Lecture 10 - Library Services

Figure 1: Library Services

"A man is known by the books he reads"

                                                - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in an information society. Information is our basic resource and product. With the usage of internet technology traditional libraries incorporated information technology facility services like never before and focused on peoples satisfaction. Libraries value access to information as fundamental to education and research. Most of the people search information through the web rather than from a library. Searching the web is an easy way to get information and there is more and more information online everyday. Over the online resources people can search smartly for research papers, to find credible information and for discover new things. Many genuine resources are available over the web how ever general information on the web doesn't have proper reviewed so there is a high probability of misleading information. Some information on the web is not free but it accessible for students like myself to access through the facilities provided by some institutes such as APIIT Sri Lanka affiliated with Staffordshire University enables their students to access e-resource portals by paying a fairly amount of price. This will enable students to save their time required for search information since it provides some interface to search a particular resources in efficient manner rather than the open web where information on the web is not organized and comprehensive. Students and researches can use both the channels to gather knowledge but its better to use trusted online resources such as portal resources and library resources where there is responsible source of information.

Learning from Class:

Today the lecture was conducted by the Librarians (Ms. Yamani and Ms. Wathsala). The reason for this special lecturing session is to give an idea how to use available library resources effectively to student in order to do projects and assignments as well as to gather knowledge to expand their theoretical scope.

Related to APIIT Library services they mentioned different available resources such as electronic format articles, journals, ebooks and theses where the students can obtain them over the Athens portal and from APIIT internal network. An they highlighted most of the hard-copy format books that are relevant to student's modules and research requirements are available in the APIIT Library and further assistance can be obtain by library staff depending on the requirement of the student to find information that they are expecting have.

Before concluding the lecture for the day our lecturer stated that students have the facility to obtain their accessibility to Athens portal where it really helps almost all the students to carryout their studies and assignments without any lack of information. Lecture demonstrated Athens portal briefly and stated some recommended sites for obtain resources such as eBray, EBSCO, ScienceDirect, IEEE computer society and Emerald.

Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I understood all the aspects of APIIT Library facilities they willing to offer us based on our request. Athens portal is some thing like an e-book library where that I can use those rich information as an foundation to my assignments as well as for my Final Project.

Home Work: 

Steps in Conducting Academic Research

1. Determine your research topic/question

2. Understand the difference between primary and secondary research. 

3. Determine your scope and time line

4. Write a research question

5. Learn how to find useful sources.

6. Collect some possible sources

7. Begin reading in detail

8. Find a method to take notes on what you read.

9. Continue to consider new sources. 

10. Evaluate the sources you use.

11. Keep your research question in mind.

12. Write your tentative thesis.

13. Begin writing your first draft.

14. Begin to add quotes, paraphrases, or summaries into your writing.

15. Continue writing your first draft, and then revise it.

16. Prepare the final draft.

                                                                                              (Wikihow, 2012)

References:

Wikihow. (2012). Steps In Conducting an Effective Research. [Online] available at: http://www.wikihow.com/Conduct-Academic-Research [Accessed 31st July 2012]

Lecture 9 - Personality

Figure 1: Personality

In some ways we are all the same. We all have the same human nature. We share a common humanity. We all have human bodies and human minds, we all have human thoughts and human feelings.Yet in other ways we are all completely different and unique. No two people are truly alike. No two people can ever have the same experience of life, the same perspective, the same mind. In our common humanity and our unique individuality lies in  personality. Personality is about our different ways of being human. How we are all variations on the same themes. How the human nature we all share manifests in different styles of thinking, feeling and acting.

Learning from Class:

Personality is interesting topic since other people judge each other mainly based on this factor. As stated by lecturer personality is something that people have that really valuable to contribute to the world, that comes through the expression of each persons personality where single spark of divinity that sets people off and makes them different from each other. Simply its a way of how the people measure and look at you.

