| Obstacles | Overcoming strategies |
| Personal deficiencies and indiscipline Difficulties in finding the right balance and scheduling the homework Sometimes time is an obstacle as attending courses collapses with other work Procrastinating personality Lack of interest to take preparation Difficulties in finding reliable, high-quality journals and relevant articles Limited knowledge in the course Unfamiliar vocabulary and themes require reading more than once The content of articles in a reading seminar could be partly quite difficult and would require more reading. Weak or incoherent peer/group support Lack of timely peer-support or non-cooperation from group members. Unavailability of resources Unavailability of relevant books in some cases Incoherent and faulty instruction Unclear instructions Handouts can be vague, a couple of one-word bullet points per slide or just pictures and illustrations without any further explanation Get bored in lecture when the professor discusses texts and theories, very unfamiliar with and detached from the students’ knowledge If the material in the “Moodle” is not well structured, and if there is a feeling of “forcing” and pressure, the probability of doing the tasks gets lower. Sometimes the texts are difficult to understand because they are edited and out of context. Pre-readings with a heavy subject matter or written in a dull or “aged” way demotivate | Time and concentration management Motivating self to schedule time to read texts, setting smaller goals for the day, and organising the personal life Trying to be as efficient as possible: when thoughts are drifted, taking a short break could regain energy back to do the work Strategic learning Starting from the basics, not trying to rush the harder things Applying trial and error strategy by skimming through several research articles (reading mainly abstracts) to find the most relevant ones Studying autonomously and in a deliberate way Exploring related literature, especially books that approach the topic a little differently from how the teacher does it Sketching out a whole scheme tree of how an assigned concept is related (connected, branched) to the basic root idea (the tree trunk). Use of multiple resources Using multiple relevant books, dictionaries, google and Wikipedia to know the unknown vocabulary and understand concepts Seek peer-help Chasing the topic related things up on Facebook and asking for a rough guide from friends Asking classmates how they understood a given task Use of technologies Watching topic-related YouTube-videos Listening to podcasts, which could save time compared to reading |