Books!

Hello to all and thank you to everyone on Skype yesterday, especially all the Module Three students who were so encouraging and took time to answer our questions! It was so interesting to hear all your perspectives on the course and and also to really feel a sense of community even though we are all so spread out across our many locations.

Over the past week since our Module One Skype I have really enjoyed looking through the course material and getting my mindset prepared to begin study again. It does all seem more than a little overwhelming, however, I am trying my best to take the advise of Helen, Adesola and all the experienced MAPPers and NOT PANIC! I always find that for me the best way to engage with a subject is to read around it, as this not only gives me focus but also gets my brain to work and constantly think about relevant topics and ideas. I therefore asked the module three students what they began reading when they started out and which books they found to be the most helpful and informative. There were two clear winners (each on the Core Texts reading list in the student handbook,) I ordered both of these from Amazon last week and they arrived in just a couple of days:

Alan Durrant, Garth Rhodes, David Young (2009) Getting started with University-Level Work Bsed Learning. Middlesex University Press

Ruth Helyer (2010) The Work-Based Learning Student Handbook. Palgrave Macmillan

Everyone agreed that these were both great introductions to work based learning. The opinion was shared by all that they were informative and helpful as first texts before getting stuck into heavier reading, particularly if you did not come from a higher education background or had been away from education for some time. It was also mentioned that the Durrant, Rhodes, Young is a really short book (less than 100 pages) that is by far the least daunting and a great place to begin.

I'm off to start reading, I'll let you all know how it goes!