After that lecturer mentioned Six Personality Types of people as below,

Conventional Organizers:

These sort of people like to work with numbers, records or machines in a orderly way (Systematic Way). Generally avoid ambiguous and unstructured activities. More suitable in theoretical business processors such as Accounting, Finance, Economics and etc.
Ex:- Government Employees

  

Realistic Doers:

These sort of people like to do in practical. Avoid social activities like teaching, healing and informing others. Likes to experiment thing as well as like to do more realistic work rather than theatrical concepts. Sees them self as practical, mechanical and realistic.

Ex:- The ones who involve in automobile engineering, carpenters

Investigative Thinkers:

These sort of people like to study problems and do more researches and coming up with solutions. Does not like to work with machines. Likes to look at social problem and able to come with solutions for them but lack of persuading power to make work or make it practical. Sees them self as self-determined, intelligent, curious, logical, precise, analytical, reserved, independent and rational.

Ex:- Social Scientist, Programmers

Artistic Creators:

These sort of people like music, see thing in different ways. Do work in their own creative way. More likes into Original Work. Sees them self as creative, emotional, expressive, imaginative, independent, idealistic, open, original, unconventional and tolerant.

Ex:- Dancers, Artists

Social Helpers:

These sort of people likes to help society. They like to volunteering. Eager to help people and solving social problems and sees them self as helpful, warm, co-operative, sociable, tactful, friendly, kind, generous, patient and understanding.

Ex:- Nurses, Councilors, social workers   

Enterprising Persuaders:

Potential entrepreneurs. These sort of people likes to take risk and good at tricking as well as persuading people. Most likely seen in leaderships and Businesses. Able to sell ideology. They are energetic and ambitious.

Ex:- Ideologist- People with great leadership and persuade others to follow them.    

Activity Done:

Before starting the theoretical content lecturer wanted us to show how people think a simple scenario in complected angles without stick in to the basic requirements to solve it, ultimately where they end up with incompatible answers for the problem.

Before concluding the lecture for the day lecturer divided us in to 6 groups and asked to come with 6 items that are required by passengers to carryout in a scenario of a emergency plane land into sea and where passengers got into isolated island and the plane authorities only allowed them to select 6 items which are necessary for live alive in isolated island.


Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I understood all the problem we face can be solved by using simple and more specific techniques rather than mockup it as complicated situation. Identify different personality dimensions and levels that I have and enables me to differentiate and understand people and their personality from their behavioral aspects. 

Home Work: 

Dr. Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats

Figure 2: Six Thinking Hats (Saschina, 2012)

According to Mindtools (2012) "Six Thinking Hats is an important and powerful technique. It is used to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives. This forces you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and helps you to get a more rounded view of a situation".

White Hat:

Focus on the data available. Look at the information person have, and see what the person can learn from it. Look for gaps in persons knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them. (Mindtools , 2012)

Red Hat:

Look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning. (Mindtools , 2012)

Black Hat:

Look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows people to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them. Black Hat thinking helps to make plans 'tougher' and more resilient. (Mindtools , 2012)

Yellow Hat:

Think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps people to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps peoples to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult. (Mindtools , 2012)

Green Hat:

This is where people can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. (Mindtools , 2012)

Blue Hat:

The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. (Mindtools , 2012)    

References

Mindtools. (2012). Types of personality. [Online] available at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm [Accessed 26th July 2012

Saschina. (2012). Types of personality. [Online] available at: http://teachers.saschina.org/jchambers/files/2011/04/6-Thinking-Hats-POSTER-1024x768.jpg [Accessed 26th July 2012]

Lecture 8 - Business Ethics

Learning from Class:

 

Figure1: Business Ethics

Today the lecture was extended from the previous day lecture by more specifying to the business ethics. Lecturer started the lecture by explain that the Ethical Analysis conduct in order to identify the stakeholders involves in the ethical issues and the facts pertaining to it. There are some steps to identify those consequences. 

Step 1 is to identify and describe what exactly happen basically to clearly identify the facts. 

Step 2 is to define the conflict or dilemma or else the higher order value that involves.

Step 3 is to identify gnomes or stakeholders involves in this scenario.

Step 4 is to identify reasonable actions that can be take and what are the alternative actions are available.

Step 5 as the final stage identifies consequences that can be resulted from the each alternative that identified in the Step 4. This step can brings some negative outcome as well to each individual and for organizations.

