Skip to main content

Helping students learn time management

Lifehack has a review of StudyRails, a web-based service that helps students manage their time and their studying. It costs $10 a month but for students who really need help with their time management skills (I'm particularly thinking of new college students), this looks like it could be a really useful service.

I was particularly interested when I saw this post because I make it a point to tell students in my introductory courses that my objectives for the course include both subject knowledge and life skills - the first is econ-specific but the second is not. By 'life skills', I mean critical thinking (which I consider most important) but also the more mundane but clearly-important-for-success-in-life skills like teamwork, communication and time management. I began naming these skills as specific objectives for the course because I got tired of dealing with students who would turn in work that was incredibly poorly written but who would complain when I marked them down and argue, "But I answered the question correctly!"

On my course website, I have links to campus resources for students, like the counseling center, but it hadn't really occurred to me to link to other resources, like StudyRails. I'll need to think about whether if it's appropriate to link to private, for-profit services, since it will seem like I'm endorsing them. I also just don't know of other services that might be worth linking to but if anyone has suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What are the costs?

I came across an interesting discussion about a 19-year-old intern who was fired from The Gazette in Colorado Springs for plagiarism. There appears to be some controversy over the fact that the editor publicly named the girl in a letter to readers (explaining and apologizing for the plagiarism), with some people saying that doing so was unduly harsh because this incident will now follow her for the rest of her career. I was intrigued by this discussion for two reasons - one, it seems pretty clear to me that this was not a case of ignorance (as I have often encountered with my own students who have no idea how to paraphrase or cite correctly) and two, putting aside the offense itself, I have often struggled with how to handle situations where there are long-term repercussions for a student, repercussions that lead the overall costs to be far higher than might seem warranted for the specific situation. As an example of the latter issue, I have occasionally taught seniors who need to p

What was your high school economics experience like?

As I mentioned in my last post , I am asking my Econ for Teachers students to reflect on their reading by responding to discussion prompts. It occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to share my thoughts on those issues here and see if anyone wants to chime in. For this week, the students were asked to read the California and national content standards , an article by Mark Schug and others about why social science teachers dread teaching economics and how to overcome the dread, an article by William Walstad on the importance of economics for understanding the world around us and making better personal decisions (with some evidence on the dismal state of economic literacy in this country), and another article by Walstad on the status of economic education in high schools (full citations below). The reflection prompt asks the students to then answer the following questions: What was your high school econ experience like? What do you remember most from that class? How do

When is an exam "too hard"?

By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu