Now that you’re in the tertiary phase of your education, assessments are far more complex. Gone are the days when you simply had to memorise content and repeat it in an exam. Tertiary education (and its assessments) requires the application of knowledge to prepare you for the long term where you’ll be applying what you’ve learned in an actual working situation.
But how do we apply what has been learned? Here are some tips to help you perfect this skill:
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Use A Rubric Or Checklist
Checklists are great when implementing what you’ve learned. Studies have shown that using checklists improves performance in the workplace. Rubrics are even more useful in the learning environment because they have a qualitative aspect as well as the quantitative one. Using a rubric also enables the learner to self-assess as he goes along, thereby making the learning experience that much more valuable.
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Teach The Work
Teaching is often the best way of learning. Studies have proven that the best way to improve understanding of work is to explain it to other people. When doing this, you are also activating other senses. This makes the work more memorable and meaningful. If you don’t have access to other people who are willing to act as students, it can help to write the work as an explanatory document or even ass if you were writing a blog like this one. It could even help to “teach” the work to your pet; it’s the teaching – and not the learning – that matters in this instance.
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Repetition
It’s important to keep repeating the learning at spaced intervals. Your brain commits what’s been learnt to long and short term memory in different ways – and practical application of knowledge in a different way too. Psychologists agree that spaced repetition is the best way to remember things in the long term.
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Purpose Learning
This entails learning things with the specific application in mind. For example, medical students learn anatomy using a real cadavre (corpse) and this is far more effective than simply reading about anatomy. In accounting, it is preferable to work with a real problem situation than just learning the theory and later – in the workplace – finding how you’d apply it.
There are many other ways of learning with application in mind, so use the methods that work for you.
Dux
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“Dux dʌks noun
The top pupil in a school or class.”
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