Personal Blogs

Stage One

I've punched my way through the three main course books which are named blocks 1, 2 and 3 and could just as well be expressed as some 60 + activities over the 20 or so weeks.

Unusually for me and influenced by seeing what others do (an advantage of a face to face tutorials) I too have 'defaced' my course books with highlighter pens, biro and notes. (A school career in which text books were bought and resold/recycled meant that unitl recently I kept books in a pristine condition. I wonder of being able to diddle about with electronic versions has encouraged me to do this?)

From this I will extract through notes what I consider to be key points and people.

This isn't second guessing the exam questions so much as covering topics that I believe I understand and can write about adequatetly.

This isn't the time to fill in significant gaps unless I feel there are any.

Tapping into the content benefits from some techniques that served me well decades ago and I know discover are taught to revision clases: anagrams and mnemonics.

I once had dozens of these, one in particular, a sentence that gave the key letter into some 27 facts on Elizabethan history which swirls around my head to this day three decades later.

I am learning another to get me through OU MBA Module exam B822 'Creativity, Innovation and Change'.

We were introduced to 12 precepts in relation to running a creative problem solving exercise or workshop. These I feel are crucial. Unlike a chronology of events in history or the order of the planets from the sun, there is no order to these precepts which makes devising an anagram or mnemonic all the easier. All the easier too now that there is readily availiable software to help.

AEBVBLNICKCM doesn't look promising

I began with 'an early bird values breakfast' which would give me

• Adopt a set to break sets
• Explore the 'givens'
• Broad picture, local detail
• Value Play
• Build up, don't break down

Then I Googled an anagram tool which gave me all the letters in VAN BECK CLIMB

1. Value play
2. Adopt a set to break sets
3. Nurture : it is already there
4. Broad picture, local detail
5. Explore the givens
6. Connect and be receptive
7. Know what you really want
8. Cycle often and close late
9. Live with looseness
10. Involve others
11. Manage the process
12. Build up and break down

All I have to do is test my ability to

• A) match all 12 letters to the phrases above
• B) know what these phrases mean
• C) use this as a 'brain dump' to help answer the question, rather than shoe-horning the above into a question.
• D) Repeat the above in a variety of ways, perhaps 8 - 12 times evenly across all 3 blocks

If techniques on remembering stuff for exams interests you do ask; I have a variety of approaches up my sleeve (that fall short of having a piece of paper up your sleeve).

I was thinking of devising a list around the word

HIGHLAND SPRING

Seems a bit futile though. More ingenous, though cheating of course, would be to reprint the entire HIGHLAND SPRING label with a series of craftily hidden anagrams, mnemonics and other clues with the 'contents' a variety of authors and dates.