Study Sessions: Before, During and After

I usually study between 10am and 2pm because my boyfriend works nights. 

Before:

1. Organise your study area - don't deep clean as procrastination!
2. Grab drinks/food/snacks of your choice (Healthy snacks will help you concentrate for longer)
3. Choose a study playlist on YouTube or Spotify (I have a post coming soon!) if you like background music to study with
4. List all the study tasks you need to get done for the whole week - the OU week starts on a Saturday so that's when I write this list
5. Organise your calendar for the week with other commitments such as work shifts or after-school clubs where you have to pick up your children at a specific time
6. Add study sessions around your commitments - one study session should be 30 minutes study:10 minutes break:30 minutes study (You may have time for two or three study sessions a day depending on how busy your life is)

During:

1.  Prioritise the tasks you need to get done that day - 2 big tasks or 4/5 small tasks
2. Time yourself for 30-45 minutes and then have a break for 10 minutes
3. Repeat this until either the tasks are done or you have something else scheduled
4. You should only have two or three study sessions a day so that you can concentrate on each task sufficiently

After:

1.  Highlight/mark/cross out the tasks that you have completed
2. Transfer any uncompleted/partly completed tasks to the next day and prioritise them as tasks that need to be done before anything else
3. Review how successful the study session was and identify ways to improve - did you get interrupted because you were studying as the kids came home from school or it wasn't baby's nap time yet?
4. Don't forget that you don't have to study every day - depending on whether you are studying part time or full time and your course, you should be told the number of hours you are expected to study each week. Some courses are more intense than others

That's it for now,

Kazia

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Study Sessions: How do I use references?

Most students are scared of referencing, maybe because they're inexperienced or because they have not organised their notes accordingly.

So what are references and why do you need to use them?

Students must include in-text citations when they refer to, summarise, paraphrase, or quote from another source and then reference them in an alphabetically ordered list. This ensures that the author has been acknowledged and other people can further their own independent research on the subject. In-text citations give brief details of the author's surname, year of publication, and particular page numbers used. For example (Terry, 2017, p. 1)

For me, I find referencing easy because I make my notes as I go through each module. On the Open University website, there is a study planner that sets out work for each week. 

This is a glossary of terms from my module book.
I have four module books this year so alternated by writing in light green/dark green and pink/purple.
The minty green colour is for the source of a quote.

All the quotes I use this year will be in the same minty green colour so that I keep my notes organised and ready for assignments. I will use the same colour in my typed notes and assignments too and then change the colour before I submit the assignments. Obviously, everyone that uses a colour coding system does it differently or uses different colours but this is the way that I have found works best for me. The pens I use are Staedtler Triplus Fineliners which can be found for around £10-20.

That's it for now,

Kazia