How Physical Activity and Sports Motivate Students

BY SYLVIA KOHL

 

Many studies conducted in the past showed that physical activity can significantly boost students` cognitive and affective foundation. Truth is that students can gain numerous benefits from regular physical activities. They will not just become better prepared for their sports competitions, but they will become more aware of living a healthy lifestyle. That will translate to successes in other fields as well, and the university students will be able to make better choices and wiser decisions and significantly improve their safety and wellbeing.

How Physical Activity and Sports Motivate Students

We all know that focusing on specific everyday tasks is not easy. Sometimes we have to juggle between different things and that lowers down our focus. Physical activity during sports helps students regain their focus and think about what matters most. Their energy levels get higher so they become more concentrated on doing what they do. There is an entire science behind various sports, so if you want to learn more, click here to get educated on the matter. So, what are the benefits of physical activity for students?

1. Character Building

The first major benefit that comes from physical activity is that it teaches students about ethical behavior and builds their character. This is necessary for the student to later function in the real-world environment. By engaging themselves in sports and exercising, students learn about work ethics. Sometimes in sports, they get to experience failure, but that will prepare them for the struggles in other fields of life. It motivates them to keep their focus and keep working to become better as an athlete and as a person.

2. Improved Brain Activity

Another benefit of physical education is that it increases blood flow and improves the activity of the brain. Oxygen levels get higher and blood pressure gets lower, which in turn increases the activity inside the brain over extended period of time. Besides, engaging in sports also increases a person`s confidence and self-belief. By regularly undergoing athletic challenges like playing team or individual sports, they will experience the value that comes from accomplishing different goals. This not only raises their performance, but also boosts their confidence to the highest levels.

3. Teamwork

The third big benefit of playing sports is that it also teaches young students about the importance of group work and collaborative thinking. These traits are very important for life outside sports, so students can acquire necessary skills that they can use later in their everyday relationships with other people. Finally, any physical activity discourages living a sedentary life. By engaging in sports and other activities, students will get indispensable values for their future when they become adults. They will avoid numerous problems with blood circulation, hypertension, heart problems and much more.

4. Discipline

 Flashy competitions and events are not all that there is about sports. In fact, they are merely a tip of the iceberg, a result of rigorous training that occupies most of the sportsman’s time. To achieve any degree of success in sports, one has to possess enough self-control and determination to train regularly, forgo other, more pleasant activities in favor of spending more time improving one’s results, denying yourself certain lifestyle choices. In the long run, all this teaches one the discipline necessary to get to the top in life. And the earlier one starts out, the better.

As we can conclude, physical activity indeed boosts the cognitive functions in students and helps them become better people. They get to learn valuable things that they can use in different aspects of their lives. Therefore, motivating students to exercise and take part in sports is of crucial importance for preparing them for the future.

Sylvia Kohl is an IT teacher with more than 8 years of professional experience. Her main spheres of interest are e-education and she convinced that learning process doesn’t stop after years in school and university.

 

Want to write Better? Read More

Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review

The extra-large ubiquitous Literacy Community is under siege from universal dissatisfaction with the Writing skills of both students and graduates, and this is a complaint of very long standing.

The Community response is to request more money and time to spend on sentence structure, paragraphing, voice, tone, and other mechanical Writing paraphernalia.

It never seems to occur to them that if students read more, they would know more, and in that way actually have some knowledge they wanted to write about. But reading and knowledge never seem to find their way into discussions of Literacy in Our Schools.

When teaching our students to write, not only are standards set very low in most high schools, limiting students to the five-paragraph essay, responses to a document-based question, or the personal (or college) essay about matters which are often no one else’s business, but we often so load up students with formulae and guidelines that the importance of writing when the author has something to say gets lost in the maze of processes.

On the one hand writing is difficult enough to do, and academic writing is especially difficult if the student hasn’t read anything, and on the other hand teachers feel the need to have students “produce” writing, however short or superficial that writing may be. So writing consultants and writing teachers feel they must come up with guidelines, parameters, checklists, and the like, as props to substitute for students’ absent motivation to describe or express in writing something they have learned.

Samuel Johnson once said, “an author will turn over half a library to produce one book,” the point being, as I understand it, that good writing must be based on extensive reading. But reading is just the step that is left out of the “Writing Process” in too many instances. The result is that students in fact do not have much to say, so of course they don’t have much they want to communicate in writing.

Enter the guidelines. Students are told to write a topic sentence, to express one idea per paragraph, to follow the structure of Introduction, Body, Conclusion, to follow the Twelve Steps to Effective Writing, and the like. This the students can be made to do, but the result is too often empty, formulaic writing which students come to despise, and which does not prepare them for the serious academic papers they may be asked to do in college.

