B211 Learning to Learn

Towards Life-long Learning: Learning to Learn for Yourself

Self-Learning

In today's rapidly changing world, and especially in our field on Internet Computing, it is no longer the case that you can learn a fix set of content and knowledge and that will allow you to operate competently forever. You have to continually keep up with the requirements of whatever area you work in. Therefore, one of the important aspects of a unit like B336 is for you to develop attitudes and pick up skills that will allow you to continuously learn on your own. These generic learning skills can be categorised in different ways. In this unit, I will concentrate on three categories:

Analytical skills: skills to identify what you can use and what is missing in your environment to complete required tasks (eg. knowledge, resources, supporting personnel, etc).

People skills: skills to communicate with people to learn what you need to learn, as quickly and as effectively as you can.

Technical skills: skills to learn quickly and effectively (eg. knowing where to find missing information, being able to assimilate quickly, making notes while reading, etc).

Associated with these skills are important attitudes:

Willingness to change and try new things.

Willingness to ask and seek assistance.

Willingness to listen and assimilate what you hear.

Not assume you know everything.

Willingness to share and assist others, so that the whole progresses.

By having these attidues and skills, you will be able to operate effectively in the future, when your area(s) of study undergoes change. This is a very important aspect of working on the Internet, where change is the norm rather than the exception.

Self-Learning in the Assignments

A lot of activities in this unit will be aimed at promoting developments in the above attitudes and skills. Some of them will be outside of your assessments (eg. through online discussion forums, discussions with tutors in labs, etc). Many of the activities though, will be within your assessments. Assignments in this unit have a much more important role than just assessing how much content you have picked up. They are also there for you to develop your attitudes and practically pick up those life-long learning skills. No matter how good your product is as an assignment submission, it means nothing if you cannot reproduce that quality when you leave the university.

To that end, the assignment tasks will be geared towards:

Raising your awareness about the required attitudes and skills, and

Getting you to show that you have picked up certain attitudes and skills in the categories above.

In this unit, you are required to do two things for ALL your assignments:

Complete Part A Plans form, and submit them to your tutor BEFORE you start work on your assignments. This part outlines how you plan to approach doing the work (eg. how to start finding information, what people to talk to, etc).

Complete Part B Evaluation of Plans and Methods form once you have completed your assignment, and submit them with your final assignment submission. This part outlines your evaluation of what you did (eg. what worked, what didn't work, how to adjust, what may not be realistic in the real world, etc).

Your tutor will also advise you on your plans as submitted in Part A, so that you can pick up on obvious gaps and flaws which may exist in your original plans (eg. a unit resource you were not aware of, etc).

The marks and deadlines for each part is outlined in each assignment description. Please note them very carefully.

H.L. Hiew
Unit Coordinator