Week 2 (1/15/2025 - 1/21/2025)

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    Hi everyone, welcome to my second blog! This week I will be reflecting on a few resources that I read in the Module 2 lecture material of CST 300 Major ProSeminar.

• Part 1: Reflection of Learning Strategy
• Top three items I am good at, according to the document
• Effective Study Environments
• For online students, this is a very tough concept to master. However, I have been doing online learning long enough to become a natural at creating effective study environments in my own home.
• Limiting Distractions
• Another concept that does not come natural to online students is limiting distractions. In an online program, by design, the entire internet is at your fingertips at all times. The internet is a huge cyberspace with content in just about anything you can think of, therefore it is incredibly easy to steer off-course. Even I am guilty of this sometimes, but over time I have become quite good at resisting such temptations.
• Thinking Skills
• A skill that is crucial for any STEM major. Effectively all fields of science, technology, engineering, and math require extensive critical thinking skills. If you do not have critical thinking skills, it is quite hard to succeed in STEM. This is a skill I had to build up over time. Today, I thankfully feel that my thinking skills are above average.
• Top three items I am weak in, according to the document
• Religiously maintaining a schedule 
• Although I have done just fine with a general weekly planner in the past; crossing assignments and readings off as I complete them, it is clear that this is not very good practice and that I should start following a stricter schedule sooner, rather than later.
• Don't Read Aloud to Yourself
• This being a bad thing surprised me. Although I do not really read to myself when studying, I do like to read my essays out loud before submitting them as it seems to help improve my confidence about what I am writing. If your word choice sounds concise on paper and when speaking out loud, then it is probably good word choice.
• Where to Keep Notes
• This document gives absolutely no mercy to digital notetakers. Instead, it suggests to have a handwritten loose-leaf notebook. While I realize this document was probably made for in-person students, the fact this was not mentioned as an alternative was shocking. As an online student, I have preferred to either type my notes or handwrite them digitally on an iPad using the Apple Pencil.
• Part 2: Reflection of Time Management Skills
• Above is a screenshot of an activity log that gives an idea of what I did each day. 
• Part 3: Reflection of Project Management Basics
• The three project management presentations are very informative and provide a lot of information on the subject. The main takeaway is that there are three primary factors to project management: scope, time, and cost. All three of these factors are correlated. For instance, if the scope of the project is massive, then the time and cost of a project will increase as well. If the budget of a project is very high, then a project can afford to increase its scope, which also increases the cost and time investment required.  The other two videos are presentations on work breakdown structures (WBS) and Gnatt charts. Work breakdown structures do what they say: break down a larger problem into a smaller problem, which then create deliverables that all add up to be the larger problem's overall solution. The Gnatt Chart was invented by Karol Adamiecki and is a visual allocation of which parts of a project need to be completed at what time.
• Part 4: Reflection of Previous Capstones
• Overall, these are all interesting projects. One project that caught my attention is "A Bird's Song." For their problem statement, the group strategically chose their game's protagonist to be a Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, which is a native Hawaiian bird that went extinct due to environmental destruction and the introduction of non-native species. The game is intended to tell this story through its art direction and gameplay. The group used Krita, Jira, GitHub, and Unity to bring their game to life. Next, they outlined what each member was responsible for. Finally, they outlined the challenges encountered when making the game. They cited unequal levels of experience with the tools used as their biggest challenge, which certainly makes sense.
• Part 5: Summarization of the week
• In addition to what I have learned from reading through the four resources above, I continued to learn and practice APA formatting. I also had the opportunity to meet with the instructors of CST 300 this week. I also continued to learn about teamwork skills through OLI Module 2. Finally, I continued toward completing the Industry Analysis Draft and had the opportunity to peer review two of my teammates' drafts.

That is all for this week, see you in my Week 3 post!