I fear that the history book report, at least at the high school level in too many places, has died in the United States. Perhaps people will contact me with welcome evidence to the contrary, but where it is no longer done, students have not only been discouraged from reading nonfiction, but also have been lead to believe that they can and must write to formula without knowing something—for instance about the contents of a good book—before they write.

A nationally famous teacher of teachers of writing once told me: “I teach writing, I don’t get into content that much…” This is a splendid example of the divorce between content [reading and knowledge] and process [techniques] in common writing instruction. 

Reading and writing are inseparable partners, in my view. In letters from authors of essays published in The Concord Review since 1987, they often say that they read so much about something in history that they reached a point where they felt a strong need to tell people what they had found out. The knowledge they had acquired had given them the desire to write well so that others could share and appreciate it as they did.

This is where good academic writing should start. When the motivation is there, born from knowledge gained, then the writing process follows a much more natural and straightforward  path. Then the student can write, read what they have written, and see what they have left out, what they need to learn more about, and what they have failed to express as clearly as they wanted to. Then they read more, re-write, and do all the natural things that have always lead to good academic writing, whether in history or in any other subject.

At that point the guidelines are no longer needed, because the student has become immersed in the real work of expressing the meaning and value of something they know is worth writing about. This writing helps them discover the limits of their own understanding of the subject and allows them to see more clearly what they themselves think about the subject. The process of critiquing their own writing becomes natural and automatic. This is not to deny, of course, the value of reading what they have written to a friend or of giving it to a teacher for criticism and advice. But the writing techniques and processes no longer stop up the natural springs for the motivation to write.

As students are encouraged to learn more before they write, their writing will gradually extend past the five-paragraph size so often constraining the craft of writing in our schools. The Page Per Year Plan© suggests that all public high school Seniors could be expected to write a twelve-page history research paper, if they had written an eleven-page paper their Junior year, a ten-page paper their Sophomore year, and a nine-page paper their Freshman year, and so on all the way back through the five-page paper in Fifth Grade and even to a one-page paper on a topic other than themselves their first year in school. With the Page Per Year Plan©, every Senior in high school will have learned, for that twelve-page paper, more about some topic probably than anyone else in their class knows, perhaps even more than any of their teachers knows about that subject. They will have had in the course of writing longer papers each year, that first taste of being a scholar which will serve them so well in higher education and beyond.

Writing is always much harder when the student has nothing to communicate, and the proliferating paraphernalia of structural aids from writing consultants and teachers often simply encumber students and alienate them from the essential benefits of writing. John Adams urged his fellow citizens to “Dare to read, think, speak and write” so that they could contribute to the civilization we have been given to enjoy and preserve. Let us endeavor to allow students to discover, through their own academic reading and writing, both the discipline and the satisfactions of reading and of writing carefully and well.

In 1625, Francis Bacon wrote, “Reading maketh a Full man, Conference a Ready man, and Writing an Exact man.” These benefits are surely among those we should not withhold from our K-12 students.

The Concord Review, 730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24, Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776

www.tcr.org    978-443-0022     fitzhugh@tcr.org

How to Decide if Graduate School Is Right for You

BY JORI HAMILTON

Remember your very first day of college? You may have felt nervous and out of place, unsure of where anything was, what your professors would be like, and who you’d become friends with. Now, four years later, it’s time to graduate, and it can be hard to believe how fast the time zipped by. While your classmates and pals are heading back to their hometowns or moving far away to enter the job market after graduation, you’re wondering if you should continue your education.

Or, maybe you graduated a few years ago and have been working since then, but you feel like you’d get higher pay or a promotion if you had a graduate degree. Many people in the workforce, tired of being unable to advance their careers, often resort to common resume lies, but doing so can present serious problems.

Instead, look into furthering your education by pursuing a graduate degree. In some cases, your employer might even be willing to pay for it, and you know that it will benefit your career if you can find the time to fit it in. Let’s explore why you may want a graduate degree, as well as the pros and cons of going after one.

Reasons for Attending Graduate School

Understanding how to get a graduate degree and what to expect from graduate school is important, but they’re not nearly as important as discovering why you want a master’s degree in the first place. Here are some questions to answer when deciding if graduate school is right for you:

 

• Will your employer pay for graduate school? Alternatively, will they pay you a high enough salary to justify the expense of graduate school?
• If they will pay for your education, what requirements do you have to fulfill? For example, you may have to work there for a certain amount of time after completing the program.
• What will your job look like once you have your graduate degree? Is there a promise of higher pay or a better position? Will you advance more quickly?
• Are there other ways to achieve more pay and higher status without going to graduate school?

You don’t have to be in love with your coursework, but you should have some level of investment or interest in it. Otherwise, you may fail your classes or drop out before you’ve earned your degree. By finding a driving “why” behind your choice to attend graduate school, you’re more likely to stick with it — even when your schedule and workload become burdensome.

