our future, your future 2007 distance and flexible learning handbook

alert. This depends on if you are an early
morning person or if you feel more
relaxed in the early evening or late
at night. Obviously, this will also depend
on what your other commitments are and
the location at which you have chosen to
study.
- How do I plan my study time? Draw
up a study schedule. If you have
a daily or weekly plan for completing
your readings and assignments and then
stick to the schedule, the workload will feel
less overwhelming. Plan at least two weeks
in advance. Two weeks is a long enough
period to gauge your progress, but not
too far ahead that you can’t adapt the
plan. To begin with itemise what you
want to study each day, to cover the work
set for the whole week. At the end of
the two weeks, check to see if you have
achieved your goals before planning the
next two weeks.
• Before you begin a study period,
review the work you achieved during
your last study session. Going over
your last session’s notes will refresh your
memory at the same time as reinforce
your understanding of the information
you have learnt. If you completed
a practical exercise during your
last session, rewrite the results as notes
and highlight the observations you made.
You may have started an assignment,
so it might be useful to read it out
loud and review if it is focused on
the assignment question. Reviewing your
last session’s work is valuable because
you are reinforcing what you are learning.
• Before you begin studying, decide what
you intend to do for that study session.
Set a defined amount of work that you
wish to achieve and make it realistic
for the time you have set aside. For
example you may choose to spend one
hour reading a set number of pages,
or starting an assignment, or preparing
some notes for a practical exercise. By
setting hourly or daily session goals, you
will achieve more.
• Keep up your attendance at lectures,
laboratories and tutorials. Even if you are
given lecture notes, these will provide only
part of the information you need to
fully understand the course; you
need to attend the lecture and tutorials
as well. Often a lecturer or tutor will let
students ask further questions, which may
result in the tutor or lecturer providing
more information than what is supplied in
the lecture notes.
• When you watch lectures on a video
monitor, you are forced to stare at the
screen for long periods of time. There may
also be wide variations in the quality
of the video picture and sound. For these
reasons, watching a lecture on video
requires more concentration than being in
a regular classroom.
• During any type of lecture, make a
habit of writing down any questions as you
think of them. While you may not be able
to communicate directly with your
lecturer, during a lecture, you may get an
opportunity to ask your questions
during an audio conference or via an online
discussion sometime after the lecture.
• If you haven’t used online learning
before, make sure you attend
one of the training sessions held
at the start of semester. This will
help you develop the skills required
to participate fully in the interactive
portion of your course. If you
can’t attend the training session, ask
about alternative arrangements. Make
sure you access your online learning early
on in your semester and keep accessing
throughout the semester. The online
learning management system is
often used by lecturers and tutors to
communicate vital announcements
or additional course material. It will
also help you keep in touch with your
classmates around the region.
• Make sure you regularly check with your
local USP campus for changes to the dates
and times of your lectures, laboratory
sessions and tutorials. Sometimes
the dates and times of these sessions
are changed at the last minute due to
technical difficulties with the USPNet, or
clashes with other courses.
How do I learn through reading?
As a DFL student, you will probably do most
of your learning through reading your study
materials, instead of listening to someone
lecturing to you. Therefore, reading will be the
most frequent activity you will be doing during
your studies. Indeed, reading may be a daily
activity.
Reading for study is very different from reading
for pleasure. Reading for study means learning,
understanding and retaining the information
you read. Most students find the most effective
reading technique is a three-stage process:
survey reading, serious reading, and study
reading.
What is survey reading?
The purpose of survey reading is to find out
quickly what the main topic is and how the
material is organised into sections or subsections.
To survey read, follow these simple
steps:
1. Rapidly read the title, introductory
paragraph and last paragraph(s) of the
selected chapter or article, as these often
summarise the main ideas communicated
of the chapter or article.
2. Read the headings and sub-headings. If
there are none, then read the first sentence
of each paragraph.
3. Note any words highlighted by colour, bold
or italic print.
4. Take a quick look at illustrations, maps,
diagrams, tables, figures and charts.
Many USP courses also provide
a schematic overview at the beginning of a
section.
What is serious reading?
In the serious reading stage, you should get a
deeper understanding of the main points, how
the examples and explanations support these
main points, and how the materials fit into your
previous knowledge of the subject. To serious
read, follow these simple steps:
STUDYING BY DFL
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