1. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Business Skills Handbook

2. Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Business Skills Handbook How to Study Week 2

3. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Reading Recommended text: The Business Skills Handbook Horn, R. London: CIPD. 1st edition, 2009 ISBN: 1843982188 Chapter 2: How to Study (page 25)

4. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Lecture Outline l effective learning actions l lectures and how to get the most out of them l active learning in lectures l forms of note-taking

5. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Learning Objectives l be able to understand the format of lectures and the key learning habits of effective learners l have a repertoire of note-taking styles l understand the importance of note-taking in lectures

6. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Effective Learning Actions: Lectures l Read the module text chapter relevant to the lecture beforehand. l Listen and take notes. l Engage with the topic. l The above advice is a good way to start turning an essentially passive lecture into an interesting and engaging learning event. The main way to engage the mind is by thinking about the topics and ideas. There are several ways to do this and I feel sure you will quickly develop your own approach.

7. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Engagement with Lecture Material l Apply the lecture material to a context you know. Ask – how would that work at my workplace? l Be critical. Ask – is that correct? l Think about the consequences. Ask – what does that mean in this or that situation? l Look for connections. Ask – how does this connect with that?

8. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Create Learning Actions l Active learning should inspire action. What you hear and see in a lecture should make you want to investigate and find out more. If you record these inspirations during the lecture, you are far more likely to act on them and research further after the lecture. By following up on ideas you have in the lecture, further learning and development will take place. Some of these learning actions will be about asking clarifying questions in seminars; if you don’t write them down in an ordered way at the time they will be forgotten. Other actions will be about ‘diving’ more deeply into interesting or important areas. Yet more actions may be about remembering an important comment that the lecturer may have said, such as, ‘This topic is likely to come up in the examination.’

9. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Standard Format of Lectures [1] l entering and settling down l lecture introduction l the main part of the lecture l the lecture summary l closing the lecture

10. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Standard Format of Lectures [2] l Entering and settling down – arrive early and collect any lecture notes. Skim-read these before the lecture begins. Underline any important topic areas and highlight any unfamiliar terms or words. Use the notes to provide a skeleton structure for your own notes.

11. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Standard Format of Lectures [3] l Lecture introduction – often delivered using a bullet point list of topics and a set of learning objectives. Write these down as it marks the start of your active listening. The introduction prepares you for what is to come; it is like a map of the lecture. Knowing this map will make it easier to follow the lecture.

12. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Standard Format of Lectures [4] l The main part of the lecture will often be structured as an explanation of a main idea, supported by practical applications and/or research findings. You can tell when a main idea is coming by the lecturer’s use of signal words, such as ‘a major development’ and ‘the leading author’.

13. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Standard Format of Lectures [5] l The lecture summary – as with the introduction, write this down. It symbolises the end of your active listening and involvement. Your notes should ‘mirror’ the summary.

14. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Standard Format of Lectures [6] l Closing the lecture – there is often an opportunity to ask questions at the end of a lecture. The lecturer will normally remain in the room so that one-to-one questions can be asked. Any action notes you made that need an answer could be dealt with in this part of the lecture. If you don’t need to ask questions, check and organise your notes before leaving.

15. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development General Thoughts about Note-taking l Learning to make notes effectively and consistently is the most useful device to assist your ability to learn and remember. But, producing notes and understanding the main content of lectures does not allow you to recall the information. Having information ready for recall requires review and reinforcement. Effective note-taking allows for this recall of information. The hardest thing at first is to develop the skill of selection. You will not be able to write everything down that is said in lectures. You have to select and record key points and memorable points.

16. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development General Thoughts about Note-taking – Important Points l Use a title and date on the notes pages. l Use a paragraph numbering system for easy navigation of the notes. l Be selective, look out for signal words and record the key ideas. l Write key words or short sentences – do not try to write everything that is said. l Leave gaps in the notes for adding extra material as the lecture progresses. l Use your own words, not the lecturer’s, but be careful not to change the meaning of the point being made.

17. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development General Thoughts about Note-taking – Important Points [2] l Write only when you need to record important material – it is easy to just keep note-taking when the lecturer is side-tracked or talking generally. l Understand that there will be times when you need to listen intensely; at these times it will be difficult to make notes. l Use indenting to indicate levels of importance. l Use colour, highlighting and underlining to convey importance and connection.

18. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development General Thoughts about Note-taking – Important Points [3] l Leave half a page at the top of the notes so that you can return and create a top-level summary of the notes. l Don’t worry if you miss a point. Just leave some space; you may get the point later or it may be covered in the summary. l Reflect on the notes as soon after the lecture as possible and add reflective comments if they improve the notes. l Make it a habit to review your notes regularly as this will aid your recall of the material.

19. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Note-taking Forms l As noted earlier, there are an infinite number of ways to record notes in a lecture. The important thing is to develop a system that works for you. In the following sections I set out a few common methods and one new method that I encourage my own students to use.

20. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Traditional Written Notes l Every year across the globe millions of students write their lecture notes using short sentences and in chronological form – it is a system that works. As the lecture progresses, they record points that the lecturer makes and that seem important. The notes are handwritten using very little structure or emphasis and flow paragraph by paragraph until the end of the lecture.

21. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Traditional Written Notes [2] l This system can easily be improved so that the notes are more memorable and easier to understand by the inclusion of colour, underlining and indenting. Leaving a half-page space at the top of the notes allows for a summary to be completed after the lecture. The outcome of this method is a file of notes with perhaps two to five A4 pages of notes with a summary at the top of each page for each lecture.

22. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Traditional Written Notes [3] l You can enhance this system a bit more by creating an index page as the first page of the file and sequentially numbering the pages in the file. It would be normal to use dividers to separate distinct subjects. l In summary this is a useful, well-tried and effective way to record and store notes from your lectures.

23. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Mind Map Written Notes l Mind map written notes allow for more flexibility in how they are organised. They are still made up of predominantly headings and short sentences, but they are arranged in boxes with the writing inside. By using arrows and numbering, the relationships between ideas and the structure of the ideas can be changed. It is a good idea to have a written mind map index as the first page in your file. This lists all the topics week by week with a very short summary of the main points.

24. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Mind Map Written Notes [2] l You can build a written note mind map with pen and paper or using Microsoft Word or OneNote. OneNote has the added advantage that you can drag and drop all manner of items onto the page, such as screenshots, pictures, webpage images, tables of data, and so on.

25. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Mind Map Written Notes

26. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Mind Map Written Notes

27. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Mind Maps l Traditional mind maps contain only top-level ideas and are drawn in a pictorial way. This is a good technique for linking ideas and concepts. It does not work so well in conveying detailed information. Your notes will need to contain detailed information so that you can revise and prepare for examinations. If you are a visual learner mind maps may work well for you. You can adapt the technique to include more information alongside the pictorial elements.

28. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Application Action Notes l This is a specific form of note-taking that works well in business and management courses. It aims to encourage a highly active form of note-taking that encourages learning in lectures by thinking about the application of ideas. It also encourages actions that create more learning after lectures.

29. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

30. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

31. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Activity The triple lecture – case study Carry out the preparation tasks required for the case study. Work in groups of three 60 minutes

32. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Next Week how learning and skills improve performance using learning styles to enhance learning the skills of active learning learning in the workplace understanding and exploiting university culture lifelong learning and the attributes of lifelong learners how to ‘trap’ your learning

33. The Business Skills Handbook Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development The Business Skills Handbook The End