Pros of Attending Graduate School

There are a lot of perks to attending graduate school. Put time and effort into researching graduate programs so you can enjoy these benefits:

 

• If you’re already working, it’s possible that the college of your choice will waive your GMAT score (the test students take to determine eligibility for a graduate program) due to your work experience. This can lower the barrier of entry for a graduate program and encourage you to continue your education.
• Depending on the school you attend, you may have excellent networking opportunities through your graduate program. For example, Oprah Winfrey taught a course at Northwestern about leadership. Attending classes taught by industry influencers can improve your reputation in your field and maybe open up doors you didn’t have access to before.
• While research isn’t a mandatory part of master’s degree programs, some courses do require or allow it. If you want to research a specific topic, attending a master’s program that requires a thesis is an excellent way to dive into what excites you.

If you feel like you want to explore your education more, graduate school could very well be the best decision for you. While career advancement and a higher income are nice, you’ll get the most out of the program if you enjoy what you’re learning.

Cons of Attending Graduate School

On the fence about graduate school? It’s not for everyone, and it may not benefit your career quite as much as you think it will. Here’s what to consider:

 

• Remember studying for your SATs? Passing the GRE, which is required for many of graduate programs, is harder. Before you even start your graduate program, you’ll have to spend time and money to study in order to pass the test. Note that some grad programs these days will also waive this test, much like the waiving of the GMAT, so do your research!
• Graduate degree programs vary in cost, but most of them will cost you several thousand dollars — that could be as low as $30,000 overall or as high as $30,000 or more per year, as public schools tend to cost less than private schools. There’s also less financial help for graduate students than undergraduate students.
• Graduate degree programs can be demanding. Grad students work year-round and complete the program faster than an undergraduate program, with a lot of condensed, hard work in a shorter time frame. If you have other responsibilities, like a full-time job and a family, you may have to sacrifice something you’re not willing to give up.

Ultimately, determining whether getting a master’s degree is worth it depends on your particular circumstances. Will it open new employment avenues that you’d be interested in pursuing? Would it enable you to earn more money and do things in your personal life that you’d be unable to do otherwise? Can you go to school while upholding your other responsibilities in life? Answering these questions honestly will guide you in the right direction.

While going back to school to pursue a graduate degree may do wonders for your career, make sure that you’re not simply trying to stay in college instead of moving on with your life. If that’s the case, there are a number of ways to stay involved with your school even as you start your career. On the other hand, if you’re in a field that requires a graduate degree even for entry-level employees, like STEM fields, you may not have a choice about whether or not to continue your education. Whether you’re opting to go to school or are required to, do your due diligence when researching schools, as there’s a lot of variety between graduate programs.

Bio: Jori Hamilton is a writer from the Northwest who is passionate about education and social justice issues. You can follow her on Twitter @HamiltonJori

5 Resume Tips Students Can Use to Land Their Dream Jobs

By McLean Mills

As a college student, it’s punishing enough that a few grammatical mistakes here or there on your term paper can cost you high marks. However, when it comes to your resume, the stakes are even higher. Just one tiny mistake can mean the difference between securing an interview for your dream job and having your application completely ignored. So, with this much on the line here are 5 resume tips that you can use to perfect your resume.

1. Use the power of the internet

The first thing you do every time you need to write a paper is probably open up a blank Word document and go from there. When it comes to your resume though, this probably isn’t your best bet. Instead, start by using the web to make things easier for yourself. Start by finding a well-designed professional resume template that you can download for free or use an online resume builder. Before actually writing the contents of your resume, read a few online samples first and even pull one up that you can reference. Once your resume is finished, consider asking an online community like Reddit’s to critique your resume. You can also get analytical feedback on sites like X and Y.

2. Take advantage of LinkedIn

One of the biggest mistakes college students make as they search for their first full-time job is not using LinkedIn to their advantage. Not only does LinkedIn unlock a plethora of job opportunities you can apply to, it also gives you the ability to build a relationship with recruiters and hiring managers who are going to want to connect with you through LinkedIn.

Even if you want to apply to jobs the good old-fashioned way, a recent resume study has found that simply including an active LinkedIn profile on your resume is going to give a huge leg up over the applicants who don’t because it shows recruiters that you’re serious about your job search.

3. Understand proper resume etiquette

Writing a resume is a lot different from writing a paper. There’s a lot of unwritten rules to resume writing that just don’t apply elsewhere. All your bullet points should start with a strong action verb, first person pronouns like “I” and “me” should never be used, bullet points should be kept to a couple of sentences tops, past tense should be used in almost all cases, one or two pages is preferred while three pages is too long, and the list of unwritten rules you should be made aware of goes on and on.

4. Be smart when it comes to your academic achievements

As a general rule of thumb, only list your GPA if it’s higher than 3.0 on a typical 4.0 scale. If your major GPA is higher than your overall GPA, it would be wise to list that instead.

