P1 Introduction to skills develpment and WSPA

Follow-Up 1: An introduction to skills development and the Warwick Skills Portfolio

Workshop Tutor: Han-Na Cha

Introduction

I wanted to attend this workshop for a long time now; I had already participated in five different workshop from the Master Skills Programme, and I thought that I have to attend the “Introduction to skills development and the Warwick Skills Portfolio” just because it’s a requirement for the Award, I was wrong! As it turned out to be a most informing experience, in which I was presented with various tools and techniques to gauge my skills, determine what had room for improvement and recognize my learning style. I found it very important, because up till that moment I was only deciding what workshop to attend based on intuition, now I have a scientific method.

An example, the learning styles questionnaire which reflected my learning preferences as follows (learning style followed by score):

• Activist: 4
• Theorist: 8
• Reflector: 5
• Pragmatist: 6

This showed me what areas could be improved; activism and reflections. In the action plans I shall address these.
However, these did not reflect perfectly my styles as I tend to be a mix of the different ones giving preference varying on situations. Considering the questionnaire gave me a low preference for the majority and only one moderate preference, is an incorrect representation of my styles. But observing the different questions I was able to pick up points to improve on, my action points.

But the workshop wasn’t all about information and work, it was fun as well, and I had the chance to connect on a much personal level than usual with other participant, because the number of students was low, which also meant that each one had the enough time to express what was on their mind, besides the Han-Na was very friendly and lively, contributing hugely to the success of this friendly workshop.

In the following part I will make my action points as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant & Timely) as possible.

Action Points

1. Taking actions towards becoming more active and pragmatic; I chose the following actions from the Learning Styles Questionnaire (Honey, P., 2008)

o Backing a hunch once in a while, rather than over analysing. Allowing myself to trust my feelings more.

o Take a challenge and try the different ways of doing things rather than being set in tried and tested ways all the time.

o Reflect on pieces of work prior to submition by having a few rough drafts .

2. Take the complete Vark questionnaire from vark-learn.com; this will hopefully help me fully understand my favoured learning styles, along with providing methods to develop my less favoured one.

3. Develop my under-developed skills; namely assertiveness, presentational and organisational, with the help of the Warwick Master Skills Programme and some practice.

Best Regards

Melvin Jose

Melvin Jose : 04 Jul 2012 18:32 |  Tags: P1 Portfolio |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem