3.3 The experiential model of learning The main proponent of this approach to learning, David Kolb, put forward a theory which he intended to be sufficiently general to account for all forms of learning (Kolb, 1984). He argued that there are four distinctive kinds of knowledge and that each is associated with a distinctive kind of learning. The four kinds of learning are: concrete experiencing reflective observation abstract analysis activ
2.2.3 Doing Finally, learning how to act or perform in particular ways is essential for the development of all kinds of intellectual and physical skills. For example, we need to be able to learn how to create a variety of kinds of written communication, or how to present complex information in a clear diagram, or to decide how a team will structure its work, and so on. No amount of explanation of how to compose a clear technical report, for example, would provide convincing proof that we could actually p
2.2.1 Memorising We sometimes have to remember words, names, symbols and other signs, simply because there is a convention that they will stand for some accepted meaning. This is the kind of learning we use, for example, when we memorise road signs, or the conversion of metric to imperial measures, or lists of words in a foreign language. However, very little of what you study in this unit will require this kind of rote learning. You may need it if you try to remember certain definitions, for example. You wil
1.4 Defining reflection Reflection is both an academic concept and also a word in common use, combining ideas of thinking, musing, pondering and so on. This everyday meaning is a good basis from which to start: reflection is very much to do with thinking. However, one of the most important things about reflection is that it enables us to think about our own thinking – about what it is that we know or have experienced. Such reflection might be summed up in the phrase, ‘the mind's conversation with itself’.
1.3 Reflection and course study Many of the units on the OpenLearn website include self-assessment questions and activities designed to require you to stop and think, sometimes to take action. This is also true of many Open University courses because Open University course teams typically want students to question what they read and to try out ideas for themselves. Every time you pause to do your own thinking in this way, you are reflecting on what you have learnt. This unit includes several activities that are specif
1.2 Learning beyond course study Learning how to learn has become an important goal in higher education. There is a national context in which an emphasis on ability to learn has come to prominence. It is now widely asserted that an ability to learn is as important an outcome of university study as knowledge of a discipline. This is a view put forward strongly by employers, for example, who have an interest in the employability of graduates and the skills they bring into the work place. It is a view which has been reiterated
3.4.6 Residual stress One factor that can cause serious problems in any material is the presence of residual tensile stress. The problem often arises as a direct result of manufacturing, when hot material is shaped and then allowed to cool to ambient temperatures. For large castings like those needed to make the eye bars, such residual stress would be modified by the subsequent heat treatment to strengthen the steel, but had to be studied as part of the research effort into the catastrophic failure of the bridge.<
3.4.4 Stress concentration at joint Although it is known that a round hole in a flat sample will theoretically produce a stress concentration of about 3, the issue was decided experimentally. A tensile test at 25 °C was undertaken on an intact eye-bar-pin assembly from the bridge, being some 8 m long and from a lower part of the chain. It yielded at about 7 MN, and fractured in the shank at a stress of about 770 MPa. The yield stress in the shank was about 520 MPa, and the failed eye bar showed ductile behaviour with a reducti
2.5 Corrosion processes: galvanic series A similar concept to the electrochemical series that has been used by engineers for many years is the galvanic series (one example of which is shown in Table 2: here the list should be read down the columns rather than across the rows). It ranks metals and alloys in order of reactivity or
2.3 Corrosion processes For many materials, degradation processes are simply one or a series of chemical reactions that act to erode or deteriorate the material. The deterioration of metals is a little more complex than that of non-metals because metals are electrical conductors. Local
electrochemical cells freq
1.3 Environmental factors I indicated earlier that many failures occur after a product has been in service for some time: such as the wear of a car tyre, or corrosion of the car body itself. It is also possible for components to fail because of a combination of a manufacturing defect with the applied loading or with the environmental conditions during use. Author(s):
5.1 ‘Religion’ and ‘the religions’: two new notions I want to begin our closer discussion of the question ‘what is religion?’ by looking briefly at the history of the use and meaning of the term. You may be surprised to find how recently the word ‘religion’ has taken on the meanings attached to it today. Contemporary scholars of religion emphasise not merely the cultural breadth but also the antiquity of religious activity. Yet, the term ‘religion’ as we understand it today is very much a Western concept. 1 Themes and issues in the history of art This unit introduces you to a number of themes and issues in the history of art, taking as its pretext a visit to the Louvre in Paris. It asks three kinds of question: How did the Grand Louvre (as the modernised Louvre is called) – its buildings, paintings and sculptures – come to be as it is? How should we respond to the claim that the collections in the Louvre constitute a significant part of the canon of Western European art? Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: have an understanding of how the Grand Louvre has come to be as it is; critically discuss the claim that the collections in the Louvre constitute a significant part of the canon of Western European art; ask questions of museums and collections that are appropriate to art history. References 5.1 Relativising the Holocaust? In the wake of the Soviet armies during 1944–45 came police units. In Poland the communist Office of State Security (Urzad Bezpieczerstwa Publicznego, UB) refilled former Nazi camps and prisons with civilians, many of whom were Germans innocent of any offence other than that of being German. Somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 died as a result of UB behaviour in the camps and prisons; victims were beaten, tortured, starved, killed. One of the only researched UB units is that which op 4.2 Who to blame Browning developed his work on Police Battalion 101 into a book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992b). The same material was subsequently used, and reinterpreted, by Daniel J. Goldhagen for Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996). Goldhagen points the finger of blame for the Holocaust precisely at Germany. The Holocaust was, he stresses, a German phenomenon, and he argues that it built on what he det 4.1 The killers – portrayal and reality Read Document II.11, Himmler's speech to the Gauleiter (leaders of the territorial divisions of the Nazi Party, found under the link below) of 6 November 1943, and answer the following questions: 1.1 The Holocaust: a unique event? World War I has a claim to being called the first industrialised war in the sense that, for the first time, the full power of industrial technology was deployed in concentrated ways on the battlefields. During the Second World War, what might be termed industrialised mass killing was employed for the first time – not on the battlefields but in specially designated areas behind the battle fronts. The perpetrators were directed by educated men, little different socially from the bureaucrats i Acknowledgements This unit was written by Dr Sue Asbee
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Activity 5
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