Another smart thing to do, especially if you don’t have a lot of work experience, is to list out any important courses you’ve taken that are relevant to the jobs you’re applying for.

5. Get help if necessary

If English isn’t your first language or writing just isn’t your forte, don’t hurt your hiring chances by forcing yourself to write your own resume. Instead, get help. As a college student the first place you should really turn to is your college’s career center. If you have any family and friends that have found success writing their own resume, then turn to them for guidance as well. As a last resort, you can also turn to a resume writing service where professional resume writers can write your resume for you. However beware, not every company is going to do a good job, and an entire CNBC article has been written detailing what you should know before choosing a resume writing service.

6. Keep unrelated experience to a minimal

It’s natural to want to include everything you’ve ever done or achieved on your resume, whether it be that you won your collegiate swimming competition or that you were a part of your college’s book club. However the issue is, hiring managers often don’t care. If you’re applying to a job as a financial analyst, being a good swimmer or a book worm proves nothing when it comes to your ability to analyze financial statements and predict the stock market. With that being the case, only briefly mention activities or work experience that are unrelated to the job and always put yourself in the employer’s shoes when writing your resume.

Byline: McLean Mills is a career coach and previously worked as a college career adviser and hiring manager for Coca Cola.

 

 

 

CSM Software and Cloud Infrastructure for Educational Institutions and Students

By Leslie Wilder

 

In this digital era when every little information is now available on the Internet, the role that websites play is far beyond measurable terms. There is not a single industry that has been left untouched by the wave of the digital revolution. Educational institutions and their students are no exceptions.

For most educational institutions, the primary and most crucial mode of communication and marketing today is via their websites. Since students and aspiring candidates of higher educational establishments primarily search for details online, the complexities also keep growing for these websites. It, therefore, becomes extremely vital to support such online establishments with a robust system for managing  data.

Digital data, both structured and unstructured, is being generated at exponential levels today. But with the help of an advanced content management technology that supports dynamic website content, it becomes easier for educational organizations and students to keep this data organized.

The purpose of this article is to review some content management platforms suitable activities and online publications, and to suggest what is the best approach to host and use them on the cloud.

Best practices in hosting educational CMS

In theory, each company that offers Linux or Windows based web hosting service should be able to provide a decent hosted environment for educational and learning management systems reviewed below. However, there are few important things to consider.

1. Does the company you are about to host your educational website, CMS and IT infrastructure with has its own Cloud infrastructure? It is recommended to avoid hosting educational platform with any of the major clouds. Large commercial cloud infrastructure is expensive and charge a lot for data transfer. The best practice for hosting an educational website on the cloud is to approach any small or medium size service providers and to send them a list of technical requirements.
2. Always Compare Cloud services based on the resources they offer and most importantly on the technical support level included in the services. The so-called “Major Clouds” (AWS, Microsoft Azure and others) charge their customers for technical support, which is quite unfair considering the high prices of their Cloud infrastructure service fees. On the contrary, the smaller and medium sized Clouds usually provide technical support to their customers for free and charge only for any client-side Management services.
3. Consider using a Managed Cloud Hosting service. If someone offers “Server less Computing”, simply disregard the offering. Serverless Computing is phony term used by marketers to describe a “Managed Hosting” or “Managed Cloud computing service”. Using Managed Cloud Hosting service worth’s as the infrastructure provide which take responsibility on securing and managing the educational infrastructure, which lowers the management effort for the organization.

Moodle

Moodle has been around for almost two decades. The first release came in 2002. This comes to say that Moodle is very mature software, suitable for creating a whole educational ecosystem. It is an Open source CMS used by more than one hundred thousand educational and learning websites, 10 thousand of them in the U.S. Moodle is very well documented, which makes the system setup and management easy. Most web hosting providers offer the CMS as standard installation.

Chamilo E-learning system

The community behind Chamilo is related to the educational or the human resources sectors. It is an Open Source CMS launched in 2009. The mail features of this educational CMS are: Courses, users and training cycles; social network for learning; SCORM 1.2 compatibility and authoring tool; LTI 1.1 support; multi-institutions mode; time-controlled exams; international characters (UTF-8); automated generation of certificates; tracking of users progress; competence based training (CBT) integrated with Mozilla Open Badges; multiple time zones and more.

It offers third party implementations and links well with Joomla, Drupal, OpenID secure authentication framework and Oracle. Like Moodle it can be self-hosted on own Private or Public Cloud Server, which means that there is no vendor lock-in.