By evaluating all the above steps ultimately enable peoples to come up with good set of actions to solve an ethical problem in formal way without creating any unwanted conflicts.

After discussing above those practicality of business ethics lecturer moved the discussion to theoretical aspect of business ethics. As the first point, lecturer stated the definition for business ethics as the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right and wrong are addressed. The organizations come up with code of conduct to put ethics and practices to its employees and government related consumer agencies guideline and regulate organizations that sells good and services to consumers in order to boost up the ethical standards in all areas that involves in business process. As organizations there are two characteristics to follow in order to show transparency by telling what organization should be doing and by giving guidelines and rules to operate and follow. In middle of the discussion lecturer pointed out the benefits of studying ethics that helps peoples to clearly identify the differentiate as well as to helps them to do right thing, where as just studying ethics no one gets ethical until they apply it to actions. Along with above factors lecturer mentioned ethics are align with social responsibilities and it’s a win win situation because if person is totally responsible for activities perform by them the society will respect the person’s values.  

Lecturer specially highlighted 4 concepts of ethics as mention below

Relativism – This consider the consequences that resulting from a particular action to decide which is wright or wrong and believes that there is a universal standard where the morality can be judge. By considering the problems in the relativism lecturer specified that people tried to judge the persons morality by looking at the society that the person belong to but in other point of view there are some cross culture factors that belongs to everyone such as murder, slavery, torture and rape that considered to be unethical.  

Egoism - One ought to act in his or her own self-interest because each person acts according to their own set of interest as well as believes and goals were shape relevant to that. There can be many laws and policies accountable to people but people reacts different ways based on their self-interest. The bottom line is people acts based on their norms and ethics each person believe.    

Utilitarianism – This believes that morals of an action can be determined by consequences. Using consequences people can determine whether it ethical or not. There was another interesting fact on Utilitarianism, although the action was unethical and unjustifiable but the consequence can be ethical. The bottom line is that utilitarianism believes if the action is considered to be ethical if it promotes greater good for greater number. In this relationship, action relates to the cost and the consequences relates to benefits.       

  

Deontologism – This talks about the duty and states that actions are justifiable based on the actual work.

As the final topic for today, lecturer taught the way to do a Ethical Tests by considering different aspects.

The first way of testing named as  legal test as shown in the below diagram (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Legal Test

As illustrated in the above diagram  a particular decision can be put into either one of those quadrants based on two dimension ethical and legal. If a particular decision decision falls into Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 4 there is no issue people can take actions but If a particular decision decision falls into Quadrant 2 and Quadrant 3 there is an issues.

The second way of ethical testing named as Benefit Cost Test

This defines whether the befit exceed the cost to whomsoever they accrue. This again based on Utilitarianism law.

The third way of ethical testing named as Light of Day Test

This defines what peoples reaction when the action was brought into open for public scrutiny. Basically the societies point of view.

The forth way of ethical testing named as Do Unto Others Test

This defines that the action of a particular person willing to do can be judge by considering them self as the stakeholder, basically whether a particulate person would like others to do the same thing to themselves.

The last and the fifth way of ethical testing named as Ventilation Test 

This defines the process of checking other peoples point of view regarding a particular actions and get their feedback. Depending on the majorities answer, decide it.

Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I understood to do an Ethical Analysis for personal life problems as well as for problems occur in businesses environment by giving priority to core consequences where that enables to map the big picture of the problem and open potential ways to solve it. Based on the  4 concepts of ethics and Ethical Tests enables me to look and process any action willing to take or any situation in 360 degree angle by considering the all the aspects relevant to it that enables me to differentiate easy whether the action is Ethical or Not.

Lecture 7 - Ethics (Good and Evil)

Figure 1: Good and Evil

What is Good and Evil?

This comes to action when people have to make a decision based on conscience. This is not against with the rules, unlawful as well as with any policy. But people know that the work planning to do or about to do is wrong in someway is its runs counter to your conscience and that's then the ethics kick in where people have to do the wright thing then if there is no any rules that tells people exactly what to do.

