8.4.1 Plan your use of problem-solving skills and select methods Exploring and planning an activity often results in different options, possibilities and ways forward. Some approaches will be more feasible or will interest you more than others. At this stage you need to think about how you will be using your problem-solving skills and how you will assess the overall quality of your work. To help you make these decisions, you may find tools such as concept maps or critical-path analysis helpful in representing the different parts of the problem-solving acti
8.3.1 Identify opportunities for using problem-solving skills Where and how will you use problem-solving skills over the next 3–4 months? What opportunities do you have to develop your skills? For example, you may be working on a course project with a defined goal but the best route to that goal is not clear; you might be involved in contributing to the design of a system, improving its performance or investigating the feasibility of ideas; you may be involved in resolving resource or staffing difficulties, or in planning a major event. Problems
8.1 Introduction to improving your skills in problem solving This key skill develops your problem-solving skills in your studies, work or other activities over a period of time. To tackle this key skill, you will need to plan your work over at least 3–4 months to give yourself enough time to practise and improve your skills, to seek feedback from others, and to monitor your progress and evaluate your strategy. Problem solving runs through many other activities and, rather like the key skill ‘Improving own learning and performance’, it can b
7.6.3 Explain results in relation to your work You should be able to explain the results of your work, drawing attention to any patterns, trends or relationships you have identified. What are the consequences of your work? Does it support the hypotheses or assumptions you started with? How did you carry out your work? What lines of enquiry did you follow to reach your conclusions? Were there any dead-ends where you felt you could not make further progress, or particular insights that you felt helped you to understand your work better? You
6.6.2 Evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy Using the records in your Skills File, look back over your information literacy development work and think about how your decisions, and the facilities and constraints of your working environment influenced the way you tackled the task. How effective was your strategy in improving your IL skills? Identify what was and was not helpful in achieving your goals and outcomes, and assess how your own IL strengths and weaknesses contributed to this. Assess your achievements against the criteri
Interpret results and identify your main findings In interpreting your results, think about the coverage of your searches and whether you have missed anything or left out important areas. You cannot find everything, but you should be confident that you have located sources recognised for their accuracy, authority and authenticity. How will you judge the quality and coverage of your material? Be aware that while your information may be accurate and reliable, it may not be unbiased. Look carefully at the sources of your information (ask yourse
6.5.4 Monitor and critically reflect on your use of IL skills As you develop your information literacy skills, refer back to the outcomes you hope to achieve and goals you have set yourself. Ask yourself questions such as: am I on track to achieve my outcomes? what difficulties in using information literacy techniques have I experienced and what have I done about them? how have the choices and decisions I made impacted on the quality of my work? do I need to mak
6.5.1 Explore different information sources Where and how are you going to look for your information? Finding information effectively involves being aware of techniques for locating and digging out the relevant information. Find out about how the sources you have identified are organised and indexed, and formulate your questions appropriately. Set up different search strategies and criteria to explore alternative lines of enquiry. If you need to search for, evaluate and select information from the Internet or other databases, fin
5.5.4 Evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy Using the records in your Skills File, look back over your IT development work and think about how your decisions, and the facilities and constraints of your working environment influenced the way you tackled the task. How effective was your strategy in improving your IT skills? Identify what was and was not helpful in achieving your goals and outcomes, and assess how your own IT strengths and weaknesses contributed to this. Evaluate your achievements against the criteria you establishe
5.5.1 Develop the structure for presenting your work In presenting the results of your use of IT, you may need to integrate information of different types and formats. For example, in a report you may want to bring together text, numerical and symbolic data, equations and formulas, tables and graphs, charts or other images. Check that your intended approach follows accepted conventions, and find out what guidelines or advice are available to you. If you are bringing information together in a single document or presentation, ensure that fo
5.2 Developing a strategy In developing a strategy for improving your IT skills you are aiming to: identify the opportunities you can use to develop and practise your IT skills; establish the outcomes you hope to achieve and targets for meeting them; identify the resources you might use for developing your skills, including people who might be able to help you as well as books, study guides, tutorials, specialist training, databases, libraries
4.5 Drawing ideas together This key skill has used a three-stage framework for developing your skills. By developing a strategy, monitoring your progress and evaluating your overall approach, you take an active role in your own learning. But learning does not necessarily follow a path of steady improvement, it involves change: revisiting ideas, seeing things from different perspectives, tackling things in different ways. You are unlikely to be able to complete your work by working through it from beginning to end
3.8.1 Select and bring together effective ways to present outcomes The most appropriate method to present your work may depend on what you are required to do either for your course, or for a work-related project. For example you could be submitting a written assignment, making a presentation to work colleagues, or putting together a collection of designs. You also need to look back at your notes and comments and take time to consider what you have learned while completing this key skill. Bring together what you have learned into a synthesis. A synthesi
Introduction This unit focuses on higher level skills. Skills development is complementary to other learning – it cannot be done in isolation. The higher level skills in this material aim to raise your awareness of the processes of learning and development – other subject-based material must supply the context and motivation for this. Key skills underpin the ability to carry out successfully, and improve on, a wide range of tasks in higher education, employment and wherever there is a continua
Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. MC Masterchef by Colin Cookman All other materials included in this unit are derived from content originated at the Open University.
Unit Image
7.2 Developing a strategy Present notes/records that show you have planned your use of skills to work with others. Your evidence must include: the goals you hope to achieve over 3–4 months or so; you should indicate how these goals relate to the context in which you are working and to your current capabilities; notes/records about the resources you might use and what information you need to support you in developing your skills and completing the work; for e
2 Sources of help This assessment unit is designed to be self-contained. However you might like to access the following sources for support and guidance if you need it. These sources include:
U529_1 Key skills – making a difference: This OpenLearn unit is designed to complement the assessment units. It provides detailed guidance and activities to help you work on your key skills, gives examples of key skills work from students, and helps you prepare and selec
Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence
Unit Image
Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit: The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see (see terms and conditions).This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence
Author(s):
3.7.3 Fluency Try to make your essays flow from one sentence to the next. As we have seen, this is partly a matter of structure and partly of signposting. It is vital to think of your essay in terms of its overall structure – to move points around, and cut and trim, in search of a clear sequence for your ideas. Then, having worked out a structure, you have to ‘talk’ your reader through it, emphasising the key turning points in the essay, summarising where you have got to, showing how ea