Claroline

This is another content management system that can be used for online collaboration and learning platform. Like those above it is also released under the GPL open-source license. Claroline allows educational organizations to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces over the web. Claroline is a software with a European origin and its main website is in French. It can be installed on Windows, macOS or Linux kind bare-metal server. If anyone wants to use it in virtualized environment it should be installed on Windows or Linux server as Apply macOS officially does not support installation on Virtualized environments. A suitable Europe Cloud Server solution for Claroline is HCE, a service that features High Availability (HA) by default. In short High Availability is an IT functionality which reboots automatically the server in case of OS failure or a failure of the underlying physical host. i is an excellent feature that minimizes any interruption of the educational and learning services.

Claroline has the following functionality: write a course description; publish documents in any format (text, PDF, HTML, video and more); administer public or private forums; create learning paths (compatible with SCORM); create groups of users; compose exercises (compatible with IMS / QTI standard 2); structure an agenda with tasks and deadlines; post notifications (also by email); propose home work to make online; view statistics of attendance and completion exercises; use the wiki to write collaborative documents.

The main interface of Clarolinein in French, but this should not discourage the English-speaking institutions as the CMS is good.

Dokeos

I like the Dokeo’s website and how they present their educational online software platform. However, the effort that Dokeos team made results in a $250/month license for “Training Centers” and $385/month price of the “Corporate” license, as listed on their website. Those licenses apply for groups from 1 to 50 users. Any educational or learning institution which has one thousand uses of the system should be prepared to pay $2300/month for the “Training” license and $1700/month for the “Corporate” one.

Dokeos is obviously a commercial project. For commerce purposes it is integrated with Shopify, a hosted commercial e-commerce software, which starts selling licenses at $29/month for a license with limited functionality.

Considering the high cost of Dokeos licenses compared to other Open Source CMS, the Dokeos is obviously not a preferred web-based system for educational activities. Still, its worth’s to be examined by any well-funded organizations.

eFront

eFront has been established as Moodle alternative. It has been launched in 2001, which means it has been around for almost two decades. eFront runs Linux and Microsoft Windows. In order for the software work properly the hosted environment needs to support PHP 5.1+ and MySQL 5+.

eFront has a community edition distributed as Open Source software and three commercial editions which offer more advanced features for educational institutions and enterprises. Paid versions come with full source code but only the community edition uses an OSI accepted license.

From web development point of view, a very good feature of eFront its native HTML5 editor. The community editions features the following functionality: user management; lessons, courses, curriculum and categories management; files management; exam builders; assignments builders; communication tools (forum, chat, calendar, glossary); progress tracking; authentication methods; enrollment methods; certifications; reports generators; extensibility via modules; payments integration through PayPal; social tools such as lesson & system history, user wall, user status and Facebook interconnection; customizable notification system through email; availability of different design patterns.

The eFront license commercial license for up to 1000 user’s costs $750/month, which makes it more affordable than Dokeos.

It worths taking the time to compare all those the content management systems created for learning and educational purposes. Planning the process of growing your organization’s online based educational activities is very important as it will help you to take control over the short term and long-term IT infrastructure costs.

 

Leslie Wilder a creative writer & blogger, who is residing in Nashville the capital of U.S. state of Tennessee, I’m also a self-proclaimed happiness junkie, and someone you would generally consider confident and well balanced.

 

6 Outstanding Study Abroad Programs

BY JANE HURST

As you are getting ready for your semester and figuring out what classes to take, you should consider a study abroad program. These programs offer you an experience of a lifetime. You can experience a different culture and learn a new language. There are many opportunities out there with study abroad programs. Here are six great study abroad programs that you can take part in.

 

1. IES Abroad Siena Summer – This program takes you to Italy for cuisine classes. Sienna is a small town located in the Tuscany region of Italy. You can immerse yourself in the food and culture of this medieval city. There are gelato laboratories, vineyards, restaurants, and dairies available to help you immerse yourself in Tuscan food. If you are lucky, you can travel to Sienna in July to witness the Palio. It is a famous horse race that takes place at the Piazza del Campo and has roots in the Middle Ages. So travel to Tuscan and enjoy the food and atmosphere of a wonderful city.
2. CIS (China International Summer) Program – The CIS program is located in Shanghai, China and it is focused on academic research. Every summer, the program invites a large group of renowned professors from top universities around the world to lead research projects. When you are not involved with research or your classes, you can explore country and the unique cultural experience it has to offer. This is a one-month long program available to high school and college students taught in English. One class even created and launched a remote sensing satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. If you are interested in spending a summer in research in a unique setting, this is the program for you.
3. USAC France: Lyon – This study abroad program takes you to France, specifically Lyon to study Art history, French language, and Francophone studies. This is a yearlong in-depth language arts program where you will earn credits for French and additional studies. You can enjoy a weekend skiing on the Alps or enjoy Bourgogne. You can tour Provence and visit the Mediterranean coast. You will enjoy the food and atmosphere of Lyon while you study French and other classes.
4. College Year in Athens – Imagine yourself on the island of Greece. You could be living there for a year with this program. You can focus on East Mediterranean and European studies while enjoying the culture of Athens. Field trips and other travels to parts of Europe and Greece are included in your tuition. If you are interested in Athens and want to submerge yourself in Ancient Greek history or foreign languages, this is the program for you.
5. ISA Study Abroad in Sevilla, Spain – You can study abroad in the fourth largest city in Spain. There are various courses and lengths of time you can spend in Sevilla. Sevilla is a modern city with traditional highlights. It is easy to get around by bike or metro. You will be surrounded by flamenco dancing and tapas bars as you study in Sevilla. You can spend time biking along the Guadalquivir River taking in the sights and sounds of Sevilla. The largest Semana Santa celebration takes place in Sevilla which includes 12-hour long processions during Holy Week. They also celebrate Feria de Abril which is a festival with food and traditional dance. Come celebrate with the locals while earning some college credits.
6. Uppsala International Summer Session – This is a summer abroad program that takes place in Sweden. Your courses will range from two to nine weeks. You will learn the Swedish language, history, and culture. You can wander around the botanical gardens and visit the iconic gothic cathedral in Uppsala. You can find prehistoric burial mounds in Old Uppsala and fantastic food and museums throughout the city. You will enjoy your intensive language study program over the summer in Uppsala.