Learning from Class:

Today the topics was Ethics. Lecturer started the lecture by explaining the guidelines of ethics that defines what people have to do. This will allows the society to function in harmony and in order to balance its requires a Religion and Law. The importance of religion is some what like the programming of our mind that defines the dimensions between good and bad and gives the ability to evaluate between them. Law comes to action to control peoples activities to some extend by blocking the consequence that related to peoples actions. 

Ethics complement to Religion and Law and shape the peoples behavior for better purpose. According to lecturer ethics are change from country to country, society to society and culture to culture. Lecturer explained this scenario by relating to public affection and the way they take care of elderly parents between Asian Countries and Western Countries.

As lecturer stated there is a reason for ethics to change because people are more detached from the moral value but in current day situation people are using their moral value because of that they are used to be more ethical since moral values are the ones that guides someones life. In order to become a good citizen as person you should believe in moral values that the society is respects.

After discussing basic concepts of Ethics lecturer driven the lecture in to aspect of IT related to Ethics. Under that aspect lecture mentioned that the organization do marketing based on the customer wants and needs in order to gather information. Those companies analyze each person online behavior to conduct direct marketing. The problem in this scenario is organization able to track each persons data that exchanges through the internet that enables them to prepare psycho graphic profile on each person, where each persons personal aspect exposed to another third party where it can be unethical in some way but most of the organizations used to provide more specific marketing options for each person. As the next stage of this discussion lecturer discussed about the relationship between Information Privacy and Intimacy that describes the more you share the information with some one the more you get closer to them. This concept applicable to personal aspects as well as organizational aspects. From this discussion lecture was able to give a proper definition for Ethics as specified below.

"Ethics are moral value that basically guides some ones life acting as a decision maker to highlight what is wright and what is wrong"

By relating to the above definition lecturer said that Ethics are molted based on the Nationality, Culture, Subculture and the Family background.

Before concluding the lecture for the day lecturer mentioned basic concepts in ethics as listed below,

* Responsibility - Accepting or tacking costs,duties, obligations for decisions.

* Accountability - Assessing responsibilities for decisions and actions.

* Liability - Abel to pay for legal damages.

Activity Done:

After that lecturer gave a task to groups. The task was to have a role play on the topic of "How to handle ethical situation". Our group did the role play on the scenario of APIIT dress code. From our group Cindy, Shavindra and Sumedha did the role play behalf of our group as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Role Play

Outcomes of the lecture:

Ethics shaping the peoples behavior and enables them to differentiate the wright or wrong.

Religion mainly dealing with peoples mind where it set in top of all the aspects and Laws are imposed to forcefully controls peoples behavior.

Moral Value is the key factor that attached with peoples ethics. More closer to the Moral Values peoples becomes more ethical for what they think and doing.

In Information Technology, Ethics can be look at different ways by relating to business aspect and personal aspect. Peoples online behavior can be tracked by business organizations in order to better cater to them personally. This can be seen in different point of views as an unethical activity but the main objective is to provide better benefits to customer and individuals point of view by opening the appropriate information and Intimacy people can benefit more from the organizations than the traditional way of interacting with them.

There are some factors to consider such as Responsibility, Accountability and Liability in scenarios where helps particular person to drag their mind set immediately to ethical stage from unethical thinking procedure.

Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I understood ethics enables me to differentiate the good and evil activities. Most of the ethic guidelines that I follow were from my religion as well as from my parents behavior. Ethics can be related to any context or any subject but there is a common thing that is wright or wrong according to each persons moral values. In generally there is simple way of differentiating the good work from bad work that is the out come of any activity results any negative impact to your self, others or any another living being.   

Lecture 6 - Prioritise Work (Time is Money)

Figure 1: Check List

Most people alter their Study, Work, Performance and Behavior due to the awareness that they are being observed. The best way to perform your duties by making them interest to your life. The only way to overcome reactivity is to prioritize work and eliminate the unnecessary stress that builds towards you. Most people prioritize work on the basis of urgency, and many people enjoy the adrenaline rush of doing things at the last minute this can be call as addiction to urgency. A far better way to prioritize is based on importance.

