Essentials in Higher
Education
Time management, note taking,
reading and reflecting
©The Learning Quality Support Unit, 2013
Time Management
• What time have I got?
• Utilisation
• study schedule
– Long term
– Short term
– Immediate
(Monash University, 2009)
Intermediate extended schedule
Mon
a.m.
Comments/
follow up
actions
Lunch
p.m.
Comments/
follow up
actions
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
Taking Notes in Lectures
• Get a good loose-leaf notebook
• Familiarise yourself with the lecture
• Use ‘The Cornell Note-taking System’
(Pauk, 2001):
Record* Questions* Recite* Reflect*
Review*
Notes from written material
•
•
•
•
Note key ideas, facts or statistics
Mark the pages (not in pen!)
What has the author ‘found’?
What method of data collection has
been used; how as the data been
analysed?
Efficient reading skills
•Purposeful
•Interactive
• Circumtextual framing (info from the
source).
• Intratextual framing (cues from the text)
• Extratextual framing (background
knowledge and experience).
• Intertextual framing (connections with
other texts)
What is reflection and why do I
need to use it?
• Links theory and practice
• Defined variously:
Utilising learning from past
experiences/events to improve
future practice.
• Schön (1983) and Gibbs(1988)
Schön (1983)
• Reflection-in-action: ‘action present’
– “When someone reflects-in-action, he
becomes a researcher in the practice
context. He is not dependent on the
categories or established theory and
technique, but constructs a new
theory of the unique case” (Schön,
1983, p.68).
Schön (1983)
• Reflection-on-action: change
– “We reflect on action, thinking back
on what we have done in order to
discover how our knowing-in-action
may have contributed to an
unexpected outcome”
(Schön, 1983, p. 26).
Steps:
Steps for reflecting-onaction
1. Choose an incident.
2. Think about what the situation was like
before your intervention and what it
was like afterwards.
3. Consider the thinking process that you
used to bridge the gap between the
‘before and after’.
4. Summarise
Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (1988)
References
• Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by Doing: A Guide to
Teaching and Learning Methods. Oxford: Oxford
Further Education Unit
• Monash University (2009). Study Methods. Retrieved
from
http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/quickrefs/02study-methods.xml
• Pauk, W. (2001). The Cornell Note-taking System.
Retrieved from
http://lsc.cornell.edu/LSC_Resources/cornellsystem.
pdf
• Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How
professionals think in action. London: Temple Smith