I had finished part 2 of TU100’s first block quite a while before ‘putting it to bed.’  After completing the material and activities, one is supposed to fill out a Learning Outcomes template for each part.  It is a vile thing.

The format of the template is that you’re supposed to take each one of the part’s ‘learning objectives’ and answer a few things about it.

What I’ve done to get through these is to ignore the “How far acheived?” question, since this is a meaningless question that assumes a linear structure to what may be an abstract notion, and instead concentrated on the other question in the box, “Examples of TU100 activities?”  I can then just flip through my activities notebook and match up which ones speak to the learning objectives.

The progression field is often completely meaningless, as the learning objective may not be a continuum, but rather have a nature that is accomplished or is not accomplished.

The ‘Skills’ field is probably the must infuriating. For each learning objective you need to compare it against 36 alleged skills to determine which ones you’ve developed by reading a book.  Most of these skills are not actually skills, and many of them don’t even have any substantive meaning.  So as much as I’m against the tick-box mentality, as much as I love self-reflection for personal development … I’m afraid the tick-box mentality of the template’s designer has forced me to just jot down a couple of relevant skills and try to live with myself for not giving an activity my all.

That I have to do this nearly every single week just doesn’t sit well with me, but the above tips will at least help me get through them.