By: EaglebrookSchool

A few questions and answers about studying or revising online.

Q. Okay, let’s start with the BIG question, why should I study or revise for the IB diploma online?

A. First of all, let’s start by saying that every opportunity you take to study or revise is likely to improve your knowledge and learning about your subject. If you want to do well in the exam, then you need to take every opportunity offered to you to study or revise. By offering students these online opportunities, OSC are giving them another opportunity to learn and, above all, a chance to do better in the IB diploma exam.

Q. Can online sessions ever match the learning you get from real life classroom teaching?

A. The biggest factor in learning is the effectiveness and expertise of the teacher. This is why OSC has built its reputation upon the quality and experience of its teachers. We maintain this in our online service. Our classes and tuition services are led by the same highly qualified IB teachers that lead our respected residential courses. Each of them is an expert IB teacher. Our sessions online are led live by an IB teacher, so students attending one of our online sessions get all the benefits of being taught as if that teacher were in the same room.

Q. So OSC sessions are done live in real time?

A. That’s right. We believe very much in the value of having real teachers lead our classes. That way, students can ask questions of the teacher, the teacher can pace the sessions according to the needs of the class and the teacher can make sure the students stay on task or on track. It’s very easy for a student to wander offtrack when revising on their own, it’s so easy to get distracted or to put off anything you don’t really like. With a teacher there with you, you are better able to keep up and get support mduring difficult studies.

Q. Can online sessions cover everything in a subject?

A. Given time, that would be possible. However, time is not always available to a student, especially when they are revising for an exam. So our courses try to focus upon aspects of each subject which tend to be most difficult for a student. They will cover areas or questions that most often trip up a student or cause them difficulties in understanding or answering. That is where the expert teacher becomes really valuable mto a student, in helping you to tackle the more difficult areas.

Q. How are you able to offer this to IB Diploma students around the world?

A. By the magic of the internet! Most parts of the world have internet access nowadays or so it would seem. All our students need to do is access our service at the agreed time and they will find a teacher there ready and waiting to teach them or help them with their revision. We have our teachers placed around the world and we are training more all the time, so we can attempt to cover all time zones and regions.

Q. Do you seeline sessions replacing classroom sessions?

A. We offer our online sessions as a compiment or an addition to a student’s usual classroom sessions in school. They are not intended as an excuse by a student to miss lessons in school. They are used to give a student extra opportunities to learn something about their subject they didn’t quite grasp while in class or they are used to help a student in revising their subject. Having said that we also attract students who may have missed sessions in class through illness or absence, in which case our sessions may give them a chance to catch up.

Q. What do parents think about your online sessions?

A. To date parents have been very supportive of what we’ve done. They see our online sessions as an extra opportunity to help their son or daughter to learn their subject, especially if they find a subject difficult. Parents also sometimes see it as a great opportunity for their son or daughter to try to improve their exam score, especially where their predicted score may not be enough to gain university entrance.

Q. And, I guess a final big question, what do students think of your online courses?

A. Students have been most complimentary of our courses. They have especially found it beneficial to have an expert teacher to guide them and to explain things more clearly to them. The idea of having an expert teacher proivide you with extra tuition or guidance at a time that best suits you, is something most students find valuable. I’d say all our students have found our online courses useful.

January 20, 2012

That Edge Enhancement Effect!

Understand what the Edge Enhancement Effect is all about and how the optical illusion produced by a Hermann grid can be explained with regard to, firstly, the distribution of cones and rods in the retina effect, secondly, the different neuronal wiring of cones and rods and, thirdly the role of receptive fields.  Once you have got your head around each of the three basic ideas you can move on to the next level and figure out why those dark areas appearing where white lines meet suddenly disappear when you directly look at them.

Be (mathematically) prepared for the option paper!

Each section on the HL paper 3 is worth 20 marks. Of those 20, two marks are typically awarded for a fairly simple calculation. In other word, 10 percent of the paper 3 marks are awarded for mathematical skills. Don’t risk getting a lower grade because you forgot to practice calculating percentage increases!!!

