TU170: Learning online

1. TU170: Learning online By: Bassam Bokhowa tobassam@hotmail.com

2. Section 2

3. When Finishing Section 2 • You should be an experienced on-line group worker • You should have improved your skills of reading, summarizing, and commenting on written documents.

4. Benefits of Groupwork • Conversation, which helps access other people’s thoughts and clarifies your own. • Discussion helps you understand ideas. • Exchanging ideas:important way of learning. • Develops your communication skills. • A chance to exercise speaking the language. • Helps you acquire the habit of developing ideas and using them at the same time. • It may take only a minute to identify a mistake in your technique when you ask.

5. Benefits of Groupwork • Others summarize their experiences and help you catch up with what you have missed. • To discover that everyone may have your doubts too, is sure to boost your own confidence. • Working with a group helps you to keep pace. • Others you get to know help in practical ways. • Groupwork is a way of meeting interesting people.

6. Reading and Making Notes The challenge lies in: • Coping with large amounts. • Understandingthe difficult parts. • Finding ways to remember.

7. Reactions to Reading Depends on: • What you are interested in. • What you already know. • What experience you have about reading in a particular subject area. • How hard you are trying.

8. Feelings About Reading You can't learn effectively unless you: • Become interested in your subject. AND • Get some enjoyment out of studying it.

9. Develop Interest • Link what you are reading to questions that already interest you - the questions that made you interested in the subject. • Figure out why other people have found the topic interesting - the questions that have interested them. • Connect the subject to your own experience.

10. Coping With Words Should you stop and look up a dictionary? • It will slow you up if you do it a lot. • You have to decide whether a word seemsimportant. • Does it come up regularly? • Do you seem to miss something? • If it hasn’t been explained in one of your texts, you ought to. • You’ll have to make your own judgment as to: whether or not knowing the exact meaning of a word is interfering with your understanding of the text.

11. Dictionary Importance • A Dictionary is an important resource to have handy, but don’t expect it to be infallible (perfect). • Some specialist words will not appear in a general dictionary and words that do appear may not be defined the same way in your subject area. • A dictionary is a useful guide when you are lost, but often you can get a better insight into the meaning of key terms from your study texts.

12. Scientific Writing Style • In a scientific report, you say exactly what you mean; no more and no less. • Only information which is directly relevant to the scientific point is to be included.

13. Effective Study • To study effectively, you need to be able to "manage" your feeling and find ways of: • Building upon your enthusiasm (interests/passions/eagerness). • Avoiding sinking into despair when things become hard. • Specifically, you need to: • Be able to make the subject interesting. • Accept technical language. • Customize yourself to the scientific style of writing.

14. Purpose of Reading Reading develops your understanding by: • Building new mental models of how things work. • Adding new concepts to those you already have. • Understanding explanations not met before. • Incorporating new information alongside that which you already possess. These are "Thinking" processes, and if you try to bypass them then you are not really learning as you read.

15. Reading Environment When you read, you have to consider: • The place you read in, AND • The speed of reading According to your type of reading

16. Time Investment • By becoming a student you are choosing to invest your own time in developing your intellectual powers. • Always ask yourself: • Am I getting a better grasp (understanding) of the subject? • Does this subject make me think better? • If the answers were "NO", then the time you are investing is being wasted and you should either repeat or switch to a new activity.

17. Making notes Should you try to remember facts, figures and names? • If the answer is “NO”, You need to note only the general gist (idea) of the information. • Other facts and detailed information needed for future study must be written down. • Don't worry about your memory. Just write things down. It's what you understand that matters. • Taking notes is an important aspect. Always try to underline or highlight words in a way that allows you to pick up the gist of the argument when you come back to the text later.

18. Making notes • Note-making is not a single skill, or something that you acquire once and for all. • It is a range of different activities, the common characteristic of which is that you arewriting for yourself rather that an "audience", so you don't have to worry about "explaining" yourself. • Making notes helps you in many different ways and learning when and how to make notes as you study is critical to your development as a student.

19. Reading for Study • Define your tasks as you set out to read (set a target). • Underline orhighlight as you read, if appropriate. • Stop to look forward or backward in the text when you lose your way. • Check other sources when you have a difficulty. • Monitor your progress from time to time. • Change your approach as necessary.

20. Visit for TU170 related videos: www.youtube.com/tobassam Thank You BassamBokhowa.com