Unit 1 Sci411 Academic And Personal Development

SCI411 Academic and personal development

Portfolio: Part 1

From not being in education for a few years, being able to recognise my own academic skills, strengths and weaknesses was quite difficult. However, over these first couple of weeks in lectures my learning strengths and weaknesses have made themselves apparent. Whilst filling out the questionnaire Skills Self-Assessment Audit (Theeducators, 2013) it took a lot of understanding of the questions to be able to answer honestly, and my lowest scores reflected this in the personal effectiveness category.

Skill strengths

My strongest attribute is being able to work well in a team and taking lead if needs be. I am very confident in speaking, presenting and asking/answering questions in lectures.

When getting home and reading through my notes this was apparent, as I didn’t fully understand everything I had written and had to do some additional research so I could fully understand everything from the lecture. From attending a year at university previously, I know that planning and writing coursework is difficult for me. I am able to do the research and understand the coursework set, but struggle to write down what I am trying to say. I think this is because I lack the confidence of being able to do a task where I think I may be

This will also become useful when coming to write coursework plans as I will already have a lot of the information at hand and won’t be having to try and remember information from lectures, instead I will have it all written down in a way that I understand and is useful to me. This is also useful as anything that I have taken away from a lecture I can read into more in-depth at home or research anything that I didn’t understand and re-write in a way that I will understand for future reference. This also backs up my read/write learning style.

I can use diagrams and pictures where applicable to demonstrate/understand information, not study or read for long periods of time, use study material that uses all my sense i.e. videos, diagrams, field visits, lab work, speaking to lecturers about coursework with my first draft and seeing all feedback as being positive. This will help me to learn by not just sitting and reading in lots of information, it is a much more practical way of learning which links back into my kinesthetic learning preference and backs up the learning style theory of a kinesthetic learner (VARK, 2015).

With having a couple of preferable learning styles I will be able to apply them in different situations when needed