Know your action verbs!

Distinguish, evaluate, discuss – how to do it best? It’s easy to lose marks as a result of responding inappropriately with regard to the action verb used. When for example distinguishing between rods and cones you will receive zero marks for: “Rod cells enable black and white vision as they absorb all wavelengths of light. On the other hand, cones allow us to see more detail, or with a higher resolution because each single cone sends impulses to one ganglion via a bipolar neuron.” However, you do receive two marks for this much shorter answer: “Rod cells absorb all wavelengths of light whereas cones absorb distinct wavelengths and cones give greater visual sensitivity than rods.” When asked to distinguish, identify differences by writing direct comparative statements.

March 5, 2012

We’d be really interested to hear also whether any students have any tips they’d like to share. Your tips could be really useful for other students. Tips on how to revise, how to take notes, how to organise your time perhaps? If you have anything you’d like to share which you feel could help others, please share in the comments.

February 22, 2012

Increasingly, education is taking advantage of the online world and is using technology to help deliver and support the work of teachers. At OSC, we too are creating a range of online services for IB students. Last year, we offered a range of online classes to support students studying science options. This year we are offering a wider range of online IB revision classes, covering more subjects and more topics within those subjects.

We still offer some IB revsion classes to support IB science options but also we are offering a large range of shorter classes offering revision support in many more IB subjects, including IB Mathematics, IB History, IB Economics and IB English. Have a look here at the subjects we are offering and please do sign up or ask us for more details if you see a class that meets your IB revision needs.

For the first time, we are excited to be able to offer IB English revision classes for IB students in the US and also IB English revision classes for students in the Middle East and in India.

We’ll be adding more classes during the next few weeks, so please keep checking back or, if you do not yet see a class you want, please do contact us to ask about our personal 1-1 service.

February 8, 2012

Whenever I ask students what things they think they need to know in order to pass an exam, there are two things which always crop up. Similarly, whenever I ask teachers what they think students need to know, there is one thing which often gets mentioned. So in this article, I have taken the two things mentioned by the students and the one thing mentioned by teachers to give you; ‘3 Things You Need to Know to Pass the Diploma Exam’.

The first thing that groups of students say is that they need to know the questions. Well, let’s be honest, this just isn’t going to happen; you are not going to know what questions are being asked before you sit the exam. What you can do of course is look at past papers and see the way in which certain types of questions are asked. You can also check on the vocabulary being used to ask questions. Both of these can give you some insight into how questions are asked and also give you confidence in answering them.

The second thing students usually say is that they’d like to know the answers! Well, if you think about it, you already do! The examiners are not going to ask questions about something outside the syllabus, so they cannot ask you something about anything you’ve not studied. So provided you’ve studied the whole course, you should have the answer to any question the examiner asks. Perhaps, the key here is to read the question that is being asked, that will give you an indication what answer(s) the examiner is looking for and also how to present your answer.

The third thing is one thing teachers almost always say, for a student to pass any examination they only need to know the subject. This is true, there really is no substitute for knowing your subject. That means knowing it inside-out, being able to remember, recall and apply everything you’ve studied since day one!

Let’s be honest, though, even with the best notes in the world, not many students can remember everything they studied from week one of their course and there would have been lessons on, say, a wet Friday afternoon when your brain and attention were longing to be elsewhere! Combine this with any absences or illnesses and you can start to appreciate why students often find gaps in their knowledge.

Let me here put in a shameless plug for OSC’s revision courses. In our online classes and in our 1-1 tuition, we help provide students with an opportunity to fill those gaps in their subject knowledge and, thereby become better prepared for their exams.

February 20, 2012

First of all let’s talk about failure. You are not a failure, you may feel like it right now but believe me, you are not a failure. You have not even failed your exams; you simply haven’t got the scores you needed. So you need to take stock of your situation, do you accept the result you’ve been given or do you challenge it? You may be able to challenge the result and seek a re-grading, it can be a risky undertaking and it’s best to talk to your school if that’s what you wish to do.

