- Current section: Introduction
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Introduction
- 2 You and your learning
- 3 Exploring learning
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 Getting feedback from other people
- 3.3 Your learning – what does ‘theory’ offer?
- 3.3.1 Why it might be useful
- 3.3.2 What problems might you have with this?
- 3.3.3 How might it be possible to integrate theory and personal understanding?
- 3.3.4 The importance of other people in our immediate social and learning environments
- 3.3.5 Communities of practice
- 3.3.6 A ‘health warning’ about groups
- 3.3.7 Entwistle’s theory – students’ approaches to learning
- 3.4 Preparing to move on – connecting theory with skills
- 3.5 Conclusion
- References
- 4 Where next?
- 5 Reflecting backwards, reflecting forwards
- Acknowledgements
from The Open University
Alternatively you can skip the navigation by pressing 'Enter'.
- You are here:
- Home
- Education
- Learning to change
Learning to change
This unit is for people who are thinking about making changes in...
This unit is for people who are thinking about making changes in their lives, such as returning to study or taking a different direction at work. It will help you build on what you already know; consider the choices open to you; use your skills and qualities to achieve change; and make plans for the future.
The aims of section 1 are to:
- provide you with a clear idea of what the unit is about and how it is structured
- help you understand the importance of the word ‘skills’
- start you thinking about your own learning.
- understand that valuable and important learning goes on all the time
- appreciate that learning can involve thinking, doing and feeling
- develop a clearer idea of what you have learned and what qualities, knowledge and skills you already have
- better understand the importance of everyday.
- use feedback to add information about your qualities, knowledge and skills from another perspective
- use academic approaches to learning to increase your understanding of your qualities, knowledge and skills
- reflect on the academic skills you have used.
- explain how the wider social and political context may affect your learning
- choose at least one goal that you would like to work towards and explain why you have chosen that goal
- identify what you can do to help you achieve your goal
- draw up a plan for achieving your goal
- explain how you have used any ideas presented in the unit to identify your goals.
- Duration: 100 hours
- Published on: Friday 15th July 2011
- Level: Introductory
- Posted under: Education
Contents
Learning to change
Introduction

Being unsure of what you want to do in life (or what you want to study) is not unusual. How to deal with the changes that we want in our lives can be more challenging. You may be unsure about what subject you are interested in or whether you can cope with study at university level. You may be unsure about what path in life to pursue.
This unit takes your life as its starting point. It helps you to think about what you can do already. It then uses this to build up your confidence in your abilities. It uses a mixture of personal reflection, case studies (including three real-life case studies) and ideas about how we learn. This combination equips you to move your life forward.
This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Learning to change (Y165) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in this subject area [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .
Archive content
This is an extract from an Open University course which is no longer available to new students. If you found this interesting you could explore more free Education course units or view the range of currently available OU Education courses.
Other pages You might like

Try: English: Personal Experiences
How has the English language influenced your life? How would you define your relationship...

Try: School business manager: Developing the...
There is an ongoing ‘revolution’ in the running of state schools and this is making...

Try: Extending and developing your thinking...
Diagrams, mind-maps, tables, graphs, time lines, flow charts, sequence diagrams, decision...

Try: Revision and examinations
Do you get stressed at the thought of an examination? Does the idea of revision fill you...

Try: Creating open educational resources
Are you interested in creating your own open educational resources? This unit will help...

Try: Why teach art?
What value does art have in the school curriculum? This unit, primarily aimed at...

Try: Learning how to learn
Learning how to learn: a process we all engage in throughout our lives, but no single...

Try: Creativity, community and ICT
What do you think being creative means? This unit engages with the debates surrounding...

Try: Teaching citizenship: Work and the...
The issue of ‘citizenship, work and the economy’ is often neglected in everyday...

Try: Using visualisation in maths teaching
This unit looks at visualisation as it relates to mathematics, focusing upon how it can...

Try: Careers education and guidance
Successful transitions – whether from lower secondary to upper secondary; at age 16;...

Try: Learning to Learn
Learning and change can mean big decisions and asking important questions. This free...
Comments
Be the first to post a comment
Copyright & revisions
Copyright information
- Creative-Commons: The Open University is proud to release this free course under a Creative Commons licence. However, any third-party materials featured within it are used with permission and are not ours to give away. These materials are not subject to the Creative Commons licence. See terms and conditions. Full details can be found in the Acknowledgements section.
Feeds
If you enjoyed this, why not follow a feed to find out when we have new things like it? Choose an RSS feed from the list below. (Don't know what to do with RSS feeds?)
Remember, you can also make your own, personal feed by combining tags from around OpenLearn.
Alternative Formats
Tags, Ratings and Social Bookmarking
Page Tags
Sign in or create a free account to add tags to your personal tag cloud using:
Have you tried our free courses?
Back on the streets
More Or Less returns
OU TV & Radio
-
Keeping Britain Alive - Ep 8BBC Two (Northern Ireland only)
Saturday 0:10 -
Life In The UndergrowthEden
Saturday 9:00 -
History Of ScotlandBBC Two
Saturday 10:00 -
More Or LessBBC Radio 4
Sunday 20:00 -
Thinking Allowed: Plenty & stammeringBBC Radio 4
Monday 0:15
Views
Votes
Comments
Tags
- climate change (373)
- business (277)
- diaries (194)
- bottom line (169)
- food (168)
- Rough Science (162)
- internet (147)
- BBC Two (145)
- BBC Radio 4 (140)
- BBC (133)
- Scotland (121)
- points for debate (120)
- listings (120)
- Creative Climate (116)
- Bang goes the Theory (116)
- children (116)
- English Civil War (115)
- astronomy (108)
- Thinking Allowed (104)
- religion (98)
- 20th century (94)
- marketing (94)
- Charles I (93)
- communication (92)
- evolution (92)
- research (89)
- sustainability (89)
- architecture (86)
- energy (83)
- National Health Service (NHS) (78)
OpenLearn Links
Copyrighted imageCredit: Background image Lucian Milasan | Dreamstime.com 

