Making Learning Styles Personal

Completing the learning styles questionnaires/ tests has helped me discover my learning style and indeed offered suggestions with enhancing my learning. I do, however, understand that the learning styles merely act as a guideline and do not depict a fixed learning style.

The modalities and skills - VARK (Fleming and Mills, 1992; Fleming & Baume, 2006), Honey and Mumford model (Honey and Mumford, 1982) and Kolb model (Kolb, 1984) - can be used to an advantage, for example; when studying for exams and writing assignment. One common advantage with these modalities is, they encourage (a) Reflection, (b) Conceptualisation, and (c) ways of testing ideas...

1. VARK (An acronym for Visual, Aural, Read/Write and Kenisthetic) model

Professional Development Presentation

Academic skills, Research, Referencing, Academic writing styles and bibliographies

Learning academic writing skills has helped me establish an efficient way of writing, particularly with regards to college assignments and my personal link building and content marketing website (See here).

Academic writing is certainly important in higher educational studies as it ensures a message is conveyed succinctly.

This style of writing can be broken down into 3 cycle process which involves:

1. Planning
2. Thinking
3. Writing

The first stage - Planning - focuses on understanding the question at hand (with regards to assignments/ essays/ reports or proposals), then creating a list of tasks along with deadlines. The planning process helps with staying up-to-date and achieving targets, efficiently.

Reflective Practices

According to Dewey (1933), reflection can be explained as a:

• A meaning making process
• Systematic way of thinking; and
• Method which requires attitude that values personal and intellectual growth of oneself.

In this lesson I learnt that reflective practice is fundamental when I needs to stop and analyse my decision making process and draw on theory in order to relate it in real life situations.

Doing so refocuses thinking on existing "knowledge and helps generate new knowledge and ideas", according to the Charted Institute of Physiotherapy. In short, reflection clarifies thoughts; and improves [future] situations or problems.

Different method of reflection can be used, such as;

• Keeping a diary
• Working with colleagues 
• Writing a blog

November SMART Objective

My November SMART objective involves expanding my understanding and usage of social networking sites and tools, such as Facebook and Spotify Analytics, Twitter micro-blogging and how to increase traffic to a business website, Pinterest and Youtube. I aim to achieve this objective through utilizing influential tech sites and blogs and through online research. I Achieving this objective will assist with my Digital Media and Marketing programme. 

However, due to the constant changing Social Media environment, this objective will be an ongoing process. I will re-evaluate and share my progress in March 2015.