Slide 1: Introduction Slide 2: Time Management Self Assessment

Transcription

1 Slide 1: Introduction First of all I want to thank everybody for taking time out of their morning to sit through this presentation. This whole presentation came about last summer. I was fortune enough to visit Saint Francis campus and got to talk to Ms. McCarty and Ms. Cronin about the possibility of doing a series like this. For those of you who are quite familiar with how Saint Francis works, it is all about student success at this University. Which is one of the reasons why I love working here so much. When Ms. McCarty and Ms. Cronin and I were talking we were like we need a time management piece that s going to make our students more successful. A lot of the things that I ve noticed in my lifetime as a student and instructor is that time management is of the outmost importance. And I ve got to tell you, I was the worst at time management. I am the ultimate procrastinator and to this day I am still the ultimate procrastinator. However, there are things that I have learned along the way to kind of take those things away so that I am not such a huge procrastinator. So I want to share some tips with you that I have found that have worked along the way. These are tips I share with my associate of science students at my current job and things I want to share with you because I know as a graduate student, having lived through that experience on both a masters and graduate level, if I hadn t managed my time, I probably would not have been as successful. So, I want to help you be more successful at getting through an online graduate program. Before I do get started, I would like you to chime in with questions as you have them. Or, as Ms. Cronin mentioned there is some opportunity to do some chat work or you can just type some stuff up and I ll try to respond as we go along. So, if you are all ready, let s get started. Slide 2: Time Management Self Assessment A couple of things, as I was putting this presentation together, I found a self assessment tool out online which I found to be very very helpful. One of the things that I found on this tool was a check-off list to see how actually well my time management is and kind of assess myself. And I think the biggest part of doing a time management assessment is to really take a deep look at yourself to see what it is that is holding you back from being successful. Let s take a look at this very quickly, Do you organize things that need to be completed? Do you make lists? I was never a list maker but over time I learned to make a list. I find that if I m over programed with school and work and family and whatever it is I need to do and you re probably feeling the exact same way Is if I don t write things down, I can t remember a darn thing. And it happens all the time. And, I hate to say it, as we get older things start to sorta slip a little bit. So for those of you who are younger, preserve your memory, it s an awesome thing to have. Having the ability to keep things in lists, my favorite thing about a lists is that you can check things off as you get done and at the end of the day, if I ve gone through my whole list, and I ve crossed things off, I know I ve had a very very successful day.

2 The next thing, procrastination. Well, I don t know about you but I find I was a big procrastinator and there s still somethings I procrastinate about. I know if I become overwhelmed, I have a tendency to not know where to start. So procrastination leads to that where do I start, where do I start And it s like with anything, if you take one task and leave it to do later and you have another task to do and another task to do.. And the next thing that happens you have all these tasks that have balled up on top of each other and you just don t know where to begin. So, do you procrastinate when you have tasks? And I think one of the biggest things I ve found with students when it comes to procrastination is their soo overwhelmed they don t know where to start. And not knowing where to start will lead to worst series of procrastination. The best thing I could tell you is don t procrastinate. Find ways to schedule your time and we re gonna talk about those things as we move through this presentation. Small blocks of time are very important. And, do you use your time wisely? Small blocks of time work fabulously. Take a goal that you want to set, assign a time to it, see how long it will take you to reach that goal. Also with these small blocks of time, you ve got to remember if you re sitting in front of book, or reading a chapter, or a project for too long, it starts to become redundant and you start to lose yourself. What I m trying to get at is this Use those small blocks of time/set-up small blocks of time. And also evaluate how do you use your time? I know that it s difficult if you ve got clinic, you have family, you have school work, you have laundry, you have to do your homework, you have to do a writing project, you have go through and do 15 other things outside of that. And if you have kids on top of that, it can make things difficult. How do you use your time wisely so that you re not so over-programmed and you don t know how to start. Do you prioritize what you need to do, what need to be completed? Priorities are important. Now, I m not saying that there s nothing in your life that s not important. But do you prioritize what s more important, what s least important. And do your priorities match the needs of what you need to be successful not only in family life, school, and career but how do you prioritize those items. How are you motivated? Well I can tell you as a graduate student obviously your motivation is to complete your degree. So what s going to motivate you to complete your degree? What s going to motivate you to complete your writing assignment? What s going to motivate you to do your homework? What motivates you in your family life? What motivates you in your career? Find those things that motivate you to complete your task. I have a lot of motivational skills from when I was a student that to these days as an online instructor and a full time instructor, I set up little tasks that I d like to complete. For those of you who don t know me too well, I m a tremendously huge golfer and I live in South Florida. So my motivation is if I get a task completed, I can go out and play a round of golf. And I used that when I was a student. During my graduate years, I would actually sit down and would write a paper (and we had large papers due every single week). If I completed a certain chapter or section of my paper by a certain

