Continued Research on Successful College Students

In doing some more research, and trying to relate study habits to successful college students, I found that although you can relate most of the 7 habits to that topic, it needed to be broadened a little more, because there is more to success than studying. So I have broadened my topic a little to include other elements of things college students to be successful, remain focused, and stay happy.

KNHL Study

IDEO Methods

Learn

Last week I started doing Secondary Research, one of the Learning activities. I found that I was kind of all over in my research, having a hard time focusing just on study habits in connection with the 7 habits, mainly because although the first 3 habits relate to yourself, and the 7th habit is to keep learning, habits 4-6 have to do with other people. I found a lot of good information though.

After I did my research, my next step was to perform and Analysis of the content I had gathered. This is really the step that made me decide to expand my topic a little to include some more general habits for successful college students. I feel this will be able to relate to the 7 habits of highly effective people better, and will allow me to find more qualitative and quantitative data to display. I am still going to stick as close to study as possible, but there are other elements that affect a student, you can’t just wrap it up into one. For example, some of the most successful college students take the time to volunteer and be involved (relates to either Be Proactive, or Think Win-Win), but that doesn’t directly relate to their study habits.

Look

I did some good initial Visual Audits this week to get ideas of how I want to style my exhibit website. I found some really cool sites that come with all sorts of styles. I found all sorts of things that could help with the visual style. I am going to continue to expand this more as I gain more information, but I think I got a pretty good start here. 

The other portion I did was some Competitive Research looking at what other things are out there for the 7 habits. I didn’t find a lot, most of the information was reviews or generic summaries linking to the Covey website. There was some elements, like this YouTube video. There is some competitive research linked to the pinterest account mentioned above.

Visuals

I didn’t get as much as I wanted to done, but I did start to layout my website. It’s still super simple and not all the way finished. It will most likely change many times as I gather more information and develop the visual style I want to stick with.

I also got a few drafts of charts done, these were my favorites:

I still have tons to do, but I think I got a pretty good start this week. I have also been thinking about different ways to gather data and information since I’m always at work when students are on campus. I know that sometimes you can get a survey sent out to the student body, I want to see what I need to get that going this week. The survey will ask information about study habits, as well as familiarity with the 7 habits of Highly Effective People. I would then also send the survey to a bunch of my friends at other colleges.

Schedule

Also, we updated our schedule a little bit, so here is the new one that Katie made for us: