CREDIT: FSU PUBLICATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT

Being a new student or even a mature student coming back to college might be stressful, trying to figure everything out at the start. If you are thinking Fanshawe Online Learning (FOL) looks like a maze or even if you feel lost about what to prepare for at the start of your program, then these online workshops might be helpful. The Fanshawe Library Learning Commons website offers a free summer workshop series that provides useful resources on multiple topics that can benefit your time throughout your studies. Although the workshops are hosted in the summer, they can be accessed online year-round and many more workshops are also hosted throughout the school year.

Let’s dive into a few workshops that can help you be a successful student here at Fanshawe.

FOL Training


This one-hour session they will guide you on everything you need to know about FOL. FOL is used in almost every program at Fanshawe to submit assignments and other digital work. It is also used for professors to give out the lessons and provide information to the classroom that students will need to know. Professors will also use it as a way to communicate with students via email or give them comments about the work they have recently marked. The online learning workshop covers where to find all of this in FOL. They will also cover how you can add a tag at the end of the emails so you won’t have to add the regards at the end all the time. Getting to know the tools within FOL and some hidden uses can help put your mind at ease before starting your academic course.

Study and Testing Strategies

This workshop is a helpful workshop that teaches you about understanding daily study behaviours. It also provides useful techniques when taking multiple-choice exams. The study skills portion provides tips about reading textbooks and how to break it down into smaller portions that can help you understand lessons rather than trying to cram all of the reading in a night before the test day. It also shows note-taking and time management strategies and how to apply this into your daily routines while balancing student life. The multiple-choice section helps with knowing how to direct yourself throughout exams and tests. The workshop also helps with reading questions and how to point out the significant words that stick out to keep in mind when trying to choose or give the right answer.

Scholarly Standards and Research

In this session, they help you understand about academic integrity and the policies to follow. Understanding these tips will help avoid any penalties, offences or plagiarism in your program. They will also show you about Turnitin, a program that professors use on FOL. Turnitin is a software that checks your work to see if anything might be plagiarized and there is a place on FOL that you can check your work before submitting it to the professors. The research session dives into all of the resources that the Fanshawe Library Learning Commons has on their webpage. They teach you all about where you can find books that will help with your research for your courses. Another thing it shows is about e-books that your program might be offering instead of a hard copy of textbooks.

These are just a few workshops that can help you out throughout your studies. There are many more workshops to choose from. Math, academic writing, science, technology skills, Indigenous awareness, return to learning: for mature students, and an overview of the Library Learning Commons services.These workshops are offered virtually and in person here at Fanshawe.

A student-graduate here at Fanshawe, Kimberly Milhomens said that these workshops helped prepare her for her program “Getting to know my way around FOL really helped me out,” Milhomens said. “Most of these workshops are offered throughout July and August but the workshops will be recorded and posted in the workshop section on Fanshawe’s Library Learning Commons web page in case you missed it.”

Hopefully these tools will help you out to become a successful student here at Fanshawe.