Listen to NOVA on the go

Did you know that NOVA is on iTunes U? On NOVA's iTunes U, you can download podcasts (audio clips) or vodcasts (video clips) on a wide range of topics. We have everything from a message from NOVA's President to an interview with a successful ELI student to our popular "60-Second Chef" series. All the recordings are free, and you can listen to them on your computer or download them to your iPod or other mp3 player to listen or watch on the go. Check it out, and let us know what you think!

Are You a Fan of NOVA?

How about showing how much you like NOVA--and learning more about what's going on--by becoming a fan on Facebook? Find more info on becoming a fan of NOVA on Facebook here. Or, if you prefer MySpace, find out how to connect with NOVA on MySpace here.

Looking to Speed Up Your Degree Completion?

NOVA students come to college with a wide variety of skills, knowledge, and information. Often they want to know how to apply their life and work experience to earn college credits.

Check out what one of our students has done to accelerate her course completion.

Christie Pilkington is a current ELI student who recently completed her Small Business Management Certificate and has decided to continue with the Business Administration degree. One of the courses required for her program (and pretty much all programs at NOVA) is ENG 111. After finding out the course objectives, she decided that she would try a CLEP (College-Level Exam Program) test.

Christie purchased a CLEP study guide for English and prepared for her exam. Once she felt ready, she registered to take the exam at the Alexandria Campus Continuing Education Department, and for less than $150, she earned credit for ENG 111. Congrats, Christie!

CLEP exams are offered in many general education subjects (like history, foreign language, math, science, etc.), and study guides can be purchased from the CLEP website to help you prepare.

Learn more here about CLEP exam dates and times. Please contact a NOVA counselor to discuss CLEP exam options and transfer considerations. For those of you that have taken CLEP exams, please share your experiences with us.

We’ll share more ways to accelerate your degree at NOVA in future ELIfe postings!

Your Musical Genome

Have you tried using Pandora to listen, free, to music online? It's a unique site because instead of just playing a radio station over the internet, it uses its "music genome" research to identify songs that you, based on the songs you already like, will probably also like. You can also bookmark songs as you listen to make your own specialized "station" playing only the songs and artists you like best. Pandora also has lots of background information about the artists, songs, and albums you hear, so you can read up on the music you're listening to when you're curious about what it means or what inspired it. And, you can get a Pandora app for your iPhone or iPod Touch and listen to it anywhere!

New to ELI? Attend our Online Orientation!

Are you new to distance learning, or just to ELI? If so, we encourage you to attend one of our free, online orientation webinars. In these webinars, which you can attend from any computer with speakers or headphones, an ELI Counselor and ELI Course Designer will help you understand ELI policies and procedures, show you how Blackboard works, give you tips on how to do your best in ELI courses, and give you and the other participating students ask questions. Why not take an hour and make sure you are getting off to the right start? Click here to find the list of upcoming orientation sessions and instructions on how to sign up. Hope we'll "see" you there!

ELI Tip #3: Check Your Deadlines!

One of the most common problems students run into when taking ELI courses is that they assume all online courses are self-paced. So, they take their time and may wait months before getting started, expecting to complete all the course work at the end of the enrollment period--only to find out that their professor has withdrawn them for not meeting course deadlines!

Don't let this happen to you. It is very important to understand that all ELI courses have deadlines by which you must meet certain requirements (such as logging into your course Blackboard site for the first time or completing a certain number of assignments by a certain date). And, many ELI courses have regular assignment deadlines each week!

Be sure that you read through your course syllabus very carefully to understand all the deadlines that apply to your course. Keep your eye on any emails from your professor or announcements your professor posts in Blackboard. And don't hesitate to ask your professor a question if you're not clear on what is due, when. The deadlines are there to help make sure you make steady progress and really learn your course material well--and the first step toward that goal is making sure you understand that the deadlines are there and plan ahead to meet them.

Returning to School after 18 Years: Sound Familiar?

One of our ELI faculty shared a wonderful email from a student who wrote to thank this professor for providing a great academic experience in Spring 2009.

This student, an honors student in high school, attended a prestigious Virginia 4-year college and goofed off! She dropped out, got a job, and survived just fine. Years later, after working hard and raising a family, she decided to return to college. She chose the inexpensive route – NOVA - in order to complete her 2-year degree with affordable tuition. She discovered that she loved learning - anything and everything - this time around, and she was amazed at how well she did when academic success really mattered to her.

Can you identify with this student? We would love to hear your story, too.