 

Byline:

Jane Hurst has been working in education for over 5 years as a teacher. She loves sharing her knowledge with students, is fascinated about edtech and loves reading, a lot. Follow Jane on Twitter.

 

 

Sleep enhances studying – ensuring better sleep habits 

By Emma Bonney

College life has its ups and downs, and the increased number of study responsibilities might be currently stressing you out. You should know that your ability to study effectively could be influenced by your sleep habits. If you are currently not prioritizing an appropriate sleeping schedule, or you are dealing with other inconveniences that prevent you from resting peacefully, your academic performance will soon have to suffer as well. To ensure better sleep and thus enhance your study results, consider the following aspects:

Get a mattress of higher quality

If you are currently sleeping in a bed that is less qualitative, your sleep will also be affected. A mattress that isn’t designed with quality in mind will not allow you to rest as comfortably as you desire, so replacing it with a better alternative is recommended here. Students that stay in dorm rooms usually deal with this type of problem, so if you are one of them, you shod be taking matters into your own hands. Deciding when to buy a bed is easy is you are constantly dealing with restless nights due to mattress discomfort.

Create an optimal sleep schedule

Meeting up with friends late at night, going to parties and studying throughout the night before an important exam are habits that numerous students have become used to in college. However, this sort of behavior and imbalanced sleep schedule is doing more harm to your study abilities and performance than you would imagine. You are advised to come up with a sleep schedule and try your best to stick to it. While you could make a few compromises from time to time, during the weekend, through the rest of the week, going to bed at reasonable hours is a must.

Limit your caffeine consumption

Your inability to fall asleep easily or an agitated sleep might be triggered by your caffeine consumption. Avoid drinking coffee at night, and limit your intake throughout the entire day as well. A morning coffee is probably sufficient to keep you energized, and reduced consumption might be the solution to your issues in this department.

Light control

Light control is another important aspect that needs to be mentioned here. A bright room will not only prevent you from falling asleep easily, but can affect your sleep quality in general, so make sure the lights are turned out when you go to bed, and try your best to make the area as dark as possible. New shades on your windows might be needed, or even unplugging certain appliances before bed.

Your acidic performance during college years can be influenced by a wide variety of factors, and your sleep quality is one of them. Without optimal habits in this department, studying will seem more difficult than it should, and your abilities to obtain great marks on your exams can be affected. If you are currently dealing with problems here, the pointers suggested in this article can help you obtain an improvement. Better sleep will result in better study results, so give these ideas some thought.

A bit about myself:

Emma Bonney is a successful blogger whose articles aim to help readers with self-development, Women’s Empowerment, Education, entrepreneurship and content management.

Life Hacks for New And Recent College Students of the 21st Century

BY ANTON LUCANUS

 The day has come. You are off to college for the start of what will very likely be the most exciting – and possibly challenging – years of your life. Between balancing your finances, juggling classes and figuring out how to handle real-life relationships, your college days will offer you more than just a few learning opportunities. But don’t be daunted by what lies ahead, simply be prepared. Here are a few simple life hacks for the 21^st century student who wants to be do just this…

Get Organised

 With the approximate 1.2 billion apps available for download in the App store today, it surely comes as no surprise that there are a tonne of apps dedicated purely to helping students get themselves organised. The intuitive homework planner Studious, for example, invites students to populate the app with information about their classes, times, professors and locations, as well as homework and exam information, and the app reminds students of important dates and classes just in time. There is also Scribd, an app which allows students to find hundreds of thousands if not millions of relevant documents, books and papers to help with their studies; and StudyChecker, which records your daily, weekly, monthly breaks and studies to generate personal study statistics and helps you to divide your studying breaks up evenly for each subject or exam.

