IntroductionPlagiarism is the most serious offense in academia. Its definition—the undocumented use of another person’s work—is straightforward, and its maximum sentences for an offense are draconian: expulsion for students, termination for professors. If the stakes are so high, why would anyone risk plagiarizing another person’s work?
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Sujey Batista, Writing Specialist
“The future belongs to those who are capable of being retrained again and again.”
—Daniel Burns
Salutations Readers,
Our latest issue discusses one of the most valuable skills one can possess as a student and working professional: the ability to learn. Lifelong learning is vital for those who seek success throughout their working lives. Those who can successfully acquire and apply this part skill, part survival tactic are more likely to thrive in today’s dynamic and fast-paced world. Lifelong learners embrace the idea of learning as a mechanism for improvement as professionals and human beings.
The submissions from our team explore this topic from a variety of angles. Aside from providing readers with a conceptual understanding of the skill, we discuss the relevance of this ability in correlation with current workforce trends and its connection to Purpose-Centered Education. The issue features an interactive piece that explores the benefits of study skills as an effective learning strategy. Another section, dedicated to the student reader, provides insight on skills that, when mastered, can ease the challenges of college life. We’ve provided our readers with valuable insight that, in combination with a self-directed attitude and open-mind, can help anyone accomplish their most valued goals. Enjoy!
Sujey
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When I was growing up, there was no Dora the Explorer and no Ni-Hao Kai-Lan.
The cartoons of my childhood communicated solely in English. Ren and Stimpy, Doug, and the Rugrats were not bilingual. I, on the other hand, had to jump between two languages and two cultures.
Many recent high school graduates are experiencing certain difficulties in dealing with college undergraduate mathematics. A lot of researchers on students in college performance reveal that many first-year students are coming underprepared for college life and are frequently frustrated by sequential failure in remedial math sequence and drop out of college. “For some, it may be that their confidence has been severely dented by someone who taught them maths [sic] in a forceful or unsympathetic manner, so that they came to believe that they were ‘no good at maths [sic]’” (Fewings, 2011).
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The title of this post poses what seems to be an impossible question. Yet it results in some very objective answers.
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This is a picture I took of a wheat-pasted poster in Manhattan in the early days of Occupy Wall Street.
Its phrase attests to the age-old struggle of the masses fighting for an equitable piece of the pie. And, though it references power struggles with which we are very familiar, it is linked to a new movement radically catalyzed by social media. Until recently, major changes in power came in part through the direction of a revolution’s leaders or figure-heads, but not so anymore; the world has borne witness to an incredible new era of power shifts.
“Bearing witness” to human struggle and social activism have been at the heart of MCNY’s vision since its founding. For this—and many reasons—I regularly use and talk about social media in my Critical Thinking classes. In our class discussions, we have found that as others’ realities become instantaneously available to us, we are met with the opportunity (and obligation, I feel) to be impacted in ways never before seen in human history. Each of our lives now becomes shaped, informed, called into question by the realities of others across the globe.
In a recent article, Revolutionizing Revolutions: Virtual Collective Consciousness and the Arab Spring, the authors discuss the “role social media play not only in igniting revolutions but also in modifying how regime change is achieved” (Marzouki and Oullier, 2011). The article considers the far-reaching impact of studies tracking the “bottom-up” approach in recent uprisings. The interpretation of these studies not only gives shape to complex systems of emergent behaviors (thousands mobilizing instantly for protests), but patterns of change that are necessarily accumulative.
What does this mean?
ShareStudents often find themselves on the verge of flunking a class, and having already lost the option to withdraw, the realization of the situation produces a panic that becomes debilitating. As a result, some students succumb to the frenzy and allow the rest of their semester to crash and burn.
Instead, “Keep calm and carry on”, as states the recently commercialized British government slogan. Don’t wave the white flag and don’t call off the troops. There’s still time to save your grade!
The following grade-saving strategies will help you make the most of the remaining semester:
1. Reach out to professors
Communicating with professors is an excellent grade-saving strategy. It’s never too late to speak to the instructor. Express your desire to improve your current standing and find out exactly what is expected of you. Professors are usually willing to work something out if you show that you’re serious and motivated. You can haggle for some extra credit, extensions on deadlines, and resubmissions for higher marks.
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The hottest discussion topic among mathematic educators within Metropolitan College of New York revolves around the idea of what mathematic skills our students should have. The biggest concern arises when students face failure with fraction concepts. The advancement from secondary to post-secondary education demands that students should have already mastered these skills in elementary school and demonstrated computational proficiency during the Accuplacer entry examination. However, newly admitted and even some continuing students continue to struggle with concepts of fraction addition and fraction subtraction. So, many students believe that mastery of fraction skills will never be achieved. This belief is a myth.
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The New York Times has always been good at coming up with intellectually relatable witty titles for the articles it posts to its website, and University of Delaware Professor Ben Yagoda’s recent post, “The Most Comma Mistakes,” is no exception. Now, before you do anything else, take a second look at the sentence you just read. You will notice that it is rather long (40 words) but that it contains only three commas. “How can that be?” you might wonder. “The longer a sentence is, the more commas it needs, right?” Well, that isn’t necessarily incorrect, but it’s not correct either. In fact, it’s one of those things people think is true when they don’t actually have any idea about what they’re talking about. For the truth is that if everyone took a moment to learn the basic rules of comma usage, they would find that it’s not all that difficult to master.
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Since the beginning of time humanity has been looking at the surrounding world as a book of nature and continually trying to study it through different views and approaches, which later in time, developed into sciences like mathematics, physics and chemistry etc. Over time, many scientific discoveries were made and many theories aiming to explain these scientific advances emerged.
Why should we care?
Shareadvice Arab Spring brain teasers college decisions communicating communication education extra credit failure fraction myth free information global empowerment Grade-saving grades grammar interactive classroom Keep Calm and Carry On knowledge learning Learning Enhancement Center Luminaria math math reflections MCNY neutrinos newsletter new york times parker pracjek phobias reading science Self-directed self-directed learning siblings social media stanley fish student debt students sucess teaching the internet the new yorker tutorials virtual collective consciousness writing
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