6.2 Working on improving your IL skills The three-stage framework for developing and improving your skills provides the basis for you become more confident in: developing a strategy for using a variety of IL skills, including being clear about what you want to achieve, identifying relevant sources of information that will help you to achieve your goals, and planning how you intend to improve your skills; monitoring your progress and critically reflecting on your performance
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
5.4.4 Monitor and critically reflect on your use of IT skills As you use IT in your work, refer back to the outcomes you hope to achieve and the goals you have set yourself. Ask yourself questions such as: am I on track to achieve my outcomes? what difficulties in using information technology 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 make any changes in the way I
5.4.2 Develop and exchange relevant information to meet your purposes How does the way you communicate information affect the way you work? What opportunities do you have for developing or exploring different ways of working or sharing information using IT (e.g. using email, computer conferencing, video conferencing, web pages, sharing documents)? Depending on your requirements, you may need to consider factors such as the security, archiving and back-up of your data. What steps do you need to take to guard against the loss or misuse of your information? Can yo
5.4 Monitoring progress This stage of the framework is about keeping track of how you are doing and what progress you are making. Are you using IT effectively for your purposes? How do you know? Could you have done things differently, such as made use of different facilities and software packages, taken more advantage of training sessions or local expertise, or recognised that such support would have helped you? Monitoring your own performance and progress needs practice; try to stand back and look at what you
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
4.4.1 Organise and clearly present relevant information You need to know how to present information in ways that best suit your purpose, subject and audience, that is how to structure coherently what you say so that a sequence of ideas may be followed easily; how to use a range of techniques to help present information and support your argument (such as diagrams and models), and when to use technical vocabulary and conventions. Check that your work meets relevant guidelines and conventions. You may have guidelines about this at work and different
4.3.4 Monitor and critically reflect on your use of communication skills You need to know how to track and record your progress on your use of communication skills. Try to assess the overall quality of your written and oral work and the way you produced the work. Checklists and criteria provided as part of the project or assignment and those set out in the Bookmark can be very useful tools in helping you to assess for yourself precisely what you are doing and how well you are doing it. Unless you know what you are doing wrong, it is very difficult to improve.
4.3.2 Synthesise information Synthesising information is about assessing the new information and prior information in relation to each other, looking for logical relationships in the material, identifying the important ideas, and taking a critical attitude towards the material by relating it to your own views and experiences and thinking about how the material can be used. Synthesising information is not just summarising the information or identifying main points. 3.8.3 Identify ways of further improving your own learning and performance Remember that improving your own learning and performance is not something that you can do once and then forget about it. It is a process that needs to become an integral part of your normal approach to work and study throughout your career in higher education and in the world of work. Developing and using the skill of improving your own learning and performance can enhance all other learning. As you worked through this key skill, what is it that you have learned? What can you take away with 3.2.6 Achieving your goals Now that you have established what you intend to do and identified specific targets to achieve them, think about how you can meet your targets, taking into account what you are trying to do and looking carefully at the most effective way to do it. This might be by attending a training course or skills workshop, prioritising your time differently, taking an active part in e-tutorials, or checking out resources and giving yourself time to practise new ways of working. Take into account th 3.2.4 Set realistic targets You are now in a good position to set yourself targets – the steps towards achieving your goals. As you begin to plan in more detail, think in terms of around 3 months to achieve particular targets, although the time period for some may be shorter/longer. This may depend on other commitments, priorities, and so on. Your targets need to be clear so that you can know when you have achieved them. A good way of helping you to formulate clear targets is to use the acronym SMART – Specific, Mea 2.3 The key skills framework In this course each key skill section uses a common three-stage framework to help you develop your skills. The stages of this framework are:
developing a strategy for how you are going to tackle the key skill;
monitoring your progress as you develop your skills;
evaluating the strategy you have used and presenting outcomes of your work. But working on your skills and techniques 4 Structure of the assessment courses This key skills assessment course does not have specific questions with word limits and no statements indicating you include, say, an essay or a report. Instead, as you tackle the course you need to ask yourself ‘Which pieces of work show my skills and capabilities to best advantage?’ When you have identified and selected evidence of your skills, you must then relate this evidence directly to the criteria. This method of building a portfolio is based not on providing right or wrong 8.4 Assessing your work
Table 1 below gives the outcomes (italic) and criteria for assessment of your work. Alongside the criteria is a checklist to help you consider and assess your work. Acknowledgements Philippa Hulme taught science in British and African schools for 15 years. She now tutors on the PGCE courses at Oxford University and the Open University, as well as training VSO volunteers. She is also an editor for Science UPD8, an initiative of the Association for Science Education and Sheffield Hallam University. The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for per Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: conduct searches efficiently and effectively find references to material in bibliographic databases make efficient use of full text electronic journals services critically evaluate information from a variety of sources understand the importance of organising information. 2.6 Context and language variation As well as contributing to meaning, context can also influence the actual words and sentences that we use. Do you sometimes say ‘Hi’ and at other times say ‘Good morning’? Do you have a ‘telephone voice’? This variation in language may be done deliberately, but often it is not. There are two main reasons as to why we adjust the way we speak: to fit in with our audience or what we feel they expect of us; you may use ‘professional’ langu 1.2 What the course is about This course is about the ways in which we come to know and make sense of the world, in particular how we do this using the media of language, mathematics and science. There are many possible theoretical positions which can be taken towards early years curricula. Some people, for example, think of children as ‘empty vessels’ which can be ‘filled’ with knowledge that is transmitted to them by adults. This view has been associated with a behaviourist approach to teaching and 3.6 Features of speech: dysfluency Another of the differences between conversation and writing is sometimes referred to as dysfluency. This is the use of hesitators (sounds such as erm, urn), pauses and repetitions which reflect the difficulty of mental planning at speed. We can see all three of these dysfluencies in the next example. That's a very good – er very good precaution to take, yes. (Biber et al., 1999, p. 1053)
Table 1:
