Identifying Resources on Reading and Note-Taking

The texts below introduce strategies for active reading and studying that many students and researchers find successful at universities. They describe specific practices, techniques, and exercises to deepen your learning as you read articles and textbooks for classes, study for exams, listen to lectures, and take notes. Consider in which situation you would make use of each strategy and what main points you want to remember about them.
Megan Sumeracki, Cindy Nebel, Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, and Althea Need Kaminske. (2016.) Six Strategies for Effective Learning (Links to an external site.). [Video tutorials.] In The Learning Scientists [web resource; retrieved 18 November 2020 from ].
Hjortshoj, Keith. “Reading: How to Stay on Top of It download.” The Transition to College Writing. Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 127-151. [ WORK ON better PDF ]
When you have finished viewing and reading the texts listed above, return to your Step 1 discussion post, and offer 100-200 more words of reflection on what you’ve learned since submitting that post. What new insights did you gain from reading your peers’ posts, questions, and discussions? Which specific new strategies and practices described in the resources above might you consider for improving your learning? For example, will you ask more questions in your notes as you read your assigned texts or will you try the practice of “dual coding” described in the videos? How will you need to adjust your current habits of reading to make this possible? How have your thoughts on reading, and its relationship to learning, changed? What new ideas have emerged for you?
One of my favorite reading materials of all time is a Japanese comic series or Manga titled “The Promised Neverland”. I initially found the premise very strange at first as it revolved around the concept of humans being farmed by monsters as food, with their practices being eerily similar as to how we acquire meat, which may be through hunting, free-range farms, and the like. This series gave me a different perspective on what ethical consumption is and how we humans have such an anthropocentric view of everything. Apart from that, the series also focuses on the dynamics of power and greed, politics, redemption, racism, and self-sacrifice. This series has awakened and developed the way I think about things as the story tended to show multiple perspectives, evidently proving that no person is inherently evil, but all people believe that they are doing the best for themselves whenever they act. Here, I realized the importance of empathy and trying to understand other people before acting on anything.
Although the premise of “The Promised Neverland” is definitely so far from what I experience on a daily basis, I felt that everything in the world became clearer and made more sense, especially when I read about the motivations of each character. I often wonder why people act in certain ways and why they would choose to do ‘evil’ things, but I realized that how people are brought up and their lived context heavily influence the way they perceive, think, and act on things. Knowing this helped me better understand the people around me and how the world operates. After reading more than a hundred chapters, I felt a bit enlightened with the knowledge I acquired and it has definitely changed the way I experience reading. I realized that reading isn’t just only for taking in knowledge, but a platform to open discourse with others on a variety of subjects.
https://www(dot)learningscientists(dot)org/videos