SLC Blog: In Common. A stylized image of a diverse group of students in a lecture hall

The Student Learning Commons blog is your online writing and learning community


Exams are over! More learning?!

Published by Julia Lane

Hooray! Exams are over and you have 2 weeks until fall term classes start! Time for travel, a staycation on Metro Vancouver’s many beaches, or just an opportunity to catch up on the other life things that you had to put aside during the exam period.

Summer time, exam time

Published by Julia Lane

When Ella Fitzgerald sings "summer time, and the living is easy", she clearly isn't singing about students who are preparing for summertime exams! But, with the summer exam period one week away, the SLC team is here to offer you some helpful tips and tricks. They may not make your exams feel easy, but hopefully they will make your whole exam experience a bit easier

Got Assignments? Get the Assignment Calculator!

Published by Julia Lane

It's that time of semester when assignment deadlines can start to feel like they are piling up on you. And, it can be especially hard to get down to work when the sun is shining! 

Let the assignment calculator help you to break down your assignments into manageable steps. That's just good project management! 

Reading Guide

Published by Julia Lane

Get your summer semester off on the right foot by learning how to read smarter, not harder (or longer)!

Graduate Writing Facilitator Jennesia Pedri has generously shared with us a Reading Guide that she created to support her own reading during her comprehensive exams for her doctoral studies in the School of Communications. As Jennesia explains, the guide aims to help you read more efficiently and effectively. It also aims to make itself obsolete: eventually you won’t need it because you’ll begin to automatically ask yourself these kinds of questions as you read.

Self-explanation for studying

Published by Julia Lane

I'm sure I don't have to mention that it is exam time! In this blog post, Donya Samadi --  PhD student in Educational Psychology and former Graduate Facilitator with the SLC -- shares how the concept of self-explanation can be applied to studying. 

Self-explanation, Donya explains, may be beneficial because information previously learned is recalled and integrated with new information to generate a self-explanation. In this way, self-explanation is a connection and elaboration to prior knowledge. When engaged in self-explanations, learners can develop new meaningful associations, and further understand the content they are studying. 

Welcome Guest Blogger Eric Cai!

Published by Julia Lane

In Common welcomes former SLC Peer Eric Cai as a guest blogger. In his posts, he will focus on study and communication skills for students in math and science. Learn more about Eric in the following email interview.

The Fall Semester - midterm housekeeping reminders

Published by Julia Lane

By Daniel Chang

PhD candidate and SLC Graduate Writing Facilitator Daniel Chang offers some important reminders and tips to help take you through the end of the Fall 2018 academic term.