Getting Good Grades

Another semester is coming to a close, and my grades are still very good.

If you have any similar experiences to this, or other ideas that might work, feel free to add them to this.

A few tips to how I get better grades than my classmates, even though I am working with an LD:

1) Prep work. I do not walk into a class cold, knowing nothing about it. I research the teacher and do my best to take ones that I can work well with. I also find videos on the topic that are made by other colleges. That lets me preview the topic without learning in mind. It is just some basic exposure to prime myself. Also, if a topic in the video really confuses me or looks to have a lot to memorize, I know to start on those extra early.

That leads to 2) Scheduling. I take a mix of harder and easier topics so that my schedule is not overloaded. I go through he syllabus thoroughly and find out what I will need to do. Anything time consuming, I start to tackle as early as possible so that I have extra time, can take breaks, and do not run into issues with my LD.

I have all my accommodations available and so on, but many of them are hard to use in night school. The extra time on tests would be done in the parts of the campus that close at night. That means I have to work harder to learn in advance so that the topics are so familiar to me by test time that I can just make sense of things and put them on paper without overloading my brain. The two simple steps above have really helped me with that.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lorri Centineo on December 12, 2011 at 9:36am

I really like this, Eric. Prelearning and strategic arrangement of classes is a strategy we use for my son. He's found it easier in college to play with the schedule, effecting a combination that enables him to best show what he knows, and because that happens he has garnered additional cooperation from his professors. Now that they know him, they allow him to do essay test work outside of classroom time when there are no proctors scheduled. Also, now that the college is aware of this issue, they're making additional arrangements for extra-time proctoring at night--they've added it as a work-study job. We've found that 'why' this should be done was never addressed nor explained from the standpoint of legal access and they seem to need suggestions as to how those changes can be easily made. (I always use the wheelchair analogy - are the elevators and wheelchar ramps closed at night?)

Thanks for sharing your successes and strategies so that we can celebrate your triumphs with you!! Wonderful!

L

Permalink Reply by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide on December 13, 2011 at 9:33am

Congrats Eric!

Great tips. Our son is still in high school, but he's starting to take some college classes and preparation already seems to help a lot.

In another post, I think you mentioned Ratemyprofessors.com - wow that has been very handy. Able to avoid some real turkey that way - especially as he is taking online classes at different universities and has some choices.

Processing speed is definitely an issue - so he has found that taking classes asynchronously allows him to have more flexibility with finals and due dates, and even time to complete courses. At the University of Utah, for instance, a 12 week course can be completed in 9 months if you prefer.

He has been granted double time and keyboard accommodations, but as you say - it can be difficult figuring out how to get that double time. For a UC Berkeley class he took online, they had a proctored final. They allowed him to take it at a University of Washington-associated testing center. Normally the center is open from 5 pm until 9 pm. In order to allow double time, the testing coordinator agreed to come in at 3 pm.

We anticipate a gap year before college - and probably a request for a reduced courseload if possible. Among the college students we see, a lighter courseload can make a world of difference.

Permalink Reply by Eric McCormick on December 13, 2011 at 5:20pm

In my search for trig, I did a little more looking into Khanacademy.org. Oh boy that turned out to be a LOT better than I expected! I still have some issues with the fonts they use... let me rewind a tad.

Kahn produces all these videos and has done so for years. He has a ton on different topics. I have used them and like how it is one video per topic, sometimes a short series. No video is over 10 minutes. He aims to have short, understandable, highly visual chunks.

Well, I watched his Ted Talk about it... which lead me to his Charlie Rose interview. He goes in to how it started, how teachers use it, and more. Funny part is, it all started out of online tutoring for relatives that were having trouble at school. But, he got Youtube comments form the parents of an autistic that was finally able to grasp math after seeing these videos. It made him realize he had stumbled onto something, so he has been developing it as an non-profit that gives away education for free. Great way to topic focus for anything from K to College in math, with a lot of other topics in there, and more on the way. He has history, science, medicine, and more that have come along over time.

Another interesting resource out there is http://academicearth.org/

These are lectures, largely done by PhDs on campuses. It lets college students get a second chance at connecting with a lecture by having it be online, as well as allowing other people to learn about topics without paying a tuition.

I think there is no substitute for class time. People need interaction to learn. But these do show some great potential for the other parts of the educational process, like my previewing a class before I take it.

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