3 time, I was allowed to go out and play golf. What motivates you to complete? If you have kids, what s your favorite thing to do with your kids go to a movie, go to the mall, go to the park whatever it is. So, do you have something that s going to motivate you to complete your tasks so you can actually go enjoy yourself without always having your face in a book or writing a paper? How do you plan to reach your goals? That s a big huge thing. What is your plan for reaching your goals? I have found over the years as an instructor and even as a student, who know you start out and you say my goal is to complete this thing and I m going to fly right through this thing no problem. You hit your first class online and you have someone like me who teaches 503 Research and you re looking at the amount of work you have to do and are like is this girl crazy? So, how do you reach your goals? Where do you set your priorities and getting to your goals. What are the little things that you can do to make you more successful and to reach those goals. I think the last issue on balance is huge. What kind of balance do you have in your life? And that s really hard. You know you come into these online programs thinking you have it all figured out. I can do this for work (if you re a nurse 12 hour schedule), then you have to go home take care of the kids possibly. Hopefully you have a significant other who is also going to be very helpful with helping you balance your life. What are your priorities? I find that balance in life has everything to do with setting aside time that is for just you. I call it the me time. What is your me time? What do you do to make sure you have time to make sure your kids aren t left alone, to make sure your significant other isn t left alone, to make sure you have a little fun in your life while getting that thirteen page paper done by Sunday night at 11:59 while reading all the stuff that goes with it. So, where is the balance in your life? All of this goes back to prioritizing. And, looking at your management style. Hopefully as we go through the rest of these slides we can find the one thing that can help you be more successful. Slide 3: Objectives So very simply, after you ve done a self-assessment, let s look at what we re going to try to achieve as we go through this. What is time management when people ask you to define stuff can you actually define it. One of the things I found when I was researching for this PowerPoint was trying to find out how students spend their time. There s a lot of information out there about undergraduate students and how they spend their time. But, how do graduate students spend their time. We are a different level of student. Students who go to graduate school, probably have several years working in their modality whatever it is, health sciences or business. Most of our graduate students are probably married, have kids, they have other obligations things like mortgages and things like that. So how do graduate students spend their time. And it s a lot different than what undergraduate students did. When I was an undergraduate student, my biggest concern was how do I get up the next morning to go to class. Nowadays it s

4 how do I get up in the morning, go to work and be a successful student, family member, co-worker, clinician, whatever it is. So let s look at how we spend our time. We ll look at some management mistakes. We re also going to prioritize these tasks and our school assignments. If you re taking more than one class at a time this is going to be really really important. Because graduate level classes as you probably already noticed have a higher amount of workload then what you were used to in the undergraduate. I think one of the mis-conceptions is well I did so well in my undergraduate work, masters should be a piece of cake. I ve talked to a lot of graduate students from Saint Francis and where I went to school at Nova University that were so overwhelmed with the amount of work that they had a hard time prioritizing their tasks. What are time wasters? Well, I find that when we discuss time wasters we are going to find a common theme in the whole thing. I have to hit the social media thing. How much time do you spend on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, those types of things. Technology has really kind of promoted what is a time waster. And let s look at some effective time management tools that we can use for some of our online courses. One of the biggest misconceptions that s out there and as a student I had the exact same misconception is that oh its online, this is going to be a piece of cake. Face-to-face I had to go to class everyday. But online, I can log in whenever I want to, I can turn my assignments in when I want to. It doesn t work that way. So, as an online graduate student, I m sure you ve discovered that the misconception is that online work is easier then face-to-face. I think online is actually hard because you have to have such a good time management piece. Before we go any further, does anyone have any questions? If you have any questions you can go ahead and type them in or just ask me. No questions, I m going to go ahead and keep moving along. Slide 4: Lack of Time Management Skills: What Can Happen What can happen if you don t have any time management skills? The biggest thing that I have found is chronic procrastination. In other words, if you procrastinate too much then there s a lack of motivation and a lack of priorities. And I have found from experience that if I m a chronic procrastinator or I ve taken too much time to get stuff done, I become more and more un-motivated. Then, it becomes an issue of where do I get started, I don t even know where to begin. All the sudden you realize you have 15 tasks to do. Procrastination is a big part of this whole time management piece. Other things that can happen, declining academic performance. If you don t have a time management plan in process, in progress, or you haven t developed one, academic performance is huge. I have to wonder, and I was this student, I m motivated by grades and if I don t get A s I m going to be really mad. And I ve had As all my live, and I ve never had to do any time management. Then all of a sudden I have so many things on my plate and I can t keep up with my grades that becomes a problem. With

