Genio Learner Stories - Ruthanna

Speaker: Ruthanna Reardon, Online Learner at University of Northern Colorado

Ruthanna Reardon: Hello. My name is Ruthanna, and I've been studying at the University of Northern Colorado. I've been using Glean for about 2 years now. I have, episodic disability where it's sometimes difficult for me to pay attention in class. And so, being that I'm also studying a second language, it's been really helpful to have those notes. Because it transcribes for me and to also be able to replay what my professors say in class for instruction, because I will hear it and then I will forget what was said, whether just with the delay in processing or not being able to focus on what's being said. So, it's been really helpful for my study because I can go back and I can even search. I've got it arranged by courses, so I can search like I know this keyword that a professor said, and I can search for that keyword and it will find in the transcript where that was said, and I can replay it or I can upload PowerPoints into my notes as I'm listening, and I can still take notes that I can review and replay. Because sometimes a lot of it is also like, how did my professor say something. So it's been really helpful to prepare for tests and to recall lectures, And even when I ask questions and I get the answers, sometimes I'm so focused on taking notes that I'm like, wait, what did my professor actually say? So it's been helpful because I'm also working while I'm in, you know, classes. So it helps save time on my studies and it helps to organize, it helps me to organize my notes from my different lectures. and I could even go back and review something from a previous semester that I'm like, wait, this kind of like scaffolds and builds upon that. Let me go back to the basics and the fundamentals. and review the PowerPoints, review the videos, review how my professor's told us to do different assignments. So it's been really helpful overcoming those challenges with my memory from a traumatic brain injury, my ability to focus, my cognitive load. It's been key to my academic success.

Ruthanna Reardon: So, Glean has impacted my learning experience by helping me have a healthier work-life balance. I'm a working student, so I'm having to juggle not only class load, but also working full time outside of school. It helps to organize my studying and my notes. and feel more confident because I can re-listen to how my professor said something, you know, their tone, like, this is important, you know, wink wink. This probably will be on an exam. And I've made Honors, with my grades. My GPA is above a 3.8 cumulative at the university. So it's purely because I can reference my notes from Glean. I can review my PowerPoints. And I can review the transcript, I can review how my professor said something. I can even organize it by semester and by class. and, or even when I have advising meetings, and my advisor will say, oh, you need to take this class, in a certain semester. It's just been really helpful with my academic success and my stress levels. I can really focus on studying and not flipping through notebooks and trying to find where I took the notes. Although I will listen and the act of writing it down helps with my memory as well. So, Glean helps me to be able to listen at my pace because sometimes my professors talk like 1 mile a minute and I can't keep up. And so Glean helps me be able to have everything centralized. And because it's in a Glean cloud, it's not taking up space on like my computer per se. As long as I have like the space on my hard drive to be able to take in a new recording and then I can access it on the cloud. Anywhere as long as I'm connected to the internet and I can log in. So that's really convenient to, like, oh I can record on my phone and then it's on my cloud and I can get it on my laptop later. So that's really handy. I noticed that within the first session of using Glean right away, how helpful it is to be able to review the the PowerPoints, the lectures, the tone of my professor, the transcripts, it's been very essential for me.

Ruthanna Reardon: I would definitely recommend Glean to other students. It helped me be more organized and it helped me. Be able to focus on the content and being live in the moment with my lectures as opposed to like trying to manage like taking notes and paying attention and what's important and having to like sort through all that in real time. And it's helped me with my time management skills because once class is over, Glean uploads the lecture to the cloud, and then I can go to my next class and be ready to take notes again, and I'm not physically tired from all the writing. I can go back and write down the things that I had questions about or that were important, and I'm not trying to figure out. In the moment, what to write down or taking all these pictures of each PowerPoint slide. Because Glean can upload the PowerPoint if I have it for my professor. And as I'm listening live, I can click which slide the information ties to. And even if my professor sends the PowerPoint later, I can add it to my Glean so that I can kind of side by side, like, here's what they said, here's the PowerPoint, boom. So it's really convenient, really handy, and it's cross device. So I can record something on my phone, in the Glean app, and then it's on my Glean cloud, or I can listen to something on my phone that I previously recorded in class on my laptop. And it also has these tools to help filter out like some microphones pick up poppier sounds and others. So it can kind of clean up the audio as well. And the transcripts are searchable, so it helps when I'm like, I know that professor said something about chapter 6. Which lecture was that? What exam is that, you know, going to be? So it's really I mean the comparison from the 1st 2 years before I had Glean to the years that I had it, I can't even, it's, can't hold a candle to it. The amount of stress that I was under and how much time I was spending sifting through my notes, it's been so helpful to have Glean instead of trying to do it the old paper and pencil way. Paper and pencil was a good backup for Glean when I wanted to review the notes that I'd written. So it pairs really well with my other study tactics and techniques.