Learning online

Computing with confidence

When it comes to learning about computers and gadgets, have you noticed the apparent ease with which children learn to use these tools? This may be because they are more likely to use the activist learning style. They try out and investigate rather than follow instructions rigidly or ponder the different approaches to a problem.

We want to encourage you to be an activist when learning how to use computers. We want you to explore technological problems in the same way as a child. We have called this approach ‘computing with confidence’.

What is computing with confidence?

A confident computer user is one who knows more than just the required key presses to operate the software they are using. The two most important qualities of a confident computer user are:

  • Knowing how to cope when things go wrong
  • Knowing how to learn new computing skills independently

Coping when things go wrong

Personal computing is not a mature technology. It is changing so fast and becoming so complex that it never gets a chance to settle down and become really reliable. You need to learn ways of coping with this unreliability, to learn to laugh at the frustrations you will encounter and find ways of minimising the damage.

There are various ways of coping with computing problems: Save your work often – every few minutes, not every few hours.  Back up all your important work regularly. This means making copies of files somewhere else. Look for workarounds. There is usually more than one way of getting what you want done. If one way doesn't work, look for another. 

Most software has built-in sources of help, which can come into their own when things don't work the way you expect them to.

Develop and use your support network – friends or experts you can turn to when all else fails. Even the experts have their own experts to help when they get stuck!

Learning new computing skills

There are several principles for learning new computing skills: Don't be afraid to try things out and explore. You almost certainly won't do any harm by making mistakes – modern software will usually let you undo errors, and will warn you before performing potentially damaging actions.  Look for patterns. Find the differences and similarities between the ways in which things are done in different software, so you can begin to guess what to expect.

You will learn a lot by helping other people in addition to getting your own problems solved by them.

We hope that during your study you will be able to develop your support network further by using the Internet. Email, conferencing, chat, and the Web all greatly increase the ways in which you can seek help and information and, of course, offer help to others.

To help you develop the skills for online learning why not try the Open University Open Learn courses

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