheque/check cheque
connection/connexion
favorite/favourite

jewelry/jewellery
archeology/archaelogy
program/programme
fetus/foetus
realize/realise

These, of course, are not the only examples. Use your Oxford/English Dictionary for more examples.

KB

Grammar Bytes: Punctuation

Gower, as cited by Davidson, refers to the dash as "seductive" (Davidson, George. How to Punctuate. London: Penguin Bks., 155.) First, you need to understand the difference between the dash and the hyphen. A hyphen is the length of one key stroke. For example, the word half-life.

A dash, on the other hand, is the length of two hyphens or keystrokes like this: "The ceremony this year in New York to mark the anniversary of 9/11 -- a ceremony that was held for the first time in the impressive newly-dedicated memorial -- went on over many hours. Note that the information inside the brackets, parenthetical modifiers, explain or add new information to the already existing sentence. (Some computer programmes turn two dashes into the long dash automatically.)

Frequently, the reason for the use of the dash is because the sentence already contains internal punctuation. See this example from The Ready Reference Handbook: "These days the volume of business communications -- from customers and suppliers, from supervisors, colleagues and staff -- has mushroomed" (Dodds & Jewinski, 277). The dash here allows the reader to sort the details of the sentence out easily. However, the dash should not -- as is frequently the case in student reports, assignments and exams -- be used when the comma is the more obvious choice.

A dash is used first and foremost for emphasis. For example: "To keep my dog Scout quiet, I must use consistency and discipline -- discipline each and every day."

The second use of the dash, as noted above is to set off parenthetical material. Do this when you find the use of more commas is confusing as noted earlier in the blog.

The third use of the dash, noted in this posting, is to display lists. Please note that a colon is the more formal way of introducing a list. This makes a colon the usual choice in an academic paper. Example: "Our basement is packed with numerous items from our last six moves -- books that could not find a home upstairs, chairs and desks that are too large for our home, more kitchen equipment than our present house can't accommodate and bits and bobs that have never been sorted from one move to the next."

A fourth use of the dash is to show faltering speech, incomplete sentences or a narrative insertion. Examples:
"I can't do it --- I really can't do it -- please, don't make me," he stuttered.
(faltering speech)

"Please stop --."
"I say --."
(Incomplete sentences that are cut off by further action in the dialogue.)

"Sir" -- he raised his hands to his watering eyes -- "Surely, you can find it in your heart to be merciful."
(Narrative insertion)

Dashes need to be used with caution in academic work. Don't, as stated earlier, use them to substitute for commas. Happy writing.

KB

References

Davidson, George. How to Punctuate. London: Penguin Books, 2005.

Dodds, Jack and Judi Jewinski. The Ready Reference Book: Canadian Edition. Toronto: Prentice Hall, 1998.

Getting through your MBA/MSc : Keys to Motivation

How do you maintain motivation in order to get you through your MBA/MSc? Let's look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The page below shows numerous visual representations of this hierarchy.

(http://www.google.ca/search?q=Maslow%27s+hierarchy+of+needs&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=UEU&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=SyduTtDYIKbK0AHS0cHVBA&ved=0CFoQsAQ&biw=1094&bih=550)

A cursory examination of these various visual attempts to illustrate Maslow's principles establishes that self-actualization exists near or at the highest level of this hierarchy needs. (Please note this is not an affirmation of any of the correctness of any of these visual representations, simply that many visual representations of Maslow's hierarchy exist.)

Educators have noted that students need to use their school work, not be able to have a career and money, but strong achievers use their school work to tie into the goals of self esteem and self affirmation. Bob Poston's article, "An Exercise in Personal Exploration: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" describes Maslow's hierarchy of needs from the lowest to the highest needs in this manner:
1. Physiological Needs
2. Safety Needs
3. Belonging and Love Needs
4. Esteem Needs (Google Scholar, http://tabacco.blog-city.co/maslows_hierarchy_of_needs__physiological_level_1_to_selfact.htm, 08/15/2011)

Thus Maslow asserts that students are more motivated if what they are learning helps them establish and strengthen what we call the higher needs, that is esteem. Self esteem reinforces feelings of self worth and happiness.

For adult learners in Distance Education to remain motivated can be difficult. The adult learner often feels alone in the educational process. They seem to have no cohort and certainly have no actual physical classroom. Thus, students without sufficient discipline and inner motivation can find themselves adrift without the familiar world of the classroom they knew elsewhere. What do we do to remedy this?

