Week 4 Learning Journal

Here we are on the second week of classes. I wasn't honestly expecting to have any specific prompts for these entries, but a part of me is grateful to have something. Knowing me at this point in time, I'd probably just run out of things to say and leave this thing largely to rot. The prompt, at very least, gives me something to start off with.

And starting off this week is a reflection of a list of effective study skills provided by a Dr. Bob Kizlik. Dr. Kizlik emphasized several techniques like mind mapping, the importance of scheduling, and a method called the SQ3R method. SQ3R stands for 'Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review'. At simplest, the stages break down as follows: 

'Survey' means get the big picture or general idea of what's being studied, like going over a road map before a trip. 

'Question' means exactly what one would expect. Ask the important questions about the material. The What, Why, How, When, Where, and Whom, as it were. Answering them as you go helps to reinforce the material. The ones unanswered can be written down to be asked later.

'Read' isn't as simple as running through text. It's interaction with the material. Asking the questions mentioned previously and paying mind to anything that may be highlighted or bold or italicized, and or any graphs, diagrams or images.

'Recite' and 'Review' means taking moments while reading and after reading, respectively, to make sure you have it all correct. Reciting happens to ensure that its being gotten right at that time, and building connections to what you knew before where applicable. Reviewing is making sure that everything you studied in a given module or session has accomplished what it's supposed to; asking 'Have I missed anything?'. 

There are plenty other points in the document beyond the SQ3R method. What's above is just me showing how I look at it. And, yes, I do see how effective it can be. Of the rest of the methods and tips that the document goes over the top three things I'm good at are extracting the important details, asking questions while note taking, and not reading aloud to myself. Being able to filter out the important details in a given lecture or study subject has always been a good habit of mine. Working with the raw idea of the material without any narrative fluff makes it a lot easier for me to develop connections between it and what I already know. And when I'm unsure if I have that raw idea correct, I ask questions to make sure I am. Having the wrong idea, I've learned the hard way, is often worse than having no idea at all. Not reading aloud to myself is basically second nature to me at this point. Reading aloud, on top of creating background noise that can distract others and or myself, slows me down as I have to wait for my mouth to form the words. That slow down means my mind is left idle when it could be going through the information more smoothly and efficiently. And as someone who has had issues with attention span, an idle mind is the last thing I want when studying. Too prone to distraction. Keeping my mouth shut while reading means no limiter on how fast the info comes into my mind which, in its own way, keeps it alert and running smoothly. 

Three other weaknesses I have in regards to the document, are keeping notes organized, preparing the outline for a document, and, perhaps greatest of them, creating and keeping to a schedule. Despite it working out well for me over the years in other places, the 'Organized Chaos' approach doesn't quite cut it when it comes to matters of academic notes. All manner of crucial details and processes have been lost or otherwise unavailable when needed because I couldn't remember where in my binder they were written down. And it's bitten me back. Hard. Several times. And it certainly doesn't help that I, like a lot of students, have a bit of a procrastination problem. Setting a schedule is one thing, but it doesn't exactly do much for you if you don't keep to it. That time is meant to be set aside, through that schedule, to make sure you stay on task and get the work that's required of you finished in short manageable bursts of activity, as opposed to having to do it all at once in a mad panic near the due date. Similarly, setting up a framework for, not just essays, but entire work/study sessions helps by providing a sense of what to do and where to go with the work in question. This bars you from stalling as you try to work out what to do next, saving time and effort. You might even find yourself with more time leftover if you keep to a framework, which means that there's less work to worry about later and more breaktime for you to enjoy. Of course, like with the schedule, that framework isn't going to mean anything if it isn't kept to. So, yes, I have a few habits I've yet to get into. 

And on the subject of time management habits, Indeed.com has a few to share. One of which is keeping track of what work you put in by some sort of time tracker. Either as an app or a log of some sort. This is a screenshot of the one for last weeks work. To explain why it's all on Monday and Tuesday evening, CSUMB's academic week in the online program starts on Wednesday, and ends on the following Tuesday. And, again, bad procrastination habit. The gold columns at the right are Saturday and Sunday.

Not a lot, and its probably too small to make out detail here now that I see it on my end. It is the work that went into the first week, 'Bootstrap week' as I like to call it. So there isn't anything overwhelming here. Management skills aren't limited to time. Project management is also a subject of the prompt. And now I'm sort of hoping the blog prompts going forward aren't as exhaustive as this one.

