How I Organize My Course Materials & Readings

So when I completed my MBA at University of Phoenix (side note: awesome school, accredited, and ahead of their time being fully online…who’s laughing now, in the age of COVID-19). I needed a system to organize myself and my work so I could stay on top of things. That system also got me through my MSW and I’m now using it in my DSW (albeit now I only use an iPhone and an iPad)

So I have a mostly empty template folder because this way I can just copy and paste it and that way every course is already setup for each semester. I’ll upload a zip file of it here later as a resource. The main components are the course materials and the weekly folders. The “completed” folder is where I slide each week when we’re done with it so I can see the semester progress and get a sense of accomplishment.

The course materials folder contains a few important items. First; some blank word docs where I paste critical information like instructor contact info so I don’t have to scour the syllabus. It’s also where I save the syllabus. It’s also where I put in the most common citations (e.g. the textbook…) and where I save any reserve readings that will be used for the duration of the course. I also always get my books as PDFs (at UOPX all of our books were secure PDFs) and so they were saved here for easy access.

So each week has the same layout, though I updated the DQ folder to include DQ & Flipgrid. That folder is where I compose my message board responses. If you’ve ever written a message board response with five academic citations to have your browser crash on you, or the schools learning system due…you’ll understand why you want to compose and save in word first, and then copy and paste. Additional bonus, you get to have a record of what you wrote if you want to look back on it.

The read, read-read again, and to read folders are important. Weekly readings (PDF articles, journal articles, YouTube video URLs) are stored in the read folder at the start of the week. As I read and go through them they’re moved to the read folder, unless I didn’t get something or REALLY need to dissect an article, and then it goes into the read – read again (after all the other readings are done).

I can’t recall which of my MBA professors chastised us for attempting to read articles word by word (my recollection is that it was my business law professor) but I no longer do that. At all. Unless it’s one I’m really interested in tearing apart. We had a special class session because of it where he was like “you will not make it through grad school if you do this.” So I literally read abstract, findings, discussion and move on. When I’m doing my own research I’m way more thorough, but I don’t have time in my day/week. I do make it a habit to read the textbook chapters in their entirety (but I use a reading app at near warp speed for that, and you can train yourself to listen faster).

Also (literally citation needed, I am desperately trying to find the bookmark for the blog I saw this on, so if you know it, send it to me please!) one of the things I’ve seen mentioned is to make an annotation at the top of each pdf with a brief summary in your own words. I’m going to start that this year. I never highlight because I’ve never found it helpful, but I think this has promise. The way I read anything is to be able to explain it to the person next to me (UB Department of Linguistics methodology, which hasn’t failed me yet).

Okay typed out rapidly in between patients. Grammar on greater detail/content to be added later.