7.2 Learning from feedback This is actually quite a difficult thing for any student to do. It is most effective when your assignment is returned, but by then you may have moved on to the next part of the course. Even so, you do need to make time to re-visit your assignment when it is returned and take note of your tutor's comments. It is the one time when your tutor is able to give feedback and advice to you as an individual student so it is well worth taking time to really absorb their comments. Try to separate
4.2 Analysing the task This involves you in analysing both the learning task, (e.g. working through the text, other readings, calculations, experiments) as well as the assessed task (e.g. the assignment). It is important to work out from the start just what this part of the course requires you to do as well as to know. 4.1 Preparing In the preparation phase you should pause before starting a new section of work and think about it as a whole. What needs to be covered? What are the various components of this block of work? What are the learning objectives or outcomes? What will you need to know and be able to do at the end of it? What is required in the assignment? There are two main activities during this phase, both directly related to your course work and assignment: 3.1 Introduction to applying your learning In this part of the unit we invite you to apply some of the ideas we have introduced in a more structured way. One of the easiest ways to really understand learning how to learn as a process, rather than as a series of individual activities, is to apply it to a section of the course you are currently studying. Choose a section that is complete in itself - for example, a block of the course - and that leads to an assignment. We suggest that you read through the whole of this section and 2.4 Organising your study - keeping a learning diary If you have found this approach to learning interests you, you might like to take the analysis a stage further. To do Activity 4, you need to be studying a course so that you are engaged in learning on a regular basis. To examine your learning patterns, try keeping a 'learning diary' over a short period of time - at least a week - or maybe during the period that you are studying a particular section of your course. 2.1 Introduction In encouraging you to think explicitly about how you learn, as well as about what you learn, we are drawing on research about learning which has shown that this approach can actually improve your performance. Certainly it can and will make you a more efficient and effective learner. Before we start to explore the process, let us consider two general points about learning. There is no single method of learning that guarantees success. How 1.2 What do we mean by learning how to learn? This activity will help you to explore what we mean by learning how to learn. Think back to an example of study you have done in the past, or any fairly structured learning opportunity you remember. Focus on a particular ac Learning outcomes The broad aim of this unit is to provide a framework for learning-based activities and reflective exercises. More specifically, it is designed to offer you the opportunity to: think about and understand how you learn; apply the ideas and activities in this unit to your own learning experiences; learn how to become a reflective learner. Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material: The following material is Proprietary, used under licence (see terms and conditions) This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence 5.2 Thinking for yourself These are the kinds of questions you need to ask in order to read critically. As a higher-level student, you don't read simply to ‘find out facts’. It is assumed that you will think for yourself and question what you read and hear. The ‘truth’ is taken to be uncertain, so you weigh up ideas and arguments as you read about them. According to Marton and Saljo (1997, p. 49) research shows that successful students read as if they are constantly asking themselves questions of the kind: ‘ 5.1.3 Does the argument follow logically? As I was making sense of paragraph 3, I did pause to consider whether it was logically possible to say that on average richer people are happier, yet getting richer has not made us happier. Later, when I read that women in the US were less happy since their incomes had come closer to men's, it occurred to me that they would be unlikely to volunteer to revert to previous levels of inequality. This made me question what happiness really means, if it is not necessarily a state that a person woul 5.1.1 How much trust can I put in this text? You would generally assume that any set texts for a are trustworthy. But when you find a text through your own research you need to run a few checks to assess the soundness of its content. Who is the publisher? If an article is from an academic journal, you can assume that its quality has been vetted by the journal's editors. Also if a book is published by a major academic publishing house, you would expect it to be ‘respectable’. And if it's a book from an academic ser 4.4.1 Engaging with the content For example, when I read in paragraph 3 of Layard's article that ‘41 per cent of people in the top quarter of incomes are ‘very happy’’ I asked myself: Why is ‘very happy’ in quotation marks? Is 41 per cent about what I'd expect? What is this telling me? As soon as I thought about it, I realised that ‘very happy’ could be a response that people had ticked on a questionnaire. Perhaps th 4.1 Underlining and highlighting To be able to make sense of what you are reading, you need to read actively. One method that can help is to use a pen. Did you underline or highlight any words as you read the Layard article? If not, go back over the 2.3 Coping with difficult parts Salim and Lewis mentioned that they found some sections of Layard's article difficult. So did I; for example, anyone without a background in economics would have difficulty grasping the arguments in paragraphs 13 and 14. So what should you do when you can't make sense of what you read? Should you search online to find out about taxation theory? For my own satisfaction I searched for a definition of ‘marginal rate of taxation’ just to get the gist of it. I also tried to write down th 1 The experience of reading The best way to develop your understanding of the reading process is to follow the principles of the Kolb learning cycle, by doing some reading and then reflecting on your experience. To this end, Activity 1 asks you to read an extract from an article by Richard Layard (2003) titled ‘The secrets of happiness’ which appeared in the New Statesman. To keep the task manageable I have reduced the article to half its original length and, for ease of reference, paragraph num Introduction Reading is easy, isn't it? On any ordinary day without even noticing, you read shop signs, newspaper headlines, TV listings, a magazine, or a chapter of a paperback. So why would a message like this one appear in an online student chat room in the early weeks of a course?
Clearly, readi Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence courtesy of For Inspiration Only at Flickr 1. Join the 200,000 students References 10.2 Sources of help The internet There is a wealth of useful information on thinking on the internet. Putting key words (such as thinking skills, clear thinking, critical thinking, analysis, argument and so on) into one of the available search engines (e.g. http://www.google.com [accessed 10 October 2006]) will produce many useful links. American university websites contain some particularly interestin
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