5 lacking time management skills, you start to see a decline in you r grades and your performance. Then the class load gets to be too much. And all the sudden your family s on you because you don t have enough time to deal with them. Then, your work starts to slip and personal obligations start to slip. Not having a time management plan or time management skill or opportunity to set your own time is actually going to lead to some poor academic performance. I ve gotten plenty of s of oh my gosh, I m soo sorry my grades are slipping but I haven t had time to do anything. Then, we have to have the talk on time management. Did you prioritize, did you do this? I m constantly dealing with this not only with online students but with face-to-face students. Sleep is one of those things that we all crave. They tell you to get your 8 hours of sleep. And every time somebody says to me well you need 8 hours of sleep and I say I m happy if I get 5 or 6 hours. Sleep is important. You need to really re-generate your brain. Find ways to get more sleep. I know you are all probably laughing at that. Your thinking, I just worked a 12 hour shift, I have to come home, I have to do a discussion board, and I have to go write a paper, I have to research, I have to pull out my APA manual (cause I know how much you all love APA), and I have to do all these things when am I supposed to go to bed? The next thing you know, it s 2 or 3 o clock in the morning, you re falling asleep in your books and alarm goes off at 6 am to get the kids up to go to school. I understand all that. But there s got to be a way for you to find a chance to get some sleep. Maybe, re-prioritizing what you need to do. Maybe setting up your time in smaller chunks so you have an opportunity to sleep. I m a big fan of napping especially on the weekends. I do go hard and heavy at it all week long. I find ways to get my sleep not only during the week but on the weekends. Diet is huge. Unhealthy eating habits. How many of you are constantly on the go? You re going to work, on the way home you grab some fast food, you go home take care of the kids, laundry, walk the dog, whatever it is you have to do. Maybe, its taking a look at your diet. Diet has everything to do with it. Participant Comment Myrna asked a very important question, my issue has to do with demanding job performance as a clinical therapist manager, supervisor and educator unfortunately my family has grown, I am responsible for myself primarily. That is tough. Currently Myrna I have a student right now, who is having the same exact issue. We sat down and we did some time management skills and it came down to small chunks of time. Trying to figure out where can she spend time with her family, where can she keep up with the demanding amount of work she needs for school and she s trying to work and she s a single mom of 5 kids under the age of 10. I get that. I can understand where graduate school can be very demanding. As far as your job performance as a therapist and a manager and as an educator I can see it all becomes very demanding. I don t have a see all, be all on how to fix it. Im hoping that you can walk away from this with few more

6 management tips along the way. Don t worry Myrna, I m on your side, I feel ya, I know how you re feeling. Let me go back to what I was saying about diet and unhealthy eating habits. We re all healthcare workers or have been in healthcare or have some sort of health science background. We know the importance of a good diet. Watch the fat, watch the high sugars, watch the fast food. I know we re talking about time management but is there a way to put together healthy meals in some of your spare time that you can pack to take with you? Or take with you healthy snacks like fruits and vegetables and things like that. High fat, high sugar foods lead to burn out. You hear about people who need sugar rushes in the afternoon. I m sure you ve all been there. You eat a doughnut and you re feeling oh man, I m all fired up. In about twenty minutes you re about to crash. I also want to throw in there that I ve noticed a huge increase in the amount of energy drinks that people are drinking. Stay off of the Monster, stay off of all those types of things. Those do not help you. Healthy foods, low in fat and low in sugar. Those will definitely help you. Another issue is risk of dropping out or taking longer to complete a degree. I found a statistic that says that 30% of college students leave college of take longer to complete the degree because of time management skills. I know when you come into these types of programs, you think alright here we go. You re gonna take off. I want to get this done in 15 months and then you realize oh my goodness that s not gonna happen. It s gonna take me a little longer than that. Having poor time management may lead to withdrawing from courses, maybe being a little overwhelmed, maybe taking longer to complete the degree then you thought was gonna happen. Here again, take into consideration about a 1/3 of college students because they have poor management skills will leave because they can t keep up with the amount of work they re dealing with. Slide 5: Defining Time Management So, how do you define time management and how do you manage your time? That s a good question. We as you, as instructors, to constantly define or redefine certain terms. What is time management to you and how do you find ways to fix that? Well a couple of things is taking a look at your need to be realistic about online courses. Again, how do you define time management and how are you going to be realistic about the online courses your about to take? Here again, to me time management definitely means, without saying it, managing your time. To manage your time effectively so that you can be happy with what you re doing, and meet the needs of your goals, while trying to be the person you are outside of the classroom and outside of your professional life. Taking a look at these things, the biggest point to all of this is organization is the key. You ve got to be organized. Without organization, you re not going to meet your goals. I ve come a across a lot of graduate students, actually all of the graduate students from SFU, who are in some sort

