Advice to Beginners

Task 1 - Advice to Beginners

As a student mentor of Torrens University, it is my duty to provide right information and advice to students who are just beginning their college life and have joined Torrens University. As a student, it is really important for them to have right understanding of academic integrity. As per the university academic integrity is all about giving a concrete form to human values such as truthfulness, trust, justness, respect, dutifulness, and courageousness for achieving the academic outcomes (Torrens University Australia).

Now what students have to understand is the application of academic integrity in their student life. They can do it by practising academic integrity in their assessment practices. Even if it is an obligation by the university authorities to respect academic honesty and integrity but it is important for students’ career growth also to maintain high academic standards. All this comes under Student Conduct Policy. In case a student shows any of these 5 academic misconducts namely plagiarism, cheating in examinations, collusion, contract cheating, or other forms like unfair advantage deliberately through dishonest means then he or she is supposed to be penalised. This will depend on the seriousness of the misconduct that can be measured by the type of academic misconduct, the extent to which it has been occurred, and the experience of the student. If the student has committed any offence prior in the same or other courses in the university then penalty can be higher. It also depends on the level or stage in the course which student is currently in. The misconduct will be deemed as significant if it appeared to be deliberately planned or substantial in scale or scope.

In terms of student life, if the student doesn’t submit other person’s work as its own or do it with assistance, observe the academic requirements of their field, and provides supplementary evidence of its authorship, professors as well as peers will start depending on that student through which it will gain trust and respect. This will later help him building its personal and professional network through which it will achieve success. Hence, maintaining academic integrity proves to be a very crucial factor for a student’s personal and professional success.

Task 2 – Reflective Journal

According to Peterson and Kolb’s nine learning styles defined as experiencing, imagining, reflecting, analysing, thinking, deciding, acting, initiating, and balancing. All these nine stages can be explained as follows:

• Experiencing – It is best defined as being mindful of the surroundings through five senses.
• Imagining – Capability of recognising the patterns quickly.
• Reflecting – This is defined as connecting ideas and experiences through contemplation.
• Analysing – It is to design a methodical approach for minimising mistakes.
• Thinking – This is defined as process for making predictions while gauging gaps and problems.
• Deciding – This is about taking risks for discovering the best option.
• Acting – This is about implementing, executing, and coordinating actions towards learning goals.
• Initiating – This is about learning from its failures and shrugging off the losses.
• Balancing – This is about changing learning styles to learning experiences.

 I can best explain my style as ‘Balancing’. Because this is the only style that accommodates all the other learning styles by changing according to the different learning experiences (Kolb & Peterson, 2017). I can very well see that since as a student I have to study lot of subjects, that too taking all of them together, it is very important for me to quickly transition between act, think, feel, and reflect. Apart from bridging the gap between my existing knowledge and new information and identifying the current loopholes, this style has helped me to become resourceful, adaptive, and collaborative.

It is also very important for students to manage time as they have to give equal time to all the subjects. They have to manage lot of work at single point of time like assignments, self-study, exam preparation, notes making, etc. Sometimes, students also have to indulge in part-time jobs to earn extra income for their survival. They also have to get involved in internships which is a part of their curriculum. Keeping all this in mind, I always plan my day before hand, by making a task list. Sometimes, I also prepare a time-table for next week as per the demand of the tasks that have to be completed. So, I keep changing my time management strategies from time to time.

It is also quite important for me to critically think about the topic it is learning about in class instead of just mugging it up mechanically as it will help me understand the subject better (Halpern & Butler, 2018). For me, there is a huge difference between critical thinking and machine learning. Critical thinking is to conduct information analysis and taking decision on the basis of evidences and logic used in that analysis.

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