You should know too that once you have obtained your MBA you will join a network of over 22,000 professionals worldwide that make up The Open University Business School MBA alumni group.
- I will go on a very nice holiday after I graduate! Who knows could have a few months off to ski!
At the heart of your MBA studies are the notions of ‘reflective practice’ and ‘reflective enquiry’.
An essential feature of this approach to learning is the need to record your reflections on what you have learned and note resources you have encountered for retrieval at a later date (e.g. for assessment).
It is important to have some strategies in place and decide what platforms you want to use in advance of going too far in your studies.
Your module website can be used as a ‘document’ that you ‘annotate’. You have three years access to the website from when the module ends. You can bookmark pages of relevance. You’ll notice that nearly all the activities on the module website feature boxes below each task where you can enter your thoughts. These might be helpful for jotting down your ideas and saving them to the page that inspired them. You can save the MDAs out into ‘alternative formats’ such as ebooks and Word files. Once in these formats you can bookmark, comment on and annotate the content as you wish. You can export discussions or selected posts from your forums into Word documents If storing and accessing your work ‘in the cloud’ appeals to you, why not investigate some of the free online storage options available on the internet. Two of the better-known options are Google Docs and Dropbox [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. You could get into the habit of blogging your reflections and progress. The Open University provides each student with a personal blog.Keeping a learning journal should help you to clarify your thinking and help you to make sense of unfamiliar issues or situations that are puzzling you. Looking back through your journal from time to time should also enable you understand better how you are developing as a learner. In effect you will be keeping a watchful eye on yourself. In addition it should provide a useful repository of ideas to help you prepare for TMAs and exams.
http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=616753§ion=7
Reflect and make notes on what you have learned about your approach to time management. Go back and revise your time chart to include your study plans. Discuss your thoughts with colleagues in the forum and share things that you will now do differently in your day job and the way you intend to study for your MBA. Include extracts from your learning journal.
- prioritise
- be organised, that doesn't necessarily mean being tidy but know what your priorities are.
- keep a journal, as this is a journey so i must record everything
- reading, and using a dictaphone is productive. i can use my dead time to listen to messages e.g whilst driving, cooking, running, ok not swimming , on the plane (as per previous blog)
- make time now to know the library inside out
- get ahead
- have a flexible timetable, plan 2 weeks at a time
- know what you want to gain from each study session
One MBA student wrote recently: ‘My initial thoughts (and I suppose first questions) are centred around trying to remember why I felt that I needed to undertake some form of MBA in the first place.’
Reflect on this quotation from your own point of view and note your reasons for starting an MBA in your learning journal for later use.
.....so here goes:
- to gain that competitive edge
- to learn how to be a great leader
- for the challenge
- to keep growing as an individual
- i've seen too many bad managers just blag their way to their positions, but they must be frightened that they will lose their position one day. i'd like to develop into a good leader, and a good education will help achieve that.
- time for a new chapter, since i had that amazing experience working in california for 3 years, i moved back to the UK and haven't had an exciting challenge, so i'm ready for something new
- it would be a greater loss, to not do the mba
- i love the challenge so far, yes it's overwhelming but i love the commitment and it's so interesting already
- i will feel very proud when i graduate. in fact i'm proud already. just being on the course is great, although i am very scared of failing too. but i aim to challenge that energy in the right direction and manage that addrenalin to keep me motivated to want to succeed.
- it will be exciting learning about business models, and developing my own.
There I was feeling rubbish, because I was rushing too much and not being effective. I started again, from the very beginning and felt very relieved to read Emma's quote below. Had I not rushed so much, I wouldn't have missed an important quote. However, I am pleased that I tried the 'reflective thinking' and tried to think of an 'alternative solution' to feel on top of things. I am just going to accept that yes this is overwhelming, but it's only week 1 so try not to be too hard on myself. I am pleased that someone else also uses a dictaphone to learn. If I get stuck again, I'll try to slow the pace down (too much excitement can go the other way) and simply learn, learn and learn. I have to remember it's a journey.
"I learn mostly by listening. I tape myself reading passages in my book, or my online journals or whatever, and I record pertinent points on my digital recorder then I can play them back on my iPod. It's really good for on the move as well as when I'm at home." (Emma's quote).
You can learn from listening to
You can then listen to it when you are
Just a quick note, I have been worried about falling behind, and so I ended up reading the material too quickly and skipping sections I shouldn't have skipped, so I'm going to learn from this mistake and re-evaluate the way I am studying. I guess this is the start of my 'reflective learning'. I've just tried reading out loud, and recording extracts into my dictaphone iphone apps, and I can save recordings in folders etc allowing me to access them during my dead time. E.g I can playback a recording when I'm driving, cooking, at the gym etc, I am maximising my dead time. Reading the material, and hearing it back will hopefully reinforce the message more. Plus, when it comes to exam time I can mix up the reading with audio material, so all the reading won't seem overwhelming. We'll atleast see how this goes, so I've started again and have gone back to basics. I must remember to save these into Drop Box at some point.
This also got me thinking, about the EBI. How can I link iphone apps, useful social media tools etc to share best practice between offices? Can we share video testimonials, photo galleries etc through the cloud across various markets and for our clients too? We must explore, we must experiment, and we could use all these cool techie iphone apps and gadgets to move business forward. Or create an app? I've got great SF and Silicon Valley contacts, I may have to start picking their brains more and get advice etc. Anyhow, back to studying...
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