TMA 1, What was Different?

TMA 1 was the first experience of putting together an assessed academic document in my new 'e-portfolio' era. I want to step back here and think about what was different, compared to my previous H802 and H804 experiences of TMAs.


The TMA 1 fell into two parts, one of which was a reflective summary, and the other of which was a more traditional critical reflection on the main learning of Blocks 1-4 of the course. 


What was noticeable to me was that, as I had gradually cottoned on to the discipline of recording, organising and tagging my course work, the orderliness of my TMA reflections improved. So the least well organised thinking was from blocks 1 and 2 of H808, when I had really failed to grasp the full significance of what the modules were meant to be teaching me. This was a point that I had picked up in a couple of earlier blogs.


The reflective summary felt a great deal easier to complete than the normal academic assignment, as I had kept a pretty good record of my thoughts using my blog right from the very start. I suspect the other reason that it was easier was that I was working with material that had come from my own head, rather than having to describe material that is presented by others. 


A second piece of learning, picked up from previous H80X experience, was that in my planning for the TMA, I outlined the main sections of the assignment, and limited myself to the right general proportion of words per section, in order to meet the TMA requirements. Although there then had to be some editing and reshaping of the final version, I am convinced that I wasted much less time than previously on too many words.


Another discipline that was new was that, having outlined the main sections of the assignment, I left the sections that I thought were the easiest (usually the introductory sections!) until the end, beginning with those where there were the most significant 'gaps' in my thinking. This had the emotional effect of me feeling relieved the closer I got to the finishing line - rather than the opposite effect of feeling like the steepest hills were still left to climb!


One slight confusion was that I have material stored in a few different places. I am tending to gravitate towards Google apps as the main organising centre for my thoughts, as it is such a ubiquitous application, and is incredibly easy to access. However, the formats and range of files types supported do make its use a bit limited. And the fact that the labelling of documents across the Google apps family is not identical is a bit frustrating. But I suspect the main issue for me to come to terms with is the need to be orderly right from the outset - not a natural mind set for me, as I have reflected previously.


So the mental notes to carry forward for the rest of H808 (and maybe my life?!) are;

1. When reading and studying, store and oraganise new material with future use in mind (TMA/EC/work projects)
2. At the outset of every piece of academic work, be clear what I want to get from the activity
3. Where word limits apply to a piece of work, set these limits at the "organising of thoughts" stage
4. Where possible, convert outside inputs (academic or otherwise) into a blog posting, so that these thoughts can begin to be incorporated into my own more fully.

In conclusion, I suspect that the big breakthrough on TMA1 was that being more organised makes the compilation of thinking for TMAs much more efficient. It remains to be seen whether the quality of what was produced is as good as, or better than, previous attempts;-)