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Hello everyone,

First of all, it was my birthday yesterday 29/11/2014 and I’m so excited and grateful to be purposefully alive in good health and celebrating with family and friends. It’s been quite the work keeping up with calls, text messages and Facebook messages from well-wishers all around the world but who am I to complain? I’m enjoying the birthday attention either way.

Second of all, let me apologize for the loooooong silence. November has been a hectic month at work and compiling that with school and other extras has been quite overwhelming! (And maybe just a little bit of the infamous "thief of time" won't just let me write something!). To be frank, the past month that I’ve been off grid, I got to fully realize how involving the ODL program is. I try to imagine how much work I would actually have if I was undertaking the full-time study. At some point, I scheduled a Skype appointment with an IAD representative to aid my understanding of the ODL and we had a very fruitful discussion. In addition, we discussed extensively on tools and resources for time management among other things. Taking all of these into context, I view this “challenges” from a positive perspective of continuous personal development and capacity building as an individual and as a professional. It is also a privilege and opportunity to increase my ability to multi-task effectively.

So yaaay! Vicky Ware, a current ODLstudent, came up with this grand idea of setting up an online forum on Facebook called ODLEdSoc. She set the page up for all past, current and aspiring ODL students from University of Edinburgh to “meet”, interact, socialize and share experiences and ideas. I truly commend her for this and the overall response has been great. I join the social forum and got to meet new people, meet my course-mates (again!) on a more relaxed social level and even got to interact fully with a third year student of my course of study from my country! He even gave me some orientation and tips on using the discussion forum to increase my chances of getting more marks, literature search and how to interpret the Turnitin results on assignments submitted. I do hope soon that the social forum becomes a standardized officially recognized society in the University, if possible. For all ODL students who have not joined the Facebook page, you can send an email to odledsoc@hotmail.com, or just send a request to join the page ODLEdSoc on Facebook while including some form of recognizable school ID. It could just be your school ID number. All prospective ODL students can do the same - send an email requesting to join the Facebook page.

Finally, end of term is very near and as much as I can’t wait for to have some kind of breather and enjoy the upcoming holidays, I’ll miss the “company” of my course-mates and our weekly discussions. And apart from making sure I submit my assignments before the deadline, this is also an opportunity for me to refresh my memory by going through my course materials and discussion forum again. You never can tell what useful information you have missed therein. I wish you all the best as we approach end of term and end of year. And I wish you great success in your upcoming examinations and assignments. 

Ciao!

Where are my study resources??

Whew!

So it’s been a very long and busy 3 weeks and 3 days since the last time I posted. I have just enough time in between reading my lecture notes for the week, writing assignments and reports, and posting my thoughts on the discussion forum (while still being delighted with the depth of knowledge, creativity and diversity exhibited by my classmates) to make this post. All these studying I have to keep up with on a constant basis in conjunction with maintaining optimal performance in my workplace in Nigeria had gotten me quite stressed out in the first 2 weeks of study.

It was just less than a week ago that I remembered a message in my school mail (which I saw a while back) on Institute for Academic Development (IAD) study resources. I went to make a quick perusal of the messages in my inbox and …. There it was!

I found the link to the IAD school webpage and blog which contained various learning and career resources. Therein, I found documents ranging from time management to effective reading, literature search, managing reading workloads, drafting and planning assignments and even procrastination. Awesome right? (Lesson learned – check EVERY web-link sent to your inbox).

So, in case anyone like me just didn't take note of this on time;

http://iad4masters.wordpress.com/resources/

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/institute-academic-development/postgraduate/taught/learning-resources

You are welcome! 

Fresh and new too..

Hello all!

I would start by giving a warm welcome to all fellow new students - ODL, full time or part time. I remember being so thrilled at getting my notification of admission/scholarship that I displayed about six different dances together (while listening to Pharell’s “Happy” and Kirk Franklin’s “Could’ve been me”); which probably made me look like a really awkward dancing mosquito. Yeah, it did feel that great!

Now, as a Nigerian resident, talking of mosquitoes naturally reminds me of malaria and a host of infectious diseases, the currently notable sub-saharan epidemic being the Ebola virus. When the virus sadly made its way into my country, all I could think of (among other things) was that I couldn’t wait to get started on my Masters program in Global Health and Infectious diseases (GHID), to learn as much as I could and develop advanced skills to successfully combat similar situations that may arise. Though it’s going to be quite the journey now that I have gotten started, I strongly believe it will be worthwhile and highly beneficial to my personal and professional development.

Navigating through the online classroom platform was quite challenging and bewildering at first, most probably because of the sudden influx of information and registration processes you have to absorb and undertake all at once. But after consistent usage and special thanks to my wonderful Programme Director, it's pretty much getting better per time. To aid a smoother start for the online learning platform, I think it’s just really important for an ODL student to go through the learning and information platforms (MyEd, Learn, Blackboard, Collaborate) as often as possible, and I mean even when you don’t have any serious thing per say to do. It’s much more like going sight-seeing as a full-time fresher so as to get acquainted with your new school. With time, we all get used to a consistently navigated environment. Also, I asked as much questions as I could from technical administrators and my course director(s) which have been very helpful. Discussion boards is another awesome way to get acquainted with the online platforms. In fact, it was through this that I realized that I wasn't alone in the "ODL newbie" movement (which shouldn't be that surprising, right?).

So, I finally got to “meet” a good number of my classmates and I’m especially pleased with the diversity in culture and professional experiences present. Now that lectures have officially started, I’m truly looking forward to a mutually beneficial learning experience, making new friends, establishing lasting relationships and generally having an awesome academic year. I wish you reader a great year too.

Welcome to my world!