In preparing for my impending serious academic studies I’ve been refining and preparing a suite of tools that will allow me to implement my learning system.
This isn’t a simple labelling or sorting system or a commitment to “taking notes.” Using my knowledge of my own learning habits (good and bad), cognitive impairments and expected learning schedule I’ve developed an integrated cluster of tools to help me with my college education.
What struck me about the system was it’s apparent novelty. There isn’t really anything like it out there, as far as I could find that merges all the various methodologies I hope to implement. In essence this is a merging of task management, project management, note taking/managing, data mining, document authorship/management, research tools, with a hodge-podge of various other widgets thrown in for good measure (virtual flashcards, etc.)
It’s a adaptable system, suitable for virtually any college course. It’s centered around a number of assumptions. Firstly, that the only quantitative measure of success is CGPA, so although my subjective personal feelings are important, they are outside the scope of the tools here (so there’s nothing about these tools that will help me make friends, for example). Secondly, that although tasks may be completed at various times, school follows a very rigid timebox (school session dates) with predictable schedule anomalies (holidays).
The system is class centric and work unit driven. The largest unit within the framework is a semester. Within the semester we have courses, these courses have one or many classes. Classes have a type, either lecture, seminar or lab (which defines the note taking and document managing methods). Classes have a schedule and collection of work units. Each class has work units or study time associated with it. Work units represent tests, papers, reading or any other activity requiring one or more sessions of work on my part with a definite deadline. Work units are either graded or un-graded, graded units have a weighting (hopefully all provided by the professor).
The schedule is the aggregation of study time, work time, and classes. The system aids in the development of a schedule by accounting for these three entities for all classes. When a work unit is assigned, I will input an estimate in 15-minute units as to how long I will need, I will then take 115% of this time and distribute it across the amount of time I have remaining, based on the deadline for the assignment. Productivity is tracked based on hours worked and percentage complete. For reading assignments that is pages read, for test preparation that is stages of test prep (outlined below) progressed. Papers and other “projects” will require an outline of steps each with an approximate work value, progress is the percentage value of work “points” completed.
If a schedule slip occurs, more time is alloted accordingly. I will know very quickly how accurate my estimations were and will be able to adjust in future cases. Moreover, if progress is tracked accurately and consistently, deadlines won’t sneak up on me with little of a project completed.
Also, the priority of a given work unit is decided based on the weighting of an item, making triage of study efforts trivial.
Once I have received an assignment or test back from a professor I shall go through a process of post-mortem. This will allow me to track any errors, problems, omissions, inaccuracies and other quality failures in my work. These will be triaged, reported and prognosed in the post-mortem process. The primary focus will be on reducing or eliminating the possibility of repeated error - fail the same way only once.
As QA failures are noted, a checklist can be generated to be applied to future work. As work output increases and faults are detected, the checklist will grow.
In many ways this is a direct adaptation of personal software process - instead of generating code I am generating various documents. The project management aspects will help keep my schedule doable and stress-minimized by diffusing the work in the most efficient way possible.
I implemented as much recursive analysis as possible to allow continual adjustment to schedule timelines and work-blocks. Given the rather small time-boxes of work-units it was essential to make this a daily process. I’ll also be able to track the accuracy of my estimation skills, hopefully increasing my accuracy over time. The hope is that my tools will “learn” as I progress in work out put becoming progressively more accurate and precise, making them more useful when they are more essential to success.
In all, this is a rigorous way to keep precise and accurate what is often a fuzzy analysis rife with subjective error and personal misrepresentation. It keeps me honest and keeps my eye on the ball.
The software being used is a combination of Microsoft Outlook 2007, OneNote 2007 and my own hand-coded PHP software, though I am exploring switching to an Access DB for total Office Suite interoperability.