  

Learning from Class:

Today we had lecture in the computer lab since the lecturer wanted to give us some personal evaluation activity based on the learning styles. Before starting the activity lecturer continued the last part of Time Management Topic. As stated by lecturer their is a special way to prioritize work by utilizing the time available. Time prioritizing should be done by considering following factors.

* People must spend at least 75% of their time on tasks that are MUST to do.

* People must spend at least 20% of their time on tasks that are SHOULD do.

* People must spend at least 5% of their time on tasks that are LIKE to do. 

After elaborating above factor lecturer explained about the Pareto Principle where it defines that 20% of people's effort on work produces 80% effect on that particular work or an activity. In practical aspect, first few minutes or hours of the work will result through out the work been done (Intelligent Botching).

In the lecturer's discussion on the Energy Cycle lecturer mentioned that MUST to do work or Complex tasks better to handle in when the people's energy level is high because they can properly concentrate. When people are in average energy level they better to work in SHOULD tasks and when people get bored where the energy level is low people better to do what they really LIKE to do.

Before finish the Time Management topic in the module lecturer stated Characteristics and Noises that tend the people to become Time Wasters mainly depending on two factors that mention below,

Self Generated Factors

Disorganization - Not organize

Procrastination - In ability concentrate on current ongoing work

Inability to say “No” - Accept unnecessary work or activities

Lack of Interest - Self interest to do work

Unnecessary Perfectionism -  Requirement for everything to be perfect that tally with Time Available.

Burnout - Self exhaust to do more work when there is lack of energy left.

Environmental Factors 

Visitors, Telephone Calls or emails, Junk mails, Waiting for someone, Unproductive Meetings (Meetings without Purpose) and Crises.

Lecturer concluded the theory part of the lecture by reading out the things that people must do to "Stop Wasting Time".

Activity Done:

Figure 2: How My Brain Works

As an interesting activity, lecturer provided a computer software that capable of analyzing how each students brain works depending on answers that provided by the student for the questions that randomly prompt in the computer software. At end of 20 questions software it self generates a personal evaluation report that reflects the levels of learning styles that each person capable of. As a result of this I got Personal Evaluation Report as mention below in Figure 2 and 3 basically describes my most preferred learning style and how my Brain Works.

       

Figure 3: My Brain Evaluation

Outcomes of the lecture:

Time prioritizing is efficient way to coordinate work where it reduce the stress of work load on peoples.

Starting point is critical in every work and it gives the pathway to complete the entire work accordingly. This should start when person's energy level is in a high stage where that possible them to concentrate more on the work and to generate new ideas.

By Knowing them self's learning style helps to understand more dimensions in currently study area by following appropriate learning style methods.

Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I understood how to utilize my work comparing to time availability. For most important work I must allocate much time and requires a pure concentration regarding the core subject. Normally I give enormous effort in stating stage of any work and I find some interesting facts on related work in order to build my morality towards the work till it ends where it reduces the weariness middle of the work. When its comes to the class activity, most of the facts that the computer software profiled about me as a result of the brain evaluation were true and relevant to me since I identified my self prefer more towards Visual learning than Auditory learning patten.

Lecture 5 - Life Goals (Dream it. Create it. Live it.)

Figure 1: Life Goal

Many people don't know the goals of life. They don't know the correct direction to reach the final. Just guessing, that's what they do. When something bad happens, they will argue that fate was not impartial. Many people are aware the goals of life in old age, very unfortunate indeed. Often people are afraid to make a change in life, they just waits from what they get. The goals of their life's are never reached. Actually it doesn't matter if they change the goals of their life, most importantly is to have goals to be achieved. Lets discuss the direction and the strategy that must be implemented to achieve it.

Learning from Class:

The lecture was based on the Life Goals which is an essential factor for humans to reach from one life stage level to another level. There are important characteristics when setting up a life goal. Those characteristics are known as (SMART) as specified below.

*S - Specific

A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal, To set a specific goal have to consider the six “W” questions: Who, What, Where, When, Which, Why. Make sure there are no any ambiguous language.

*M - Measurable

Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. This enables to measure goal's progress, can stay on track, reach target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs on to continued effort required to reach the goal.

*A - Attainable

When identify goals that are most important, have to figure out ways that enables to make them come true. This requires some prerequisites such as develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them.

*R - Realistic

A goal must represent an objective toward which are both willing and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; The person who set the goal is the only one who can decide just how high the goal should be. But be sure that every goal represents substantial progress. A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low motivational force.

*T - Timely

A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency.

As stated by lecturer when setting up a life time goal there are some aspects to measure regarding the linkages between each factors in SMART.  The life time goal is the the top most goal that the person sets to achieve within the life period. Its a must to have some linkage between the other goals that classified as Short Term, Medium Term and Long Term Goals with Life Time Goal.

Finally lecturer discussed about categories of goals in personal context and defined each categories as,

Artistic Goals - Aspiration to achieve any artistic goals.

Attitude Goals - Set a goal to improve behavior or find a solution to an attitude problem.

Career Goals - What level want to reach in in career, or what expect to achieve.

Educational Goals - The level of education expected to acquire.

Family Goals - Expected criteria in family life.

Financial Goals - Money and financial sate that expected to have in different life stages.  

Physical Goals - Athletic goals or Good health expecting in different life stages.

Pleasure Activity - Plans that establishes to pleasure or to gain enjoyment to you life.

Public Service Goals (Spiritual Goals) - Plans that establishes to make external environment entities well being.

Before finishing the lecture for today lecturer stated that after identifying goals the work need to prioritize relevant to the goals that a particular person heading for. Achieving certain goals helps people to build confident and moral to achieve other goals established as well as enable them to identify their own strength and weaknesses along with many paths to achieve certain goals.
 

Outcomes of the lecture:

Setting goals makes a value to what people doing and there is clear vision of distinguishing activities relevant success and enable them to avoid noise gaining activities.

To set an effective goal there are some criteria to consider such as SMART Strategy and Types of Goals willing to set excluding to the life goal. This allows more realistic and achievable goals to people in descriptive way that can successful without any hesitation at the end.

Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I understood we all need some life aim or a goal to live a meaningful life. The life goal can be different form each personal but they must follow same set of procedures to overcome pressures (taking the ladder off) that creates by the goal and to achieve it as expected. Since I don't like to explain my future goals and expectations to a third party or third party resource I wont be able mention my future plans more specific way (which is a characteristics of good goal) in this blog. In practical aspect of setting a life goal and its continuity i ask and follow below mention questions and tasks by myself to gain more realistic and compatible goals to myself.

What do you desire?
Ask your conscience, what exactly your desire for the next few years? There is nothing wrongs if you are dreaming.

Gather information >>
By gathering information, you can more easily to achieve the desired objectives. If there are other people who have managed to do it, learn from them. Do what they do!

Do not be silent >>
Do something and continuously. That will take you to the desired destination.

Increase your abilities >>
If the ways what you do are effective, do it again! Your ability will increase and your life goals will be achieved faster.

Lecture 4 - Time Management (Racing Againts Time)

Figure 1: Time Management

There is definitely a ticking clock back of every second whether you identified it or not. To get the head of the competition there is challenge, there is goal but always want it to be the best. Time is something precious for you and try to lean how to better everyday where you working your self or as a team heading towards to achieve a goal by overcoming every single challenge, at the end until you achieve the milestone. The idea you set a goal is soo high and the expectation is soo high and work hard much as you can by managing the time in your way and beat that. Its hard to tell this will happen at this point, the major thing is to focus and tune out the noise and give the priority to what you really want to do. The only way to do this is think proactively and achieving what you dream about and the outcome will be more brighter than you ever dreamt.

Learning from Class:

The lecture was mainly wrapped around Time Management. Lecturer specified steps and procedures to follow that involves in managing time in a productive way.

According lecture there are some factors that can be used to manage precious time productively.

*Give the priority to main tasks. This can be further effective if person can handle the difficult task in the morning.

*Usage of appropriate planing method such as a to do list, diary maintenance in order to handle daily activities that have to be performed.

*The ability to say no if you cannot handle the activity with your planned daily routing.

