A MORE EFFECTIVE METHOD OF LEARNING TO DESIGN AND ANALYSE MECHANICAL SYSTEMS?
I have created a product to be a teaching/learning aid which solves the problem I had whilst learning about mechanical systems over the past few months.
my problems were;
I liked the idea of flash cards that are used for children's learning (A is for Apple, B is for Boat etc.) I thought by translating mechanical systems in the same sort of way it would make the learning easier and ensure all the most vital bits of information are present.
my problems were;
- There was too much text to read through on sites and in books for simple principles/concepts/info.
- Accessing information was time consuming and spread out. I had to keep jumping from page to page, site to site and link to link just to learn about one thing.
I liked the idea of flash cards that are used for children's learning (A is for Apple, B is for Boat etc.) I thought by translating mechanical systems in the same sort of way it would make the learning easier and ensure all the most vital bits of information are present.
What my product does;
- Easy to access the infomation as it is all in one place and there is no real effort involved to find the correct card with the information needed, its pretty instant.
- Presents infomation very clearly and simply without being cluttered by unnecessary waffle.
- Uses symbols and simple pictures to aid revision and remembering (Simple designs also prevented me from getting carried away with the design aspects of the task which usually takes over from the actual learning)
- Covers main subjects within mechanical systems to give a good introduction and overview of the topic without it being too 'heavy going'
I don't think that the entire topic of mechanical systems could be learnt from just one product or task alone. I think my Flash cards would work best in conjunction with another activity such as creating a poster, building a mechanical system or analysing something, using my cards a point of reference and means of getting answers. After creating the cards i also had a thought that maybe my product could be made into a task by having sets of Blank flash cards which had to be filled in and questions to be answered. That way my product would not only be for 'reading' but also incorporate all the other types of learning I did which helped me learn, such as finding good sources, extracting the best information and presenting it in a way i could understand. This would mean the cards could be more personal to each learner. (see below) A small space to work with would also force the learner to be much more selctive about the information presented on the card and dig out the most important information, cutting down on unnecessary waffle.
Interns of how it addresses my Audits title of the subject; ' Design and Analyse basic Mechanical systems'. i haven't exactly done this for this module however i have created a produce and undertaken a task which will allow me to do this now. I definitely feel i have a much better understanding of the topic thanks to my flash cards.
What have i learnt from my own learning'
What have i learnt from my own learning'
- There is no ONE way of learning a topic or One thing that can teach you everything. At some stage i was looking for a site or a book which would just give me all the answers but there wasn't one.
- Learning is not linear, it jumps all over the place, its important to be flexible. This was contrary to what i originally thought, as i thought it was more of a step by step process with a clear start and finish.
- its ongoing, you will never get every single important fact in your head or into a task. Unless I created a thousand cards I could never capture every aspect of mechanical systems. I had to decided when it was right to stop, and when i felt i knew enough to consider myself competent.