Identify and use Learning Resources

When doing a learning program, the learner is exposed to a wide variety of information sources. Some of them are provided by the training provider, others could be researched by the learners themselves if they need more information.

Learning resources could include:

When attending a skills program or learnership, the material provided to you by the training provider is often all that you need to study. In some cases, you may be required to do additional research to complete assignments.

When using multiple-text sources, we need to follow certain guidelines to do it effectively. It is easier to be more consistent in what information we select from short, well-constructed texts. Longer, less structured documents tend to be more confusing. In using multiple sources, keep the following in mind:

Textbooks

• Provide a foundation of facts and viewpoints to provide an overview.
• Sequence information and facts to understand issues.
• Create a context for comparing and understanding other sources.
• Are written in a neutral, objective tone.

Problems with a Single Text

Problems that could arise from using a single text as opposed to using multiple sources include:

• Information is often "academic", lacking the drama of real-life experience, adventure, and experimentation.
• Bias is hidden or concealed, ignoring competing facts, priorities, minority viewpoints.
• A single interpretation limits how reported facts are prioritized/sequenced restricting viewpoint (Euro/Caucasian) or subject testing (white male).
• Original/eyewitness sources of information are secondary to interpretative accounts.

Additional readings and alternative sources of information can assist you to:

• Create a richer understanding with additional information and perspective.
• Interactor engages with facts, actors, circumstances of the material.
• Practice and familiarize yourself with new subject vocabulary and concepts.
• Process opposing, even conflicting, points of view to assess, evaluate, defend.

Conflicting information however can impede your learning, unless you can:

• Analyze it for commonalities.
• Reorganize or synthesize your model for understanding it.
• Consider the impact of, and evaluate conflicts.
• Filter it with a context presented in the basic text.

Some recommendations:

• Read your text to provide the factual framework from which to begin.
• Proceed to shorter, more focused sources of information especially if you are inexperienced in the subject.

Practice with multiple texts to improve your evaluative skills:

• Compare and contrast your sources.
• Analyze them for bias or viewpoint.
• Note when and where they were written, and how that affects the viewpoint.
• Understand the connections between events, actors, and circumstances rather than learn a series of "facts" that can be easily be forgotten.