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Activity 2: Time Management
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.Henry Ford (1863-1947) American industrialist.
Managing your time is one of the greatest challenges you’ll face during your educational and professional career. Northcentral University is proud to announce that we have paired with a professional time management company to offer you the tools and tips you’ll need to manage your time during your education, and throughout your life.
The Most Important Thing to Learn about Succeeding in Courses at Northcentral University
Did you know that most of the students who did not succeed in this course did so because they missed their course assignment deadlines, fell behind, and could never catch up? With the help of this time management program, you can keep this from happening to you. Developing the skills needed to meet all assignment deadlines in the months and years ahead is essential to your ultimate success.
As you work through this program, be sure to focus on setting aside adequate time for all of the essential activities in your life, and some of the non-essentials as well. Be realistic. You will not be gaining any superpowers just by entering a graduate program. The same demands on your time—work, family, friends, community service, and all of life’s little emergencies—will still be there, along with the time needed to complete your course readings and activities. But in this time management program you’ll find a way to make every minute count, and probably still have some time left leftover.
Begin Your Work on this Activity Early
You will need to watch several short videos, fill out a workbook, track how you use your time, and really think about planning your time. Several hours of work are involved with most students needing 5-15 hours to complete this activity. Give yourself the time you deserve to master the time management beast, once and for all! It is not too soon to get started as soon as you receive this letter.
To set up your time management program account, carry out the instructions in the syllabus. We’ve made this as easy as possible and have tested this thoroughly so you won’t have any problems accessing your program. If, for any reason, you do have a problem, contact [email protected].
Be sure to submit the workbook by the stated deadline for this activity. Ensure all parts of it are completed; missing sections will affect your grade.
How to Download your Time Management Workbook
A pdf workbook is available in the Attack Your Day course; however, I have also sent a Microsoft Word version of the same workbook along with this letter. I strongly encourage you to use the Word version not the pdf versions. Some students have technical trouble with the pdf version and
are not able to properly save their work. The Word version works very well and as near as I know, no one has technical problems with it.
However, if for some reason you want to use the pdf version, the instructions below show how you obtain a pdf workbook for this activity.
Go to the Attack Your Day! Northcentral Training Portal. The links you need are in the Syllabus and have also been pasted below.
Attack Your Day! Northcentral Training Portal (if you have not yet registered, go to: http://ncuregistration.attackyourday.net)
Click on the Time Management Tab as shown below.
When the new window opens, click on the Time Management Workbook link as shown below.
In the new screen that opens, look under DOWNLOADS and click on the link to the workbook as pictured below.
Follow normal down load proceedures to place the workbook on your hard drive in a location you can easily find. You will be able to type directly into the workbook even though it is a pdf file. However, as mentioned above, you will be better off using the Word version I sent you with this letter.
Follow Instructions Carefully
About 20% of the students who do this activity lose marks because they do not read the instructions for each section carefully. Before you begin typing, take a moment to reflect on the instructions. As always, let me know if you have any questions.
Saving your Time Management Workbook
Some students contact me frustrated because they cannot save their workbook after typing in their entries. Here is an important tip. If your curser is still in one of the boxes where you enter text, you may not be able to save the entry. You must finishing typing and then click on any part of the workbook that is not a text box. Then click on the word “File” on the right hand corner of the page. Move your mouse pointer down to “Save” and click on it. If the word “Save” is grayed out, clicking on it will not help. The most likely reason it is grayed out because your curser is in a text box. As mentioned above, move your cursor out of the text box you are working on by clicking anywhere else on the workbook and try again. Most likely you will find that the word “Save” is no longer grayed out and you can preserve your work. Also, the “save” function remains grayed out if nothing new has been typed into the workbook. In other words, you can only save if you have made a change. If you still have trouble after trying all of this please contact Technical Support at 888-628-1567.
Submitting and Getting Feedback on Your Second Activity
For activity 1 you entered a discussion post. For activity 2 you will submit your Time Management Workbook. You do this by clicking on Activity 2 and scrolling down until find the area pictured below. This is the same area you will go to in order to receive feedback on your activity.
After you have submitted your workbook you will eventually receive an automatically generated email in the NCU messaging system that says your course work has been updated. This will usually arrive on Monday or Tuesday of the week following the activity. You can then go back to the area pictured below to retrieve your feedback.
Above you can see the file the student submitted that is marked with a green L that stands for learner. Notice that this time there are two files from the Mentor that are marked with an Orange M. The first file returned by the instructor is the cover sheet for this second activity. It will have some feedback in it. The second file returned by your instructor is the workbook. It will have feedback in it that has been added by your instructor. Be sure to download, review, and save both files from your instructor.
Never get Close to a Deadline
It would be wise to work ahead on activity 3: Giving Credit Where Credit is Due, however; Northcentral University has a firm policy that requires you to wait until one assignment is graded and returned before submitting the next one. You can still work ahead. Many students start work on the next activity as soon as they submit an assignment. As soon as the previously submitted assignment is graded and returned they check the feedback and do some final editing if any of the previous feedback applies to their next assignment. They then submit the next assignment a few days early and thus avoid getting close to the deadline. However, you are only required to submit before the deadline, working ahead is wise but is not required.
An Important Phrase about What to do if you Fall Behind in the Course
Even though Northcentral works hard to keep its students on schedule, students do fall behind schedule from time to time. As you know, Northcentral has a severe late policy (10% deduction per day). The policy evolved to its current form because it has proven to get more students through the program than more lenient policies. However, as your instructor, I can exercise some leniency relative to the late submissions provided you contact me before the deadline. If you are diligent about this, I can get you through the course relatively unscathed if, even after applying your best time management skills, you miss a deadline. Did you notice the phrase “before the deadline” that is written in bold and highlighted in yellow and repeated here in italics and underlined? Did you notice the question in italics I wrote just before this question? Do you see I am subtly trying to emphasize something in this paragraph?
An Open Invitation to Contact Me
The most successful students at Northcentral are the ones who contact their faculty members if they have any questions or concerns. This is especially true if they begin to fall behind. You have an open invitation to contact me.
Marla KelseyEducation Foundations Faculty
Email: [email protected]: marlakelsey
Phone: 480-822-0743(8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Arizona time ← click here to check)“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats
