Generative AI like ChatGPT have been around for a year or two now and made quite an impression in education and other professional spheres! Most students use generative AI in one way or another, and generative AI tools are definitely not going away! The (uni)verse co-hosts talk about their experience with generative AI and how they wished they knew how to use it, underlining concerns about their ethical use too. How do you use generative AI like ChatGPT?

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

As midterm season is well under way, we take a cheeky look at student behaviour when taking exams. Some students speed through exams, some very carefully dissect each question, some stare into space, some shake their legs so much the whole room seems to shake with them, some have each emotion written across their face, and much more. Which type of exam takers are you? 

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

Welcome to the (Uni)verse! Last year we asked 1st year students what they were looking forward to starting university, and what they worried most about. We then had 4th year students talk about their experience and answer back to some of the worries 1st year students might have. This year, our 3 podcast co-hosts, Joela, Janet and Laura, are entering the 3rd year of their program, and I was wondering how it felt to be an upper year student. Listen to the "wisdom of the three" as they discuss their experience!

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

Welcome back! The cost of living has increased quite a bit in the last couple of years. Many students are living on a tight budget and all the tricks in the basket should be applied to save a bit of money. We discuss a few tricks and suggestions we have used to budget wisely.

Do you have any tricks to share? Please let us know! See email address below.

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

Final  exam season is officially on! Exams always bring a certain amount of stress. For the most part, stress is great and useful. It keeps you alert and focus and can be turned into excitement rather than anxiety. But for many students, too much stress can lead to test anxiety, with varying consequences on exam performance and distress.

In the last episode of this series, we talk about how to recognize test anxiety, how to develop strategies to  prevent it, to mitigate its effect during an exam, and importantly, what to do if things go horribly wrong.

References used for this episode:
https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/tackling-test-anxiety/
https://sass.queensu.ca/resources/online/test-anxiety
https://opentextbc.ca/studentsuccess/chapter/test-anxiety/
https://www.anxietycanada.com/articles/thinking-traps/

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

Going to university is a social experience for many students. You meet so many new people and make new connections, whether these are professional or personal. It is a time of change, when new friendships may arise and old friendships peter out. As you progress through your degree (or change it), interests are in constant flux and the people that revolve around these interests come and go. It can also be a time of loneliness, perhaps you have gone to a university where you have no connections, perhaps there is a language or cultural barrier, perhaps you are simply shy and you need to  force yourself to get out there to create new connections.  Follow us as we talk about making connections with students, TAs and profs, the challenges, the surprises, the strategies, the beauty and sometimes the pain too.

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

Midterm season is well under way and perhaps you are feeling a little burned out? You are not alone and without any resources! During this reading, listen to yourself if you need to take a break. You can also listen to our podcast for a bit of inspiration on what sort of break might work better for you or simply commiserate on how hard life can be as a student.

Should you need help, here are a few resources:

• Good 2 talk post-secondary helpline (Ontario: 1-866-925-5454)
• uOttawa immediate Wellness support line: 613-562-5411
• Finding Flow Solutions : offers training modules to better learn how to reflect on your work habits and find solutions to learn how to overcome workflow barriers.

Take care and rest well!

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

After pondering the meaning of being an adult, we wonder if students are and want to be treated as adults at university. No one here is an expert, defining what it means to be treated as an adult is work in progress, but we do have a few comments and ideas that may resonate with faculty and students alike. What do you think? As a student, do feel like you are treated as an adult? As a faculty, are you treating your students as adults? What would not being treated as an adult look like?

Shownotes:

Why does it take so long to grow up today? Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ted talk, 2015: https://youtu.be/fv8KpQY0m6o?si=YRL76bGm0zrMUlFi

Arnett, J. (1994). Are college students adults? Their conceptions of the transition to adulthood. Journal of Adult Development, 1(4), pp. 213-224.

Nelson, L., Padilla-Walker, L., Carroll, J., Madsen, S., Barry, C., & Badger, S. (2007). “If you want me to treat you like an adult, start acting like one!” Comparing the criteria that emerging adults and their parents hold for adulthood. Journal of Family Psychology, 21(4), pp. 665-674.

At what age do you start to really feel like an adult? (If ever!), The Student Room: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5037720

 Reddit blog on students being treated as adult at university/college: https://www.reddit.com/r/college/comments/m6vkss/do_you_get_treated_like_an_adult_in_college/?rdt=47899

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

This is a question that sneaked itself into our conversation as we listened to comments made by 4th year student way back in September 2023. As you will hear, our thoughts about being an adult and whether we considered ourselves adults were pretty much all over the place. So we dug a bit more into the literature on adulting (yes, that is a word) and discussed it further. Not that we'll write a Nobel prize winning essay about this, but we did conclude adulthood is all about buying new sock!  Will you agree?

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].

There has been much talk about whether Smartphones are good or bad for learning. All students use their Smartphone in class either for non-academic related purposes or for their learning during class, using polling apps, looking up vocabulary, Google searches, etc. We do not have the answer to whether phones are good or bad for learning per say, but we can talk about what students do to manage their phone use strategically. In this episode, Diane Riddell generously spends time with us to talk about her research while working in Prof. Luc Bonneville's research group, on the student use of Smartphones in university classes.  We hope you'll recognize yourself in some of the strategies and shared experiences described, learn a thing or two and perhaps share your experience using our email address:  [email protected]. You can read more about Diane Riddell and Luc Bonneville's research here.

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at [email protected].