Though not designed specifically for students, Any.Do is another gamechanger for students seeking to organize themselves more efficiently. This app helps users create the ultimate ‘to-do’ list, then synchronizes it with all devices so that the planner can be accessed from anywhere. Students can mark tasks as complete, set themselves reminders, and all tasks are synced with Google calendar meaning students can get a visual impression of what their upcoming week looks like.

You will be surprised when realize how much time can be saved with such organization and daily schedule planning. Just imagine how that you will finally have a time for dancing lessons, foreign languages, book clubs or even join life support classes. Everything that you ever wanted but always postponing due to the constant good old “I have no time” issue.

Quit Being Distracted

 The old-fashioned approach would simply be to switch off your phone and not listen to music while studying. In this day and age where studying and completing homework typically involves having multiple tabs open in front of you at once, something a little more hardcore is required to deter students from the temptations of social media and other binge-worthy internet sites. There are a handful of apps which allow you to block distracting websites for a chosen period of time, meaning that until that time lapses you cannot access those sites under any circumstance. This is an absolute gamechanger for college students, who typically struggle to go more than 20 minutes without checking their social media accounts…

Quit Cramming

 Is your go-to approach to studying last-minute cramming? Energizing yourself with late night coffees, sweets and red bull in order to make the most of those final opportunities to study? Well, it turns out that can actually be having a detrimental effect on your ability to retain that information. The BBC reported that planning more effective, spaced out study time is in fact more effective for 90 per cent of students, despite the fact that 72 per cent of students would argue otherwise. This is because, contrary to our metacognitive instincts, the trade-off between sleep and study just isn’t worth it. UCLA researchers have confirmed that regardless of how much a student studies in one day, if that student sacrifices sleep time in order to study, he or she is likely to have academic problems as a result the following day.

Focus on the Font

 Avoid easy-to-read fonts such as Arial Black when creating your study notes, since it has been proven that information presented in more difficult-to-read fonts is retained much better by students on average. In one study carried out at Princeton University, subjects were given 90 seconds to memorize information before given a 15-minute break as a distraction. When tested on the content of the information studied after the break, those who had read in an easy-to-read font (Arial pure black) answered 72.8 per cent of the answers correctly, compared to 86.5 per cent of those who had studied the material in hard-to-read fonts (a smaller Comic Sans MS font or Bondoni MT in a lighter shade).

Get App-Savvy

 Beyond those apps that can help you to self-organize your life, there are also subject specific apps that can help make your life easier. If you are studying to become a video editor or need to edit your own videos for class projects, for example, there are a whole heap of video editing programs that will allow you to work on becoming the next Michael Khan.

For those studying sports and exercise science, you have your pick of fitness apps including Yo-Yo Test, Beep Test, VERT – for testing vertical jump measurements – and Photo Finish Timer, which doesn’t really require explaining. For artists in the making, there are apps besides Pinterest that will inspire creativity in budding artists, including Procreate, Artnear, TypeDrawing and Sketchbook Pro, to name a few. Have a browse of the App store today and get yourself set up with any apps that might make your studies that little bit easier…

Learn to Love Coffee

            This legal drug is a must for every college student – some may even tout it as their life support, unable to function without it. Coffee is the elixir which keeps many students going. There is no other substitute which is able to give you that caffeine buzz to kick start your morning and keep you focused when you need the late nights.

Between its ability to fuel you through long studious days after sleepless nights of revelling and its longstanding reputation as offering the ultimate excuse to network and meet potential new employers and mentors, you really ought to hone your love of this bitter beverage before starting University. It’s also waaaaay more affordable than food, meaning coffee is the cheapest breakfast going around. (Disclaimer: Eating a healthy breakfast is important too, I am simply a realist and aware of one’s typical University budget).

Byline – Anton Lucanus is the Director of Neliti. During his college years, he maintained a perfect GPA, was published in a top cancer journal, and received many of his country’s most prestigious undergraduate scholarships. Anton writes for The College Puzzle as a means to guide current students to achieve personal and academic goals

     

 

 

 

What to Consider When Choosing A Major

BY BRETT CLAWSON

Deciding on a major is a major step in your academic career and life. The major you’re in will determine what classes you need to take, who you interact with, and potentially even what job you end up getting later in life. While there are countless factors you should consider throughout the process, here are some of the most important questions you should ask yourself.

What Do You Enjoy?

One of the first questions to ask, whether or not you enjoy certain topics is a key factor in whether you will be successful in that major. Even if you are very talented at biochemistry (or any other major, for that matter), if it’s not something you’re interested in, it probably isn’t for you. On the other hand, being truly interested in a topic will probably help you accomplish things beyond your comfort zone.

