Task 2 – Process of Creating My Study Plan

The second task is describing the activity of creating my study plan for this semester – Autumn 2010. For this semester I prepared quite differently from previous ones. I need to explain my reasons and goals. I missed just few courses to fulfill my current curriculum and decided to find another interesting curriculum to follow as a guideline for choosing the next courses.

I suppose one of the reasons to work well-organized and produce documents about my activities lies in the fact that I knew I wanted to leave Estonia for France as soon as possible, but on the same time take maximum out of my studies this semester in Tallinn. So I had to keep track and combine the courses with my travel schedule to be.

Important components of my “method”: *Having motivation and goals; *Keeping the goals in mind; *Orientation in the resources (like TLU web); *Time; *Being organized – in my case keeping the documentation.

I used UML Activity chart (Edraw Soft) as a tool to structure the process and map my activities. I guess it is rather simple to follow but still needs some more explaination as for what did I really do under those activities.

 

Activity chart for composig my own study plan

 

Search for interesting curriculum – I browesed the TLU web for course programs and found few suitable to me. From those one stood out rather fast as the most probable and as I went on analysing the courses the decision was made. As an outcome I prepared a document with relevant information and went on to the next step.

Choose course (repeat) – Some courses were easy to eliminate from my selection as they were clearly out of my circle of interests.  I browsed through the course cards of the courses I found interesting. To make a decision if I want to attend a course or not I did the following: *Read the aims and program; *Find more information about the lecturer – practitioner, more theorist, publications?; *Browse some literature from the list given (online articles, books online). Every chosen course was highlighted in the curriculum and lecturer contacts added for the next step.

Confirm the course (repeat)- I contacted the lecturers of the courses from my list to make sure if they support my will to attend under my circumstances – it means mainly not attending most of the lectures, especially the ones in the end of semester and no exams on site. I need to add here as it is really common not to attend courses in IT departement, it is by far not so in other departements. So I eliminated some courses which could not be worked out like that. I also eliminated some courses I knew I would love to attend on site but that started at the second half of the semester. I still had a nice list in front of me and succeeded to confirm the number of courses I wanted. The document now looked a bit messy but still well color-coded.

Summarize – Cleaning up the messy document, adding more details to the chosen courses, starting dates from the ASIO calendar (all information on courses offered this semester at TLU). At that point I realized having some “holes” in my schedule. I went through the ASIO based on courses offered in other departements of my interests (Arts) and found another great course to follow that “filled in the hole”. Another “hole” got filled by attending as a free listener at another superb lecture for me.

To sum up the task. I succeeded registrating to 9 courses, of which 3 will be finished by 21st of October and all others are doable online. “Bienvenue en France!” The final document is a list of nine courses with start and end dates, lecturers names, links to materials and tasks.. all sequenced by the starting date. Now next deadlines for every course are colored red and finished tasks green. Finished courses shall be grey as on-going courses remain black-red-green coded.. Sounds a bit too much, but let it be my experiment..

I do not use Google Calendar (actively) as I read from many other course mates blogs, while I have no other responsibilities than the things I just  feel like doing (paint, travel, meet ssomeone, read…)- for listing those, I use a regular calendar-notebook and sheets of paper to keep some to-do lists. I tend not to be “fireman” as to deal with things already over deadline. I try keeping track in time and doing the things that are first in my personal priorities. I list all the links for courses at two places – my browser bookmarks bar and the document I organized at the beginning.

Reading what I have done.. It seems like a lot of work, which it may have been.. but it fulfilled my short-term goal – creating a study plan that I will love to follow, that suits my travel plans and also supports my further long-term goals. I forgot to add the last node to my chart, which should be “Learn and Enjoy!” with the document outcome called “Updated along the way”.