Quick Weather and Traffic Reports

As our recent weather in Northern Virginia shows us, you never know when the temperature's going to change or the sky is going to open up and give us another downpour. And of course, in Northern Virginia, we all always need to know how traffic is going and how to avoid construction and other traffic delays. For a quick check on these things using Google Maps as a base, visit Weather Bonk and use the tabs along the top to select weather, traffic, or whatever type of report you want. You can even view live shots from local traffic cameras and get a complete list of nearby traffic accidents. And if you have outdoor hobbies, check out the links on the top right and visit Ski Bonk, Golf Bonk, or Camp Bonk.

Anyone know any other great sites for tracking weather and traffic?

NOVA is on Twitter!

If you're a Twitter user, you might want to follow NOVA on Twitter, so you can get quick updates on what's going on at NOVA. Check it out here.

The Best Intentions

Sometimes we have the best intentions to get something done, but then we let life’s minor details take over and we don’t get done what we had planned. Check out this quick video (1 min 20 sec) on YouTube and see if you can relate to this guy’s day. I know I can! :)

I believe the video reinforces the fact that many of us need to have more than just an idea of what we want to get done each day. We need to write down our tasks and projects, prioritize them, and even schedule specific times to complete them throughout the day. I’ve found that writing down my daily tasks in my planner helps me to get my work done. I also take satisfaction in being able to check off the items from my list. How about you? Can you relate to the guy in the video? What do you do when you know you have to “get stuff done”?

Graduation Day

Today is NOVA's Commencement ceremony (in other words, graduation). Congratulations to all of you ELI students who are graduating today! And for those of you who aren't quite there yet--keep on going! Take it one course at a time, and you'll be there soon!

Writing Help at Your Fingertips

Don't have time to go to the writing center? Need a quick answer to your questions about grammar, writing style, citations, or paper formatting at the last minute? You might want to check out Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab). OWL has tons of information to help you with your writing, including guides to using the different citation formats your professors might ask you to use (MLA, APA, Chicago Manual of Style, etc.), how to go through the writing process (such as developing a thesis, outlining, and dealing with writer's block), and putting together non-class writing like business letters and resumes.

Don't forget that you can also submit paper drafts to our free online tutoring through Smarthinking if you want to get feedback on your whole paper. You can find more information about Smarthinking here. Once you log in to Smarthinking, you'll find that they also have a detailed writer's manual that can help you with the same types of questions you can get help with on OWL.

So, there's always quick help available for your writing at ELI!

A Good Attitude Goes a Long Way

Here's a quote I like from Hellen Keller:

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

Hellen Keller was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor's degree--and this at a time when our society made a lot of incorrect and limiting assumptions about what a deaf or blind person, much less one who was deaf AND blind, could do. If she could keep a hopeful attitude and use it to keep moving forward toward her educational goals, I think we all can!

Blog Tip #2: Using Labels & Archives

As we get further into the life of ELIfe, there will be more and more posts available for you to read. Depending on how frequently you check in, you may have missed some--or, you may want to re-find something you read a while back.

One easy way to find the material you are looking for is to use the blog's labels. Each blog post is labeled with keywords that describe its content. And on the right hand column of the blog, if you scroll down a bit, you can see a list of all the labels in the blog. The number in parentheses next to each label is the number of blog posts there have been about that topic.

So, let's say it's about time to register for a new semester, and you want to read all the things we've posted related to academic advising to see if there are any suggestions you should keep in mind as you make your plans. Just click the "academic advising" link under the list of labels, and you'll get all the blog entries that are about that topic. Or, what if you are feeling a bit grumpy and could use a little pick-me-up? Click the "fun" label and look back at some of the fun things we've posted.

Another way to check in on things you've missed is to use the blog archives. Also in the right hand column of the blog, you'll see a list of months. For example, click on "March 2009" and--you guessed it!--you'll see all the entries posted in that month. So, if you've been away for a while, you can quickly catch up by reading the months you missed.

I hope this tip is helpful. Does anyone have any comments or suggestions about the blog? Are you finding it useful so far? What could we do to make it more useful to you?

Help Make NOVA More "Green"

NOVA is part of the Virginia Community College System (that's what the "vccs" stands for at the end of your student email address), and right now the whole VCCS is working on a "green" initiative, trying to find ways to make all the things we do a bit more environmentally friendly.

If you'd like to help give the VCCS some ideas on this issue, please take their brief, 7-question multiple-choice survey here.

You can also share more ideas by visiting the VCCS Going Green Blog. There are already dozens of comments from students around the state, sharing their suggestions about improving the environmental sustainability of their schools. Take a look and share your thoughts!