You may also be able to challenge the results by taking the exams again. The idea behind taking the exams again is that you now know how the exmas go and what may be required in the questions, you’ve put yourself in a better position for taking the exam and you also know just where and what you need to revise more.

When it comes to revision for the IB Diploma, OSC online can certainly help. Take a look at our online 1-1 tuition service which can give you that vital extra guidance and revision to perform better.

Maybe, you do not want to retake the exams. In which case you will have to accept the score given. If these scores are not enough for your desired course or university, then you may have to change your plans and look at other courses or other Higher Education institutions.

Again, OSC online can help with that; take a look at our university consultation package which can guide you in the right direction and inform you of the entry requirements for various universities.

Whichever option you choose, contact us first to see if we can help and support you.

OSC has been providing support for IB diploma students for many years now and we’ve become quite the experts in the field. When you look at us, you’d think we’ve got lots of products and services to offer. There’s our residential revision courses (which are almost worldwide), our revision guides and now a range of online classes and individual tutor sessions. In fact, we’re only selling one thing … success.

At OSC, we’re all about selling success, not just IB success but success in later life which comes as a result.

Just think about it. We’re not saying you won’t already get a good score in the exam but have you thought that taking one of our courses might just give you a chance of achieving a better score, a better university place, a better career… That’s what we’re offering our students; after all, success is not getting a good score, success is getting a better score.

December 22, 2011

At first, it may seem a difficult concept to grasp; that some people actually like exams. After all, exams are stressful, time consuming (both in preparing for and sitting the exam) and often tedious (you often have to sit in a room for ‘ages’). So what is it that leads some people to like them?

An exam is a challenge; it’s a challenge that demands you show what you have learned. It’s also a challenge in that so much depends upon your performance in the exam.

With every challenge comes the possibility of success.

This, I think, gives us a clue as to why some people like exams; they give people an opportunity to succeed.

At first, you may think that only a few people ‘succeed’ at exams; maybe the first one or two people who get the top scores or only those who achieve the top grades. In fact, everyone can succeed at exams, everyone can ‘pass’ and everyone can get better scores than they imagine.

The key to exam success would seem to be preparation, lots of preparation and preparation that’s well focused. To my mind, this is where OSC can help students.

OSC provide you with revision courses that form part of your preparation. The courses are led by experienced teachers who are expert in IB teaching and exams. The teachers know how to answer the questions and which areas often trip up students; with this knowledge, our teachers can help students focus their preparation on what is important.

Under the guidance of a teacher, of course, there’s no more ‘shirking’, no more putting off your revision and no more ‘I’ll do it later…I’ll do it later…’ until it’s too late!

December 22, 2011

By: USAG- Humphreys

Learners forget over their summer break. That’s not new, you will hear teachers say that wherever you go. It seems the break between academic years is almost designed to allow students to forget much of what they learned at the end of the previous year.

The effect of this is that teachers and students often have to spend the first few weeks going over what had been previously covered before the start of the break. This, of course, eats in to the time available for learning new things and covering new ground in a subject.

With the help of OSC, studnets can now ensure that they do not forget what they have learned and can go back to school at the start of the new year with a fresh mind and a readiness to learn new aspects of their chosen subjects.

OSC online offer students the possibility of regular 1-1 sessions with our expert teachers. Working with our teachers, a student can go over previously learned material and keep it fresh in their minds at the start of the new year.  Your regular session could be once a month, once a week if you wish, or even just a one-off session for a subject you find particularly tricky. That still gives you plenty of time to enjoy the summer and do all the things you would normally want to do … like go on holiday with parents

To take advantage of this and give yourself a fresh mind for the next year of your studies, click onto our 1-1 tuition page and let us know which subject(s) you’d like to refresh.