5.7 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
5.2.3 Identify and research relevant sources of information Spend some time finding out about what you will need to complete your IT work successfully and who you need to consult. You may need to arrange access to a library, to the Internet, databases on CD-ROM or online, or specialist training or publications. If you need to learn more about specific IT procedures or techniques (for example setting up a spreadsheet, using a database, archiving data), then look first at your course material and then at study guides or notes aimed at your area of inter
4.3 Monitoring progress This stage is about keeping track of your progress. How confident are you that you are achieving the standards of communication required for your work? How can you check how well you are doing? Monitoring progress in communication skills involves knowing how to: make judgements about the quality of information that you use from various sources; synthesise information; and communicate information in a form that s
3.2.3 Identify and research relevant sources of information This is about identifying and tracking down the resources you need – books, reports, manuals, training courses and people. It involves finding out what is available to help you with the task at hand – in this case improving a particular skill. Skills resources may be included as part of your course or you may have manuals and online resources available at work. People represent important sources of information and support, for example your tutor, manager, other students and colleag
1.4 Using this unit There is no single way to use this unit and no single way to develop your key skills. The unit is designed so that you can use it flexibly, moving around the sections to suit yourself. You can also choose when to use the unit, but remember that skills development does not happen in isolation – it requires ‘content’. Therefore, you will find it helpful to use the unit alongside a course or a specific project so that it provides you with opportunities to develop, practise and get feedbac
1 About working with others Very few people study or work in complete isolation. Some courses now set projects and assignments that need to be completed in pairs or groups, either face-to-face or using econferencing. Even if your course does not formally require you to do this, working with others is an important part of your skills portfolio. Most jobs require you to work as part of a team, and employers value individuals who can demonstrate this. In working on a work project or an assignment with others – in p
Introduction 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 in OpenLearn unit U071_1 Improving own learning and
4 Structure of the assessment units This key skill assessment unit 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 unit 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 answe
7.4 Evaluating your strategy and assessing your work Present a reflective summary that gives details of: a judgement of your own progress and performance in the IT skills you set out to improve, including an assessment of where you feel you have made the greatest progress; discuss your use of criteria and feedback comments to help you assess your progress; those factors that had the greatest effect on you achieving what you set out to do; include those that worked well to help you impro
Learning outcomes By the end of this section you should be able to: develop a strategy for using communication skills over an extended period of time; monitor and critically reflect on your use of communication skills, adapting your strategy as necessary, to produce the quality of outcomes required; evaluate your overall strategy and present outcomes.
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. 8.1 Evidence required For Part B you must present: an example from your study or work (say, an assignment, project report, video recording) that shows you can learn using different ways of learning; and, a synthesis of what you have learned, using the different ways of learning included in your example (in 1 above). 7.3 Monitoring progress Present a reflective commentary that makes reference to your ongoing notes and records and includes: What you did to manage your time as you worked on your course or work activities, and your own assessment of the effectiveness of your time management. For example, the use you made of your planning schedules, any changes you made to your deadlines, what you did about unexpected priorities and whether you feel your time management is effective. Introduction This key skill is about helping you understand how you learn; think about how you can improve your own learning and performance, and consider how you might generalise the principles and processes for future learning. Improving your learning and performance could be considered to be a ‘meta-skill’, that is the skill of learning how to learn. This unit, then, is a little different from the other skills units because improving your own learning and performance is not a separate option 1.2.4 Rounding It looks as if there was an extra 0.2 of a person in the last calculation – why was this? Probably because the figure of 85% that we used was not precise. In fact 809 people, as a percentage of 952, is very slightly less than 85%. Values are often rounded, and using these rounded numbers in calculations can give answers like 809.2 people. Here we can round the answer down to 809 people, because we know it must be a whole number and it is more likely to be 809 than 810. When we w 1.1.5 Clearing the previous calculation To clear the previous calculation, click the ‘C’ button. Provided that no operation has been performed on an entered number, an incorrect entry can be deleted one digit at a time by clicking the ‘Backspace’ button. (This is labelled ‘Back’ on some versions of the Windows calculator.) 1.1.2 Launching the Windows scientific calculator From the Start menu on your Windows desktop choose ‘Programs’, then ‘Accessories’ and then ‘Calculator’ (if ‘Calculator’ doesn't appear on the menu, click the double down arrows at the bottom). If this is the first time you have used the Windows calculator then it is possible that only the standard view of the calculator will be displayed, but you will need to use the scientific view. To display this, click on the View menu in the calculator's menu bar and select ‘Scie 5.1.3 When is a bar chart not a good format to use? A bar chart is not the best way to show the link or mathematical relationship between two sets of data, for this you would use a line graph. 7.1 Introduction If you want to improve your computing skills or knowledge, there are plenty of resources available to help you. This section aims to get your search started by providing you with some useful websites. 3.1 Introduction One of the most useful and rewarding things you can do with your computer is use it to communicate with your tutor, other students, and course staff. If you like exchanging ideas and information, sharing support with other students, asking questions and getting feedback from your tutor, then online communication can add a whole new dimension to your learning: “Email from another student really kept me going
Table 1: Criteria for asses