7 of management position. You wouldn t be in a management position if you didn t know how to organize yourself. And that s what they re looking for. If you can organize yourself in your work, you should be able to organize yourself when it comes to your education and goals. Here again, one of the things to be realistic about is online courses are not easier and they will not take less time than face-to-face courses. I have found through my student career and my professional career that online courses take actually more work than the face-to-face. Other thing you need to worry about, not really worry about but take into consideration, is where can you get the resources to help you with your time management? Looking at my research, you can see I have a reference here to Online Universities they came out with this year, is that use your resources for time management. Family, work, and school. Find ways for your family to pitch in. I know in this day and age with family, everyone s so over programmed because everyone wants to do things to be successful and you have a lot of things going on your plate. But, ask your family to help you. Don t be afraid to ask for help. That is a huge thing. I know with work, it s kind of hard sometimes, especially going back to what Myrna was saying that she has a very busy schedule that she has to keep up with, so can your work also be a resource for you? Is there anyway that your work can help you with some of your time management. Maybe if you have a project due (and I know you re all laughing to yourself cause I worked in a clinic setting also) is there a resource in your work facility to help you with your time management. I know that Saint Francis and any school that I ve dealt with is all about student success. And, Saint Francis has a tremendous amount of resources to help you be successful. Part of that is that time management piece. I know that if you reach out to Ms. McCarty or Ms. Cronin even Dr. Budash, these three are soo huge into student success. So huge in making sure that we find ways for you to be successful. Use them as a resource. Bend their ear. Talk to them. They can help guide you through what is going to be successful to be a graduate student at Saint Francis. Slide 6: How Do Health Science Graduate Students Spend Their Time? I found this really interesting chart on how do health science graduate students spend their time. As you re looking at this, can you put yourself into all of this? Can you see yourself in every little bit of this? Participant comment I manage myself working clinically 4 days a week leaving Fridays for school work. Hopefully this will work as I embark on this next step. That is a great

8 idea. That is awesome! So, if you can get some help from work, by all means that is fantastic. Thank you very much for sharing that. Let s go back and take a look at this slide. So, time management, Study how much time do you leave yourself to study? How many of you have gotten through the week and said alright I m going to spend all day Saturday and Sunday doing everything I need I m going to get all me reading done, all my research done, and part of the studying have you actually gotten online into the class that week to see what you have to do that week and become overwhelm there s no way I m going to get this done, there s too much, it s crazy. So how much time do you spend studying and how much of that time do you actually go into the Canvas course and see what is due. I ve had plenty of students who said to me in the past, oh I didn t look at it until Saturday so I ran out of time. That leads to a poor grade and poor performance. And then an saying I can t believe I did so terrible, blah, blah, blah. Again, where is your study time, do you set aside a certain amount of time each week to study? I recommend when it comes to time management study to at least give yourself 2 hours a day. If you do 2 hours a day if you have one class, obviously it s different if you have more than 1 class. Maybe 2 hours a day per class to review everything so that by the time you sit down to do the classwork it doesn t seem so overwhelming and you don t have to worry about where you re going to stand to get things done. What about kids, those of you that have kids. I put in there kids/pets if you don t have kids. That is important. Your kids are going to constantly want your attention. Your pets are going to want your attention also. So the kids, mom lets go to the Mall, mom lets go to the movies, let s do this, sporting activities, extracurricular activities. While I don t have kids, I understand that parents always put their kids first. Sometimes other things get put on the back burner. There needs to be some priority while you re in school to get your kids to get another resource so they understand that what you are doing has some priority. In the long run, it s going to all work out for everybody. What about clinical work? That s huge. What if you re in a program that, this is more so for our physician assistant students that come into the program, that you have crazy clinical work. Or what if you re a nurse, or a clinical dietician, or anything that works in the health science. Your clinic work may be a 12 hour shift. That is really tough. Then, school goes with study. Fortunately as an online student, you don t have to commute but do you take advantage of your time while you re commuting? Do you take the train or bus to school or work? Can you in that timeframe sit down and take the time to study or review your notes? Laundry, housework, significant other. All of this, and I can t say it enough, is yourself. Where in all of your time management throughout the day do you take time for yourself? When do you do that? Is it after the kids go to sleep? Is it after you ve read? Is Iit before you get up in the morning? When is that time for yourself? I ve found that if I don t get my own self time, even if it s just for an hour, I get a little cranky. When I get

