Learning skills audit

SWOT

The SWOT analysis is a process that evaluates your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Strengths:

• Communication skills
• Group work
• Hardworking
• Creative
• Dedicated

Weaknesses:

• Easily distracted
• Easily bored
• Nervous
• Doubtful about abilities
  
• Can get confused easily

Opportunities:

• To learn new skills
• Advance in career pathways
• improve current knowledge and skills
• the chance to use new software
• to experience a new environment

Threats:

• Potential travel issues
• Money issues
• Living at home
  

Vark

VARK stand for Visual, Aural, Read/Write and Kinesthetic.

The VARK questionnaire is a set of 13 - 16 questions which aims to tell the user which learning style(s) they prefer the learn in. Once you have found out which of the learning styles suits you best you can try to adjust, the way you are taught things or the way you study things at home, to fit into the preferred learning style.

After doing the questionnaire given to us while in the lecture, I found out my scores which are;
V = 6
A = 7
R = 4
K = 6

Using these results I can see that my preferred learning style is Aural, which I am a little surprised at as its the style that involves a lot of listening, as much as I like to try to take in a lot of what is being said in lectures I often find that I get easily distracted and bored after sitting there for a while just listening.

I suppose that is why Kinesthetic and Visual are a very close second place in my learning styles, as I actually think that I learn better from being shown what to do then doing it myself over and over again a few times.

I actually went onto the VARK website to find my details of the VARK questionnaire and did the online test that is available there, the scores are quite interesting I think:

Visual: 5
Aural: 11

Read/Write: 7

Kinesthetic: 9

So after doing the online questionnaire I can still see that Aural is the best way I learn things, while the other learning styles also changes a little bit, with Visual dropping to the very bottom of the way i learn and Read/Write becoming the third most preferred style.

I found this interesting because I don't like to sit there and read things over and over again just to try to understand something better, I would rather be shown something or listen to someone talk about it, than have to read about it.

I also found out that I am something called Multimodal which is basically someone who has high scores in two or more different styles, and from looking at both sets of results this is defiantly what I would come under. I actually think this is a good thing, it means I can still learn while in different environments, be it a lecture or in a tutorial where I have to try to work out the problem on my own.

Anyway after taking both questionnaires i can see that I could improve on a couple of areas, mainly Read/Write and in some cases Visual, which would help me be an all round better learner and give me a better chance of passing my degree.

Learning Line

As you can see my learning started at a young age at playschool, basic things like talking and walking, from there I went onto primary school where I was taught to read and write,I also got taught some basic maths, history and physical education.

In secondary school I basically improved on all of the current knowledge I had as well as learning new things, which to this day have helped me become an overall better person I believe. In year 9 I was given an option to pick some of the subjects I wished to study, the one's I picked were History, Physical Education and Digital Art, but my school changed my choice in History and I instead studied a GNVQ in ICT, which taught me all kinds of skills I still use. Whilst I was in secondary school I had to take part in work experience, this actually greatly benefited me as I learnt what it was like to be apart of a work force and what was expected of me as a team member.

I then attended Harlow college, where I studied and got my national diploma in IT, this course was mainly improving the skills I'd gotten from my GNVQ but it also taught me alot more, as i got to use Visual Basic as well as a few other programs. This course always taught what universities expected from me when writing reports and essay's by teaching me the Harvard referencing system. Whilst at college i also learnt how to drive and managed to pasted my driving test.

I also work at Tesco part time which has allowed me to gain knowledge in how to work as part of a team, taught me better time keeping, how to be a team leader and how to organize work flow.

I am now at Uni, in which i hope to pass my degree to further my education and to allow me to have a more successful future.