There were three lecture videos one by 365 Financial Analyst and the other two by Online PM Courses. A 'Project' is a temporary initiative that is planned and executed to achieve a specific goal by a group. It usually has a start and end date, a resource constraint of some form, and a lasting effect after its conclusion. A business constructing a new office building, for example, or preparing a new product or service for market. They start as a proposal, presented to a higher managing power within the firm, and being investments of limited resources, are considered and analyzed in depth as to how well they'll potentially accrue returns on the investment they represent. If approved, a project manager will be assigned to that project to carry it out. The project manager isn't simply the face of the project in question, but also the one that ensures that all others involved in a project are able to get their tasks finished in turn. If something starts lagging or otherwise is becoming problematic, the project manager needs to intervene and sort it out. And, above all else, communicating these tasks to everyone involved. There are a myriad of tools at their disposal for helping keeping the folks they work with working smoothly, such as the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS can be a hierarchical decomposition of all the tasks and resources dedicated to them on a given project. The most prominent form of WBS is the Gantt Diagram. Created by Henry Gantt in the early 20th century, this simple yet ingenious table illustrated the work activities that need doing along its vertical axis and a time indicator along its horizontal axis. The fact that it's become the poster child for project management in general shows its success. The task and the time that would be allocated to it would be represented by a bar. Which row that bar is in represents the task that it represents, while its length determines how long that task is going to be worked on. There can be use of color to differentiate tasks and or other symbols to provide context, but there should be a written explanation of what it all means. The Gantt Diagram and other forms of WBS are effective tools to communicate said tasks, and keep a workforce organized as they take on a project.

Speaking of projects, the second to last section of this post's prompt is to watch a previous 'capstone festival' to see what projects that batch of students came up with. It was never formally explained to me, but it seems a capstone project is meant to be the final project of a given group of students participating in this online program that I'm now taking. I'm going to discuss three of the projects that were being displayed. The first that had my attention was 'Out of Mana', A 2D rogue-lite computer game that draws it's inspiration from Vampire Survivors, and was created on the Godot 4 engine. While admittedly the rogue-lite genre of games isn't one of my favorites, I could still appreciate the time and effort that went into 'Out of Mana'. I was very impressed with how the developer approached the challenges in development. Being hopeful that I myself find myself in game development someday, being able to watch and learn from a budding developer is going to be helpful, especially considering that I'm likely to end up canning features and or mechanics at some point. The second project came immediately after, in the form of Infinity Areas. Described as a 'Visual-first' modding tool, it's intended for creating and modifying areas in role-playing games that use the Infinity Engine, like the first two Baldur's Gate games. Creating mods for already existing games has its own challenges, and often requires dedicated tools for the tasks at hand. There are developers are willing to create dedicated 'creation kits' for their games, other games have more bespoke tools made by the communities. A good tool not only does the job required, but makes the job much easier. Jake, the developer/presenter of Infinity Areas, has done a very impressive and insightful job of creating the tool. Granted, I don't play Baldur's Gate but I always appreciate it when modders make it easier for their peers to make their own digital magic. And just as I penned that last sentence did it occur to me that these projects, like the others in the festival, had been developed over the course of a few months. Impressive, considering the difficulties involved in programming. The third and final project that had my eye was the one by Robin Hurtado. The reason this one is last is that the video didn't pause, I came back to my desk just as they were starting the presentation for Out of Mana. After rewinding, I took in the project explanation. Robin does a very good job explaining how the components worked. Having been more into game development than neural networks, there was a good chunk of it that still largely went over my head, as I was trying to picture how the code would've potentially gone together as the presentation went on. Nevertheless, I very impressed with Robin's work, and was left quite curious as to the other applications of neural nets

The rest of the week wasn't all that bad. APA essay format has a lot of the same rules as the MLA format that I was much more familiar with. And yes, this blog post did just keep dragging on. Again, not used to having to blog at all, and am very much hopeful that the blog prompts going forward aren't as intense as this one was. Or, at least, didn't involve so many lecture videos. I find I work both faster and better when I'm allowed to simply read the material at my own pace, rather than wait on narration.