9 that way I have a hard time motivating myself to complete my other tasks. I think the self component is a big part of being successful in an online course and anything in life actually. Slide 7: Time Management Mistakes Some mistakes, this slide got a little wonky Failing to do a to-do list Not setting personal goals Not prioritizing Failing to manage distractions and that is huge. What is a distractor on your life? What is that distractor. I have found in this day and age, it wasn t like this when I was a kid, the biggest distractor is the online component. The social media How much time do you spend on Facebook? What about Instagram? What about Snapchat? What about Twitter? Online games I got a lot of friends who are addicted to candy crush. I have an online game that I am playing right now that sometimes I ll sit down to play it and the next thing I know 2 hours have gone away. I get soo mad at myself because I could have been doing so many other things. So what are those distractors that are keeping you from managing your time. Procrastination we talked about that Taking on too much one of the things that I came across while I was studying and putting this time piece together was we have a hard time saying NO. We do. Do you have a hard time saying no? In your work life, your boss is piling on to you, I need you to do this, I need you to do this, I need you to do this. Do you know how to say no? Or are you afraid to say no. Or do you feel oh good their coming to me, I can take it all on, they respect me. And the next thing you know, you have too much on your plate. So I think one of the things that you find, or I have found, and I do it myself, is I have a very hard time saying no. But every once and a while, I have to put my foot down. If your anything like I am, when you say no, you feel bad. You feel like you let somebody down. But there comes that component where you have to say look, I ve got too much on my plate, I ve got to do this, I have to get my paper done, I have to do these things, my kids need this, I need this. Saying no is not a bad thing. I think we re so overprogrammed saying yes all the time that every once and awhile we just have to say no Another thing I found is thriving on busy. Oh I love to be busy. I need to keep busy. If I m not busy, I m bored. Sometimes boredom is an okay thing. Always thriving on being busy might be a great thing in your eyes but every once in awhile you need to pull back the reigns and say maybe I do need to say no and not thrive so much on being busy and re-prioritize and make a list of my tasks.

10 That kind of leads into the Multitasking How about breaks? Do you take breaks? Do you when you re studying? How many of you have done this in the past how many of you have sat down to read an assignment and you ve read the same sentence or chapter five times and you still have no idea what it is saying. That means it s time to take a break. If you go out and look at some of the educational studies that have been done across the years, sitting in front of a book at a desk for 8 hours at a time while trying to take everything in is bad. You ve got to get up and walk away. You have to. How many of you are taking more than one course at a time. In other words, you re sitting there taking two courses. You have this extreme amount of work to do and all sudden you ve been sitting in front of your books, it s been 8 hours, you re trying to go across the board, trying to read all the material for both of those courses in a short amount of time. You can t do it. Your brain can t handle it. So, when do you take a break? My recommendation is this you sit for 45 minutes to an hour, read what you need to read or write what you need to write, or research what you need to research, or whatever you need to do for the assignment and then walk away. During that break, what do you do? I do it all the time. When I m grading papers, it takes me 45 minutes to grade one paper. After I grade 1 paper, I get up, I walk around the kitchen, I grab something to drink, I ll take the dog out for a walk very quickly, maybe I ll catch up on the news. I use the break as a way to clear my brain. If I clear my brain I m able to jump back in and get to my next task. You should do the same thing when you study. 45 minutes to an hour and walk away. And I know some of you are laughing think oh my gosh, that s just impossible. Give it a shot. See what happens when you walk away from something and come back minutes later. It s going to be like your brain has been recharged. Great way to take on more information as you re studying Obviously, not scheduling your tasks will lead to some of your time management mistakes. These are some great mistakes. So, go through, do a self assessment on these mistakes and find ways that you can adjust these things so that you re not taking on soo much. Slide 8: Prioritize Tasks and Assignments Prioritizing, I know I m probably sounding like a broken record by this point but I find that redundancy is the best teacher. Deadlines Let s look at deadlines, do you meet your deadlines and due dates as part of your online success? That is huge. This goes with the beginning of every semester. One of the greatest things I discovered when I started teaching at Saint Francis two years ago is that when Ms Cronin gets together with all of the instructors and we go through our syllabi is that she also puts together a week-to-week guideline or steps of

11 things that are due from week to week. Each instructor can go in and make adjustments for setting deadlines and things like that. When you log into your Canvas course in the very first week of school or when you have access to it, you go right into the welcoming module and boom, right there is a schedule of everything you need to do for the semester. So, what do you do with that schedule? Do you make a copy of it? Do you only read it from week to week? Do you not even look at it? Do you take that schedule and put those due dates into your phone or whatever time management piece you have? Since we have all these electronics out there it s fairly easy to do. Do you check your course calendar? Deadlines are huge, huge, huge. Make sure you respect the deadlines in your online courses. Milestones, again this comes down to small chunks, a lot of timeframes. As you move through your graduate program at Saint Francis and if you do decide to go on and get doctorates (and we re hoping all of you decide to do) is how do you break down your assignments into small chunks? So let s say you re taking the 503 Research course or the 513 Clinical Project course. We have the courses at Saint Francis broken up in small chunks so you get a small bit of everything and over time everything starts to come together. When you go in and take a look at your weekly assignments and you look at the things that are to be included into each of your assignments Do you take one part of that assignment and just do a little bit at a time? In other words, maybe you attack this part of the assignment on Monday and you attack this part of the assignment on Tuesday. So by the time the weekend rolls around and everything is due Sunday night you have all those chunks together and you can come up with one large project that you can turn in on Sunday night. With these deadlines and setting milestones to get things done in small chunks. If you re sitting down on Sunday to put together a page research paper you are not going to be successful or you re going to have a very difficult time being successful. So, milestones and small chunks. Consequences, that s huge. We know the consequence of not getting your assignment in on time. The consequence is that you re probably going to get a zero on that assignment because you didn t meet the deadline. Over time, if you start to miss your deadline don t you look at possible failure out of your course or consider withdrawing from the course because you can t keep up? So, what kind of consequences are you going to face if you don t complete your tasks on time? What kind of consequences in your work life do you face if you don t get your tasks done on time? What kind of consequences in your personal life are going to happen if you don t set deadlines for your personal life? One of the things that I have found over time with graduate students is that they don t understand the consequences of poor time management and how it could affect them down the road. This goes back to what I was saying early during this presentation is that we spend so much time focusing on our grades that we forget what the consequences are if we don t meet the goals to get to that grade. I find that becomes an issue with a lot of our graduate students.

12 Again, look at your time. It comes down to time, making lists. In that to-do list you re going to make up, how much time are you going to allow to do each assignment? If you think an online graduate student assignment is going to take you an hour to put together, you are sadly mistaken. Look at the degree of stuff you need to put into a discussion board in each class. You can t just sit down and type up a discussion board. A lot of your discussion boards require a tremendous amount of feedback, a tremendous amount of research, a tremendous amount of applying resource and citations. Some of your classes your discussion boards are like putting together a research assignment. So how much time are you allotting to complete a task? And how much time are you going to allot to prepare an assignment that is scholarly and meets the guidelines as well as the writing structure and APA style? If you re under the illusion that this going to happen in just a couple of hours, you are sadly mistaken. So you need to make sure how much time is going to be needed for a certain amount of assignments. And my biggest thing, I mentioned this earlier, is what type of reward are you going to get if you meet your goal. I told you my reward is golf. That s huge to me. So those of you that live in snow country who like to ski is your reward going out to ski? Is your reward going to ice skate? Do you love the movies? Do you love shopping? What is the thing that you love to do the most that you can reward yourself with? Maybe sitting watching TV catching up on Netflix, maybe binge watching some of your favorite shows that you ve been missing. When you set your goals and you prioritize, there has to be a reward at the end for you. And that reward is that me time I was talking about earlier. What goal can you set and allot a timeframe that s going to allow you to do the one thing you love that you have missed because you prioritized? And, that s the important thing that you need to ask yourself. Slide 9: Quit Wasting Your Time: What are Time Wasters? So, quit wasting your time. What is a time waster? Not knowing your priorities obviously, the biggest thing that I have found and I m finding it this semester with my set of students it not really understanding what the class is about. When you sign up for an online class and you look at the list of outcomes and things that are going to be included, do you actually read that? Do you actually figure out oh my gosh look at all the things I have to do in this class. Or is it like I just need this class to graduate so I ll just work on it week to week. That is going to be a tremendous waste of time. Make sure you review your syllabus and you understand what is ahead of you. We already talked about the social media thing. I don t have to go over it. For those of you who do teach or have kids I m sure you re all over the whole social media thing. Sit down and think to yourself how much time do I spend on social media? I can tell you, I know absolutely nothing about Facebook. I don t know how to set up a Facebook account I don t want anything to do with it. I don t go on to Twitter, I don t do Snapchat,