At the University of Leicester, we try and duplicate the classroom environment by encouraging students to stay connected with their fellow students and module tutors through Blackboard, through encouraging them to attend summer school and by providing ways to remain in contact through the internet with skills and dissertation tutors. Students need to use these tools if they find themselves drifting off course and cannot connect stay on course with their module assignments and examinations. Valuable advise can be helpful to stay on track throughout the programme.

To summarize, the way I see it is that two qualities are essential for success. One is to remain firmly focused on the prize, that is the MBA itself. The second quality is, as I've suggested in this blog already, is to feel a sense of success and accomplishment as you make your way through each and every assignment and exam. Mark your successes in some way. Stay aware of how achievement of these goals will bring the desired result, the MBA. Keep your head in the game. This is how students before have completed this programme and how you will do the same thing.

KB

Leicester Summer School 2011

Well, I've been home from Summer School in the UK for almost two weeks now. I wanted to extend my greetings to all of the students who visited me during the week of July 25-29th . I learned a great deal from every one of you. I'm hoping to make the blog more exciting and more interactive during the next year. I was very chuffed to find out how many people actually read this blog and how many of the blog users try my approaches to: reading, studying, learning, stress and organizing work.

This merely encourages me to try and get more imaginative with the blog. I'm glad people are really reading it because I want this blog to have a little more than information. It is, to a great extent, interactive. I like when people write about questions. So, for the coming year - good luck - and for those who are leaving us double good luck - the job climate requires that students present more than a smile a briefcase these days.

Studying, reading and memory: Creating a Study Schedule that Works

Last week at Summer School 2011, I had a lot of students come to me to ask about improving their study techniques so that they would increase their marks on their exams. So, this posting will be about how you can increase memory retention while reading over module textbooks and other materials and improve your performance. Planning and understanding a little bit about how memory and the mind work help a great deal in this regard. Why? Let's look the mind and memory.

To the left is a beautiful drawing of the brain by Christopher Wren. What I find interesting about this is that Wren, who built St. Paul's Cathedral with all of its architectural complexities, was interested in domed structures at the micro level as well as structures at the macro level. Similar pictures of the brain exist in the drawings of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. Studying and drawing the structures of the body has been the standard method for hundreds of years in Western culture of understanding the dynamics of line drawing - particularly depth and proportion. We've been intrigued by these body structures for centuries and we understand some of them better than others. The brain still mystifies us in many ways, but we do have some pretty good understanding of the way memory works. We can use this understanding to improve our retention of materials for exams.

I have emphasized with many of my students the importance of examining the organizational structure of your textbook and connecting it to previously learned knowledge as a way to help retain information for your examinations. However, understanding how the brain itself works can help students realize more effective study strategies. Trying to improve memory function in learning is not a new idea. According to Walker and Schonwetter, mnemonics, or using acronyms, codes or made-up sentences to remember long pieces of oral or written work was developed by the classical Greeks (Success Secrets of University Students 2003: 157.) One example is the sentence: Richard Of York Goes Back In Vain - a nonsense sentence that is formed with words beginning with the first letter of each colour in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. It is used to remember the colours of the spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. The nonsense sentence is much easier for your brain to remember than a random collection of colours.

Another example is SQ3R...Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review. How and why does this study cycle work? To begin with, the technique my father vigorously adhered to - long and exhaustive study sessions leading up to a test - don't really improve the memory at all! In fact, if you study for eight hours at one stretch before your test - instead of, for example, breaking that time down into one hour cycles with 1/2 hour breaks between sessions - you will retain less knowledge than if you carefully planned to Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review. Why?

Memory is broken up into long term and short term memory. Obviously, when you first encounter information from a text, it will only go into your short term memory. A long pre-exam session over an 8 hour stretch cannot and will not allow that information to be transferred to long term memory. However, the SQ3R cycle repeated several times in one day and preferably over many days and weeks, will lead to the transference of information from short term memory to long term memory.

Let's examine this cycle:

Survey - Read the material over completely. Remember, these exams are comprehensive. Do not assume you know what will be on your exam. Read everything.
Question - Develop key questions about the material.
Read - Find the answers to the questions you have developed.
Recite - Go over the material, reciting it to make sure you understand what you've learned.
Review - Go over all the material again.
Take a 1/2 hour break!!!!!

This study cycle should take you one hour. If you can't review one chapter in one hour, break the chapters down as required. After a break, you can return to your studying again. This technique has many advantages - especially for many MBA/MSc students. Planning ahead, one hour of study time per day is not a waste of time as students so often believe. In fact, these short sessions are very helpful to memory retention and learning. Additionally, students can and should try and tie the information they are learning to previously learned knowledge.

Note: SQ3R was originally developed by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1970 book Effective Learning.