Words: 922
The concept of learning can be quite difficult for the weak minded, it involves a lot of critical thinking, deep thinking and changing your mentality completely. This course has taught me a lot of about how to learn. I thought I already knew how but that was changed when I started to read into the subject of “learning”. I have never heard of learning patterns until I started this class, these patterns really showed me a easier way of learning and better yet it showed me how to prepare myself for my future.
If I were to try and explain this concept to someone like my brother who has not taken this class I would tell him that learning can be the most difficult but yet simplest thing to do, all it takes is persistence, motivation and self control. I would explain that there is no two people that learn the same and that it takes some people a lot longer than others. When I took the quiz to determine what my LCI scores would be I was so confused, I had no idea what I had just gotten myself into.
My strengths were Technical Reasoning and Confluence and through-out the remainder of this course I used these two patterns to do finish up the rest of my work. While using my confluence pattern I was able to learn easier by thinking harder, I have always known that I was a “out the box” kind of thinker as it has been told to me numerous time before I knew what confluence was. I used my technical reasoning in this class to make calendars of assignments, uilding vocabulary keyword lists and decoding quizzes and test using the list I created. My other patterns “Sequence” and “Precision” were ranked as Use As Needed, and that is exactly what I did and will continue to do for the rest of my courses. During the course of this class i found myself in a few situations to where I had to switch up my learning patterns. With me being confluence and technical reasoning as Use First it became difficult for me to finish assignments with the mentality that these learning patterns came with
I found it a lot easier to use he sequence and precision patterns while working on the quizzes because those patterns had me focus more, take more notes and also make a list with valid key points of what I was reading I still do not think I have the whole “Intentional” learner down yet, I feel like I have become smarter and I am gaining a lot of knowledge by using the resources that I was supplied with but am still not an intentional learner. I used the FIT’ing process a lot. While doing the chapter reading I noticed I really had to “forge” my precision and sequence patterns at some times.
Me being a use first confluence really did not do much when it came to reading all of those chapters. I also noticed that when I did forge a pattern I would tend to lose focus ALOT faster than normal, I’m not sure if that is normal but it seemed that my attention span was that of a three year old. Whenever I noticed myself starting to lose focus I would stand up from my desk, get a glass of water and start the forge all over again. It started to wear me out after about an hour or so of forging patterns but I find that it does work well when the use first patterns lack. The other techniques I did not use. intensify” and “tether” I understand the concept of the two and I did try to tether once but it had me a little bit confused. I found it to be a lot easier to forge the weaker pattern and go with that. I loved this class, the other students were supportive as well as the instructor. This is my first time in distant learning, I did not know what to expect when I first started. I do not quite know what my expectations were from this class I guess I would say to get a feel of how online school was, this University along with this first course really gave me a positive outlook on what to expect in the next few years.
I really like the way the entire five weeks of classwork is giving to us when we first start the class, for all the people who are not procrastinators can easily get all of their work knocked out in the first week or two. I think that there may be one flaw to online learning, I had a situation in my family which was my brother passing and during that week I did not have access to the internet so i pretty much missed out on that week of work.
During that time I couldn’t get in touch with my adviser and came back to find out that he’s not even with company anymore. Ashford University as a whole is a great school and I would recommend it for anyone that would rather have home based learning, I cannot wait until I finish the first half of my degree and can start working on my actual major. I am very excited to be here and eager to learn and i want to thank you Andrea Maraska for helping me when I emailed you or had any kind of problems. You are truly appreciated.