13 I don t do any of the Instagram stuff. I have found that social media can be a real problem. Not only can it be a loss of time, it can be a career killer because of the things that are going on out there with employers. That s a whole different discussion for down the road. But, watch your time on social media. This is also another thing that I have come across is your computer and software requirements for online course. Ms. Cronin does an awesome job of making sure that you guys understand what you need when it comes to computer and software requirements. She does a great job of making sure when students come into this program they know what their computer requirements are needed and she can give you links to help you get your computer set up to where it s supposed to be. To add to that caveat, please remember that all work needs to be in Word documents. That s the shout-out from the instructors. Distractions, find a quiet place to study and read. I know, I watched (and I was part of this to) when I was studying/reading I had the TV on with the radio in the background. Find a quiet area. Find a place that is yours. If you live in a busy house, I understand that might be difficult but is there a quiet place. Is it in your bedroom, do you have your own office? Is there a place that you can go that the people in your family know that, look when I m in this room I need to be left alone for a certain amount of time so I can get caught up. Please know that once I get everything caught up, and once I ve submitted my assignments or done what I needed to do, I can come out and play. Can you find that place? I already talked about the no thing. Don t do too much. Again, game planning. Do you have a game plan for your success? In other words, are you a good planned or a bad planner? What is your game plan for success? I can guarantee that each and every one of you that came into an online program, you re game plan was to graduate. Why wouldn t it be? You re spending money to become a graduate student. You re spending money on books and things like that. Nobody comes into a program whether it s undergrad, graduate (meaning masters or doctorate), a new job, clinical setting, anything without having some sort of a game plan. That game plan is always going to be to finish something. What happens in the time between when you enroll in the program and you graduate? You re looking at almost 2 years to figure out how not to waste your time to meet that goal. Nobody comes into graduate school and says my game plan is to not be successful. My game plan is to graduate so I have this higher degree for whatever purpose it s going to be. But, what are you going to do in between to make sure you are successful? Laying out a plan will always be a good thing. Now of course, poor organizational skills. I have to believe that none of us have poor organizational skills. We would not be where we are in life. We are the fortunate people who have the opportunity to get higher education. We are the fortunate people who have the opportunity to take all of this knowledge and pass it on to somebody else.

14 We are clinical leaders. We do so many things for our community. You wouldn t be where you are if you had poor organizational skills. How do you go about enhancing those skills to be more effective? Slide 10: Graduate Student Time Management Strategies Create daily tasks. Do lists. Take larger tasks and break them down into smaller tasks. That goes back to that taking things into smaller chunks. Complete one task before moving on to another. How many of you have three or four on our list and seems to never get done. Take the time to go through and complete one task before you go on to another. Now that I said that, those of you who are taking more than one class at a time are probably laughing thinking how s that going to happen, I have 15 papers I m writing at the same time? Again, chunks, little chunks over time. That is going to be important. But if you have 4 or 5 things hanging out there that you need to complete maybe you should prioritize what s more important and you should complete that task and take it from there. I think that would be a big help to you in the long run. Here again, graduate student will schedule too much in small timeframes. That goes back to completing tasks and prioritizing. As graduate students, we have all these life experiences and all these things going on. Yes, we have too much on our plate. So again, prioritize. Spend more time working on larger assignments than smaller ones. But I want to tell you right now, all of your assignments are important. Here again it comes down to the beginning of each semester, read that syllabus. Know what s expected of you and take a look at that course schedule that s sitting out there. It takes a lot of work to put all that stuff completed to make sure you guys are successful so that is going to be a key component. At the beginning of every single semester, you take the time to review what is going to be expected of you. And make sure you prioritize small tasks versus larger tasks. How much time am I going to need to complete this. Then, make a game plan from there. Slide 11: Graduate Student Time Management Strategies Deadlines obviously Flexible daily schedules to account for unexpected distractions. What is an unexpected distraction in your life? What is it? Maybe, all of the sudden your kid comes home and you have to meet with the teacher for some issues. So do you plan for these types of distractions and that s going to be important.

15 This is huge, this next item. What is your mental peak? That is big. Are you a morning person or are you a night person. Schedule your time around when you feel the best. I m a morning person. I get up between 4 and 4:30 every single morning. I m not telling you all to do that. I m just saying that s what works for me. I find that I do my best work from 5am to 10am. That s when I am my freshest. I ll get up in the morning, I ll grade papers, I ll do s, I do some research, anything like that. So what is your best time? Are you a night hawk? If you re a night hawk, you ve got to make sure you get your sleep somewhere in there. Where are you at your best mentally? Again, learning to say no. And remember every moment counts. So look for opportunities to review notes and class readings. Are you, and I know this may sound terrible, but do you have to go to a laundry mat to do your laundry? Take your books with you. On the bus, train take your books with you. If you have a break at lunch, I know it sounds crazy, but its these little things that you need to do that make you more successful as it comes to time management as a graduate student. You ve got to find that little space and time where you can sneak in that opportunity to review your materials for your course. So look for those opportunities to review all your material. Slide 12: Time Management Tips for Completing an Online Course Course priority. Make sure you understand the duration of your course. I know at Saint Francis we have some 15 week courses and some 7 week courses. Seven week courses are brutal, they are. You re taking a lot of material and putting it in 7 weeks. Please also keep in mind your instructors also have to prioritize their time in that 7 weeks. 7 weeks of course materials is very difficult. Again, set aside a certain amount of time every day for course work. Have a study plan Get rid of your distractors Jumping ahead, I have some students who love to jump ahead. I have students who turn in work 3 or 4 weeks ahead of time. That s fabulous, that s awesome. If you can actually get yourself, maybe start off in small chunks, maybe I can get my coursework in Saturday instead of Sunday. Then you challenge yourself the next week, maybe I can get my stuff in by Friday instead of Sunday. And eventually what s going to happen is maybe you start getting your work in a week ahead of time. So maybe you have a little cushion there to do things that are exciting for you. Again, due dates, due times, calendars, and schedules are important. Again, I know this sounds redundant but I know it s what is going to help you.

16 Slide 13: More Helpful Tips for Online Success What about your professors? What s expected from you professors and your courses? Your professors set up very high level expectation of your especially as a graduate level student. So what are those levels of expectation? Get to know your professor. I can t way it enough, don t be afraid to ask for help from your professor. One of the things that I have found, not only in face-to-face but also online, is that people are afraid to ask. If you don t ask, we can t help you. Ms. Cronin is available to you. Ms. McCarty is available to you. Even Dr. Budash is available to you. You ve got to reach out to us. We can t read your minds. We can help you be successful and that s part of your online success. Again pacing Make sure you back up your work. I have 6 different thumbdrives that I work off of. What happens if you lose your work? Do you spend all your time trying to recover it? But if you have a back-up system, you can go back in to make sure you don t lose that time trying to recover that work that you lost. Again, rewards. What is your reward? Sleep, leisure time, family time. And this is the biggest thing. I can t say it enough. This last point, check into your online management tool. In this case, Canvas. If you don t check Canvas every day, you re going to be lost. Instructors post announcements. They send you s to give you updates with what is going on. I ve had plenty of students that I have ed and they get back to me three days later saying oh I didn t check my . I can t help you and we can t help you if you don t take the time to log in every single day. If you re logging in every day, maybe there s something we are putting out there that will allow you to be more successful so you re not wasting your time trying to figure things out. So that is also very important. Slide 14: Managing Time This last slide takes a look at all the things it takes when it comes to time management. What are you problems? How do you master them? What is effective? Your critical skills. Your reusable resources. And an action plan. The one thing I do want to take a look at is that reusable resources. Templates, procedures, and checklists. Those are huge. Make that checklist and use that from course to course. I don t have to read all those things to you, you can read them on your own as you re going through this. This last slide actually takes a look at everything we just pinpointed. Everything we just looked at. Everything you need to do to be successful when it comes to time management and prioritizing. And how do you master this? What I ve

17 found is by doing these things that I learned from being a graduate student, I ve actually been able to pull forward into my professional and personal life. And I m hoping that all the things I ve cover with you and have gone through with you will help you with these things down the road in your academic, professional, and personal life. Slide 15: References One more thing as you go through, the last two slides, you will see that I put in all my references. If you want to go in and research those references further, you have that ability to do so. On the final note, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for taking the time on a Saturday morning to sit here listening to me talk about time management. I want to thank Ms. Cronin, I want to thank Ms. McCarty, and Dr. Budash for giving me the opportunity kind of share some of the things that I ve come across over the last couple of years when it comes to time management. It s been an absolute pleasure talking to each and every one of you. Anybody have any questions, or anything they want to put out in the chat? Any comments. Don t be afraid, I don t bite. Anybody? Sandy do you have anything? (Ms. McCarty) I just wanted to say thank you to everyone again as Dr. Almquist has said for meeting with us today. And, I look forward to working with all of you in the future. Thank you very much Dr. Almquist, this has been very very helpful. Thank you. Oh, you re more than welcome. Anybody else? I just had a request, do you have access to these slides later? We can this presentation right? (Ms. Cronin) Yes, I can the presentation, it s also recorded and we ll be posting it out on the Community Sites. Okay. Myrna does that help you? Ok, awesome. Anybody else have any questions? If we re good, then I guess we are going to wrap it up. Anything you need from anybody Gab or Sandy?