How to record your learning and monitor your progress
1 Activities
Each unit starts with an introduction and a list of its key learning objectives. This is followed by Activity 1, which has a similar format in each unit. This activity is designed for you to make a note of:
what you might already know about the topic of the unit
what you might expect to find out in the unit.
At the end of each unit, you will revisit what you have written in Activity 1. This happens in the last activity of the section, labelled 'What I have learned', which is part of every unit. There, you will be able to see what you noted in Activity 1 and compare the notes you made at the start with the things you have actually learned throughout the unit, ranging from new Scots words and sentences, useful sources and links to external websites, to specific aspects of the unit topic.
This last activity is designed to help you consolidate what you have studied and decide what you want to take away from each unit, depending on your previous knowledge and individual interests.
Please note: Throughout the course you will be making notes in free text boxes, which are only visible to you. These will be there for you to look back at as you progress through the course. In addition, in some text boxes the information is stored and what you wrote is shown to you again later in the section.
There are also activities which allow you to record your spoken Scots. These recordings are saved on the course so that you can revisit them and your recordings can only be accessed by you.
However, in order to be able to see all your notes and replay your voice recordings, it is important that you do not clear your browser history for this course site, otherwise they will be lost.
Also note: If you are an Apple Mac user, it is important to know that the Safari browser versions 12 onwards do not support the Java software needed to use the tool for listening and making audio recordings. Using an alternative, such as the free Firefox browser, you can enable and use this tool.
Finally: You might find that some of the drag-and-drop activities are difficult to do on your screen. In these cases please use your browser’s zoom function to be able to see all items of these activities.
2 Your own learning log
As you go through each unit, we suggest you keep a learning log by taking notes on paper, in a Word document or any other format of your choice on aspects that are of particular interest to you. This will then constitute your summary of key things to take away from each unit.
To help you identify the parts of the course where it is useful to reflect and take notes you will see this icon.
In addition, you might want to take a note of some of the weblinks and other resources introduced in each unit for future reference.
3 End-of-course quiz and digital badge
By studying this course, you will have the opportunity to gain an Open University digital badge and statement of participation for your achievement. More information on badges is given in the next section Badge information.
Learning the Scots language