Reflections on Week 2.2 – Reading Pace and Settling Down

Reading Pace and Settling Down

I had anticipated that settling down to read significant numbers of papers on academic topics would be a challenge for me. I know that I have a high work rate, but am so divided in my time on many concurrent tasks that concentration for a significant period on any one task can be a problem. For some time recently, I have set aside one day per week to work from home to manage this, and find I can catch up and clear these longer tasks, such as examinations, PhD reviews, academic paper reading and reviewing, etc.

I found that by the end of week 1 I had read, but not really absorbed, the required core reading, and some secondary readings for all the courses I am on in the MSc in e-Learning. I took the opportunity to read again some Wikipedia overviews on different schools of learning which acted as a useful summary. I also got more organised with the course core rand secondary readings making them available to myself as PDF without going into WebCT… which proves too much of a distraction with dozens of discussion messages coming in… which would easily distract me into interesting, but unfocussed, new work.

So, as I settled down to week 2 reading, with a bit more structure to the learning types that are in the literature, I started to make more notes in the margins and to extract content I found interesting. The very many secondary reading links, and new literature links that appear in the discussion forums is overwhelming for the early part of the course, but I think will progressively be of more value when a steady and sustainable work pace is set.

This entry was posted in IDEL11. Bookmark the permalink.