Enquiry Based Learning Process Assessment

During the Enquiry based learning process, I have gained invaluable lessons on how to source relevant information on a chosen topic in a time effective manner. As I have been out school for ten years, I have found this paper to be particularly beneficial. I am finding tertiary learning overwhelming and struggle to keep up with my younger peers. They seem to already have a fair idea about academic formal processes and expectations, and I am still learning. However this paper has given me the tools and methods to gain some confidence in my academic writing.

In the past when gathering information I was unaware of what Boolean operators were or how to use them. I would use keywords but often separately in a search engine and with little idea of what to look at first. It meant I was gathering large volumes of information, which often had limited relevance to what I was looking for. Now that I use Boolean operators, for example the Boolean operator of “AND”, it has limited my searches by linking my key words, thus sourcing the information with linked keywords, to produce only highly relevant information. I can now go through a smaller volume of relevant information and acquire what I am looking for in a shorter period of time. This has had a positive impact on me because I feel less confused and frustrated.

Whilst working on my EP1 enquiry question, I realised my question was too broad. My original question was “how are children and adults treated differently in occupational therapy”. I needed to narrow this question down to gather concise, interesting and relevant information. I was frustrated I had picked such a broad topic, because it made it very difficult to decide what information to use and which to discard. I had...

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...reading from my paper. I look forward to doing more verbal presentations in the future to regain my confidence in this area.

Overall this paper has been the most challenging of the core papers for me. I believe it is because instead of being given a topic to explore, I had to choose one myself. Having never done so before, I made errors in the broadness of my question; this made it difficult for the following assessment.

This is my first experience of tertiary education and as each assessment progressed, I began to gain the benefits of the lecture sessions and the skills and tools they provided me with. This paper was difficult for me but had great purpose; to learn from my mistakes early on, will be of great assistance in the future. I have found the Knowledge, Enquiry and Communication paper invaluable to laying a solid foundation of my academic career.