Course Readiness Study Guide Download and print off this study guide and handwrite your answers or complete it digitally with a tablet and stylus. If neither of these are an option for you, you can type in your answers on your study guide and then make any drawings on a separate piece of paper. Clearly label each drawing, and then you will need to scan or take pictures of your drawings and integrate them into your typed study guide when you make a single multiple-page pdf of your study guide. Complete this study guide as you work through the Course Readiness Interactive – answer every question, do the drawings, speak items out loud, use color. Many of the answers can be found directly in the Interactive. Submit your study guide. The Science of Better Learning 1. Find the video in the Interactive called “The Super Mario Effect – Tricking Your Brain in Learning More.” This is a talk given by Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer and YouTuber whose videos focus on creative ideas and science- and engineering-based pranks and activities. Watch the video and answer every question below. Read each question carefully! a. Watch the first 2 minutes. Place a big checkmark in this box b. Write two sentences about what Mark Rober asked his YouTube followers to do (about 20 seconds into the video). c. What was Mark Rober actually interested in learning about (about 1 minute in)? d. What was the difference in the two puzzles? e. How did that difference affect people who worked on the puzzle? Summarize the results in the graph presented at 1:48 in the video. f. The graph presented at 2:12 shows how many attempts people make to solve the puzzle before they were successful. For the people who did not have fake internet points taken away: Did they make more attempts / fewer attempts (CIRCLE ONE)? g. True / False (CIRCLE ONE) Those people in the study who were not penalized for trying and failing, these participants did not see failing as a negative. These participants made 2.5 times more attempts than those who saw failing as a negative thing. As a result, they naturally saw more success and therefore learned more. h. What does Mark Rober say the trick is to learning more and having more success (around 2:30-3:00 min)? i. You can watch the next five minutes of the video if you like. In that time, Mark describes some of the problems and challenges he has tackled in his work, and he emphasizes how he has adopted the same attitude towards figuring out problems that he did as a kid in playing Super Mario Brothers. OR skip ahead to around 6:50min and watch to 8:10min, what exactly does Mark say about adopting this “life gamification” attitude towards learning new things? 2. Explain in your own words the differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Research shows hand writing, drawing, diagrams and speaking aloud greatly increase learning. Students that do this, as opposed to just clicking though material, understand and retain more. They get higher grades, and they feel less overwhelmed and happier with the material. 3. Watch the video “13 Scientific Study Tips”. In the space below, take hand written notes: a. Describe at least two study tips that you liked. b. Draw one diagram or picture based on the video. c. Use at least two different colors in your notes. Be Prepared! 1. Log in to Brightspace, click on this course, and find the tab at the top that says "Course Work". Click the drop down arrow and select "Content". Look through the Table of Contents on the left and find the section called "Hot Tips for Success in this Class!" Click it. There are two documents here. Open them and answer the questions below. a. Open the document “Hot Tips for Success in Biology 1140”. List six resources. 1. ____________________________________________________ 2. ____________________________________________________ 3. ____________________________________________________ 4. ____________________________________________________ 5. ____________________________________________________ 6. ____________________________________________________ b. Open the document “Best Practices for Learning Biology”. Name three strategies you might use in your learning. 1. ____________________________________________________ 2. ____________________________________________________ 3. ____________________________________________________ 2. Now, return to the interactive. You will need between 5 and 8 hours of quality study time PER CHAPTER to successfully complete this course. a. How do you plan to make enough time to do this? b. Where do you plan to study? 