Launchpad to Student Success is for the season before university: Grade 11 and 12 learners, applicants waiting to hear, and anyone in the year before a big transition who wants to arrive ready. Parents, teachers and mentors are welcome to read alongside you, while the entries stay your own.
The things that make a real difference once you get there, such as confidence in your ability, grit, how you study, how you handle emotions and whether you feel you belong, can all be built before you arrive. In this course you grow nine of them: a growth mindset, learning how to learn, grit, emotions, strengths, calm, gratitude, vitality and belonging. The only comparison it makes is you against your earlier self.
Each area has its own module, with a Foundation Note, a reader and practice tools that keep your own record. In Learning How to Learn, Study Smarter: My Retrieval and Spacing Planner helps you test yourself and space your sessions. In You Belong Here, I Will Belong: My First-Term Belonging Plan helps you write a plan for belonging in your first term. The last module brings it all together in My Launch Plan, with one practice per area and a plan for your first week, and in A Letter to a Future Student.
I suggest you begin with the first module, Launch: Where I Start, and My Launchpad Check-In, a private baseline that shows where you can lean already and where you want to grow first. You retake it at the end. You can try the whole course free for a day. Once you arrive, Optimal First Year carries the student pathway on through your first year.
Dr Alten du PlessisFounder, LearnSmart4Life