A great deal has already been said about the study skills that you will be developing as you work. But how might these help you in your future study, in the workplace or in any voluntary work that you do? This is the subject of the second band of the audiotape.
Audio: Click to listen to the audio clip entitled 'Skills in Learning Mathmatics'
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.View documentTranscriptListen to the audi clip above, entitled ‘Skills in learning mathematics?. As you listen you may wish to make some notes, and at one point you will be asked to stop the tape in order to draw up a list of skills that you have been using and developing in the unit so far. In the last part of the tape, a former student of mathematics at the Open University speaks about some of the skills that he developed during his course of study and how he has been able to use them since.
Much of this section has involved looking at how you study and making learning more explicit. Many people can improve the effectiveness of their learning if they spend some time focusing not only on the content of what they are trying to learn, but also on the learning process itself. Even if you do not find any particular difficulties with studying, it is important to pause regularly to evaluate how well you are doing and whether you can learn more effectively by changing your approach. To this end, before you finish this unit, there is one more study-skills activity to complete.
Think about your first unit of study and, if you feel it is helpful, briefly note down your thoughts. Consider how many hours you have studied, the pattern of your study periods, and where and when you have studied. Think about how you might like to change the way you work so that your study becomes more effective.
Now that you have completed your work on this section, you should have:
organized your learning file (Activity 18);
reviewed the way that you are studying the unit so far and begun to think about improvements (Activities 17 and 19).
Original Copyright © 1996 The Open University. Now made available within the Creative Commons framework under the CC Attribution – Non-commercial licence (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/).