3. There is always a possibility that there will be an issue with Internet access, your computer or life events. Write a few sentences that describes how you would handle each of the following events should they occur within 24 hours of a deadline for an assignment or an exam: a. Your computer or tablet device stops functioning. b. Your Internet access goes out either because of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) problem, modem problem or wireless router problem. (make sure you can name at least 2 other locations you can access the Internet) c. A personal medical or an immediate family emergency occurs, such as births, deaths or illness. (note: IMMEDIATE family only includes parents, spouse or children) Taking a Screenshot 1. Read through the section in the Interactive called “Taking a screenshot”. Then do a Google image search of something related to biology to find an image. Take a screenshot of part of the desktop. See example below: Save your screenshot as an image file (jpeg, png, tiff, etc). Email it directly to your instructor for credit as an attachment. In your email, click either the paperclip icon or the photo icon that has a mountain & sun on it, then select your screenshot file. In your email, be sure to state your name, indicate how excited you are to learn biology, and include your class and section number. One quick note: If you take a screenshot of your entire desktop, be aware that any other tabs you have open or bookmarks saved will also be captured for the world to see! Creating a PDF of your Study Guide You’re almost finished! Now, read the instructions below (same instructions in the Interactive) and decide which approach you will take to create one single multiple-page pdf of this study guide. Then do it! Upload your beautiful study guide for a grade. Note: You’ve already completed steps 1 and 2! Step 1: Decide to Go Paper or Go Digital • Go Paper: download any document and print it out. You will then use pencil/pen to write on the paper. Research has demonstrated that hand-writing, drawing, using colors, diagrams and speaking aloud greatly increase learning. Students that do this, as opposed to just clicking though material, understand and retain more. They get higher grades, feel less overwhelmed, and happier with the material. • Go Digital: download any document (Study Guide for example) and then import into your favorite app for digital notetaking. Examples include Notability, OneNote, Word, and many others. Use a stylus to hand-write and make drawings, and use your keyboard to type relevant notes. Step 2: Take notes and complete your study guide • Take all the notes you need. Complete your study guide, add your own notes, and really make it your own! Make drawings, use color! • So many notes! Step 3: Make a PDF • You will now need to decide how you will take your multiple-page document that will have some hand drawn items and create a SINGLE PDF document. • Options for How to Create a PDF from Pieces of Paper: 1. Option 1 – Fast and Simple but you need a smartphone a. Use an app like Microsoft Office Lens on your smartphone: – free app that works on Android and iOS devices. (There are others!) Download the app from the app store, Select “document”, take pictures of your papers, adjusting to make sure each page is in focus. When finished, click the red arrow button. Make sure these pages are in focus and in order. Then hit ‘Done’. This will take you to a page that says ‘Export to’. Here, you can change the title of your document to something more relevant, like “Smith Bio 1140 Study Guide Chapter 1”. You can ‘Save to PD’F. You can save this to your Phone Storage temporarily or to your Microsoft OneDrive if you have this connected to your phone. Select one and then you will see “My Files” with your document saved. b. If you have an iPhone, there is an app called Notes that comes on your phone. Open this app, click on the icon in the lower right that looks like a pencil on a square, then click the camera icon, and ‘Scan documents’. Take pictures of all papers in your document. When finished, click ‘Save’. Rename the file something more relevant than ‘Scanned Documents’. Email this pdf to yourself for further editing. 2. Option 2 – Old School but works a. Take photos of your pages. Email photos to yourself OR use preferred method for getting photos onto your computer. Open an MS Word document and paste each photo onto a single page. Drag the edges so the photo fills the page size. Use ‘Save as’, then select ‘PDF’ to save the MS Word document as a single PDF document. 3. Option 3 – Very Old School and you need a scanner a. Use a scanner to scan your document. Save it. Then upload it through your computer. • Make a pdf from your digital file: 1. If you choose to keep it paperless and import the document into an app like Notability or OneNote, that is fine. You may have to insert photos or drawings that you have made then save it all in one single file PDF format. Step 4: Upload your PDF into Brightspace Click on the assignment within the course content to navigate to the upload page. Upload your multiple-page single document PDF in the submission area on Brightspace. Feel proud of yourself. You did it! Reminders: It must be a single document that is PDF file! That is, one file with all the required parts embedded within in. One.