Transcript
Hi, I’m Tom Mortimer, an author of material found in ANCtoolkit. I’m also interested in how students can acquire the knowledge in this repository. This short video is presented as an experience two people have had and may be useful for you.
I’m going to introduce you to Juana Barrera because I observed, over the semester in class, that she was using a learning technique similar to what I had learned and resulted in a major turn-around in my academic career.
In high school, I had chosen to pursue a vocational education to become an auto mechanic. I got out of school at noon, worked on cars, got credit for two classes each semester, and got payed: Made total sense to me at the time. A couple of years out I decided to enter college and study electrical engineering. My last science course was biology in the eighth grade and math was plain geometry, and a rather poor grade at that. I struggled academically the first couple of years. In the fifth semester I took my second electrical engineering course taught by Dr. Seacat, a man with an unforgiving reputation who I believed would be my demise. He gave a ten-minute exam at the beginning of each class, covering anything he thought we should have seen at that point in our academic career; and even straying into areas he was sure we hadn’t seen (the Battle of Lepanto, my signature ten-minute exam for all classes I have taught, in homage to Dr. Seacat): There were many zeros on the graded exams. However, he had a modus operandi, he would repeat the exam if there were many zeros. That’s part 1 on my experience.
Now to part 2. There was a textbook for the class but it was not apparent that his lectures had any direct relationship to it. I took notes in class and later in the same day rewrote the notes in another notebook. Rewriting the notes revealed holes in my understanding that I could fill in from conversations with classmates, other books and even the textbook. Prior to the next class meeting I reviewed all of the rewritten notes for the whole semester. Over the course of the semester a glance was sufficient to review the earlier class notes.
Here is what I learned:
1. Don’t let something I don’t understand slip by.
2. I rarely got two zeros in a row.
3. It was my first A in a course that I didn’t need to study for the final exam; I had assimilated the knowledge through repeated review prior to exam time.
Now, let’s turn to Juana who will give you details on her approach to assimilating knowledge from ANCtoolkit.
Hi Juana, your turn.
Hello! My name is Juana Barrera. I was Dr. Mortimer’s student at CWRU and I used the ANCtoolkit to learn about neural control. With this video, I will tell you how I used the tool kit to be successful in class and some other tips on how to get the most out of the tool kit.
The tools I will be using throughout this video to take notes include an iPad, an apple pencil, and the app notability. I am not being sponsored by any of these products, but similar tools such as other tablets, and computers can be used instead.
Let us get started!
I have chosen to use the video titled “Cyclic Voltammogram and the Electron Transfer Process,” which can be found on Module 2 section “Measurements, Electrodes, and Cyclic Voltammetry” of the toolkit, as an example.
The first thing I do is I watch the entire video once. While I am watching the video, I take note of several things. First, I try to get a rough idea of what the video is about and what type of information and useful graphics are shown. Second, I also get a rough idea of the time at which I think the slide with most of the information appears. In this particular video, there is no changes to the slide, but some videos will have more than one slide. Just make sure you get a rough idea of the most important information to capture.
Once I am done watching the video. I go back and stop the video at the times I recorded earlier. Then I take a screen shot if I’m watching this on my iPad or take a picture if I am watching this on another device.
Now that I’ve done that, I can insert this image directly in my notes.
Next, I watch the video again. This time around I pay attention to the important details that I might have missed the 1st time or that are not found in my pictures. Every-time I come across important information I pause the video and give myself time to write it down. I think that this is the most important step because It gave me time to digest the information and recall it better later on.
I am going to play the video again and listen to Dr. Mortimer carefully.
Normally I would pause the video here. At this time Dr. Mortimer has just explained what the red line means. I can now write down next to it. “Linear sweep of interface potential, approx. steady state, thermodynamics”. Next, I can continue to watch the video.
I’m going to pause here to write down what Dr. Mortimer mentioned which I think is very important. He just described what this black line represents. Continue this process until you reach the end of the video and you feel like you have all the important information. Like I said, writing down information as you go along is very important to remember later on.
If you find yourself stuck I recommend rewinding the video and listening to the information again or scrolling down to the transcript to read the information. Another thing that can you can do is write down information on the side or write down questions that might come to mind.
If you follow these tips, I guarantee that you will succeed.
Thank you for watching.