What Are You Good At?

That being said, you should keep in mind what you have a natural talent for or greater experience with in order to boost your chances of success. If you feel like a major might be the perfect choice for you, but you have no experience with it, consider taking a couple of courses first to decide whether or not you really do like it or are even capable of performing well in that subject. Picking a major requires balancing between what your favorite subjects are and which ones you are skilled in.

Who’s Willing to Help You?

Another factor to take into consideration is whether or not you’ll be able to network well with other people in your subject. Ideally, you’ll already have people you know studying or working in your chosen field of study. If not, figure out ways to meet new people who study the same subject. Attend clubs, activities, reach out to people through phone calls or emails. Being able to work well with other people in your chosen field of study is a major determinant of success.

What School Are You Attending?

If you’re already in college, you should select a major that your school specializes in, if at all possible. Students in different majors at the same university can have completely different experiences. Access online ratings, ratings provided by news sources, and communicate with students directly to find out what majors are popular, well-organized, or have high graduate success rates at your university.

What Are the Professors and Students Like?

Get to know your campus and the people on it. Each major will have a particular feel that will attract certain types of people. While not all of the people have to be (or even should be) the same, make sure the people within the major are the kind of people with whom you’d enjoy learning. Look for people and professors who share similar skills and values as you. Also, look for majors where you might be able to contribute a unique perspective. Some professors appreciate this, and others do not, and much of this depends on your subject of study.

What Are Your Plans After College?

Majors are about learning and enjoyment, but they should have a purpose. Where do you want the major to take you? Decide whether you want to go to graduate school or start working in your field right away. Some majors are better after you’ve completed a graduate degree while others may lead to employment. If you’re on the fence about whether or not you’d like to go to graduate school, keep in mind that you can work and complete a masters program online. Although majors tend to be more flexible now than in the past, pick a major that leads to a job that you can imagine yourself enjoying long-term.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that there are many things to consider when picking a major, don’t let it psych you out. As you take classes at your university, you will begin to discover what works for you. Also, remember that your major is important but won’t necessarily determine the rest of your life.

Byline:  Brett Clawson is a writer and entrepreneur with a degree in Business Management. He enjoys researching emerging business trends and sharing their impact on business and the industry as a whole. He believes that the best way to influence others and share his knowledge with the world is through his writing.

 

 

College Tours: What High School Students Want

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

Walking backward on tours doesn’t impress anyone anymore. How can colleges make an impact? And how can colleges outside California attract Californians?

LOS ANGELES — Remember how at one point it was kind of cool when a guide on a college tour walked backward? That day is gone, said four counselors last week at a session at the annual meeting of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. The problem is that everyone does it, so it doesn’t stand out to any student (or parent) anymore, at least after visiting a second college with such guides.

The counselors were gathered to provide insights into what high school students (in this case from California high schools with high college-going rates) want when they are interacting with college admissions officers. The counselors acknowledged that students are fickle.

“Our business is designed around the predictability of 18-year-olds,” said Jeff Morrow of Oaks Christian School, who added that 18-year-olds are anything but predictable. But that said, they shared what they are hearing about student reactions.

While students are over being impressed by guides walking backward, they pay a lot of attention to the guides themselves, and college officials were urged to pay close attention to the quality of tours. Several counselors said that when they are being debriefed by students about their college trips, students will reference the name of the guide before the name of the college — and connecting with that person seems to be something high school students expect. This may be unfair to colleges, but institutions need to know that they are being judged by their tour guides, the counselors said.

Students want the information they receive to be customized and not just a general pitch, the counselors said. They criticized those colleges that send out representatives to high schools who just give the same talk over and over again.

“Sometimes the college just dives in to the general spiel” without customizing by asking students what they want to know about, said Casey Rowley, a counselor at Beverly Hills High School.

Colleges that are prestigious “assume that students will know things that they don’t know,” said Rebecca Heller of the Viewpoint School. While students may know that a given college is prestigious, they may not know much more, she said.

Morrow said that college recruiters frequently fail to meet the needs of all of the students who come to their visits. Morrow’s school opens these visits to sophomores, juniors and seniors — who are at very different stages of their college searches, and college representatives don’t seem aware of this all the time, he said. The sophomores “don’t always know what to ask,” so a college rep needs to provide some structure.

While the counselors were critical of some of the visits their high schools receive, they all said that they see better interactions in these small group meetings than at college fairs, where applicants and college reps are engaged in something that resembles speed dating.

“Everyone ends up looking the same. The brochures are all the same,” said Evelyn Alexander of Magellan College Counseling.

Several questions from the audience (primarily made up of college admissions officials) indicated that they agreed that there was relatively little value in many college fairs. But they said that they feel obliged to be there, especially if colleges with which they compete for students will be present.