This key skill is about helping you understand how you learn; think about how you can improve your own learning and performance, and consider how you might generalise the principles and processes for future learning.
Improving your learning and performance could be considered to be a ‘meta-skill’, that is the skill of learning how to learn. This unit, then, is a little different from the other skills units because improving your own learning and performance is not a separate option that you can choose to concentrate on or not – it is the basis of the three-stage framework of developing a strategy, monitoring progress and evaluating performance which you will use to develop and improve other key skills and your learning more generally. The key skill of improving your own learning and performance can be practised and developed like other skills, but unlike other skills it seems more difficult to measure and assess. What is possible, however, is to use the structure and activities presented in the OpenLearn unit U529 Key skills – making a difference to help you think about what you are doing and how well you are doing it, and then at regular intervals stand back and look at your own progress objectively. This unit is designed to be studied for 1 hour per week over 50 weeks.
This unit is from our archive and it is an adapted extract from Key skill assessment: improving your own learning and performance (U071) which is no longer in presentation. If you wish to study formally at The Open University, you may wish to explore the courses we offer in this subject.