*If some one interrupt your daily routing ask the reason for the importance of new work that planning to assign you extra to your assigned tasks.

*Give more prioritize to tasks that matters more, important and agency required for completing it.

*All ways stick with the prioritize task order.

*Depending on the personal characteristics and ability tackle tasks  one at a time or multitask (working on more than one tasks at a time).

*Accept no unscheduled or less important work since you run out of available time for other prioritize work.

*Delegation of work where its possible within group bodies based on each bodies ability and capabilities which results in more time availability for important and related tasks that relating to you.

*Avoid much as interruption and noise that comes from the environment outer to you.

There is a theoretical formula that stated below that represent to measure peoples productive time.

Actual Productive Time = Total Productive Time / Total Time

When considering peoples physical and physiological aspect each person have their own Energy cycle that represent their energy level available during the day. Identifying your energy cycle patten helps to work on more broader and complex tasks more effectively as well as to find more accurate solutions and outcomes. This can be graphically represent by considering the fact that each persons most performable (active) time units during the day.    

As a class activity to be complete lecturer explained the way how to manage a time log for each person's daily activities that defines of Day, Time Period, Activity, Comment (Additional Information) as  well as Necessary, Appropriate and Efficient under Analysis of the activity.

Outcomes of the lecture:

Time cannot be controllable, since that have to utilize the time in efficient manner that productive to yourself as well as to others. There are various methods revolves such as planing and prioritizing the work to be done depending on the persons perspective and capabilities in order to manage the unstoppable time.

Persons Energy Cycle is a mechanism that used to identify each members productive time slots where they enable to focus more on critical tasks compare to the other time slots of the day.

Activity log is some thing alternative to the traditional diaries where the people can plan their daily work and evaluate on each task.

Reality of the lecture:

 

From this lecture I understood the better way of managing the time that will enable me to identify my Energy Cycle that would be help me to effectively use those highly efficient time slots for more critical and important tasks, where requires a high potential of mind power. In my opinion this time managing procedures involves many paper base activities where the same amount of work load possible me to handle by myself without any 3rd party activity. In my perspective I'm going to stick with my own way of managing time since there is only 21900 days to live if i live longer for my 80's. Since all component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your Nirvana.

Lecture 3 - Time Management (Mind Maps)

Train the Brain. Get Smarter. Its all about Mind Maps.

Today the lecture content was something useful throughout our life since the content was mainly wrapped around Mind Maps, where it can be use for Study purposes (Remembering Information) as well as to find solutions for problems.

Learning from Class: 

As mentioned by lecturer, Mind Maps are very effective and strong tool that mainly used for remembering information that helps us to practically learn more effectively by structuring the big picture of the entire content. In psychological aspect by using mind maps it enhances differentiability and understandability of targeted subject area as they hold it in a format that the mind finds easy to recall and quick to review.

Lets identify why Mind Maps are use for.

 * Since its a learning tool grate for people who studying.

 * Summarizing and giving a big picture for a broader content.

 * Holds information in a way that the human mind finds it easy to remember and quick to review.   

There are three main types of learning styles as auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Most people learn best through a combination of the three types but they usually have a clear preference for one. Lecturer promised us that he'll arrange a lab exercise on learning styles where each student can determine which learning styles they more towards for.  Next the lecturer briefly discussed on three types of learning styles.

1. Visual Learners (See)

These types of people learn best by looking at pictures and imagery sort of snapshots. Mind Maps are more effective learning procedure for these types of people such as charts and graphs.     

2. Auditory Learners (Hear)

These types of people learn best by listening to things being explained. They study notes by reading out loud where they can hear the content of the notes back to them self.

3. Kinesthetic Learners (Touch)

These types of people learn best by through a “hands-on” experience where they practically experience the activity and try to understand. They makes it easier to study notes by rewiring the content and understand while writing.

In final stage of the lecture, actually started to discuss about components of the mind maps, elements and how to construct a mind map relevant to a subject selected as well as lecturer given a small tutorial to construct a mind map for the subject criteria learn from Mind Maps.  

Mind Map Components - Created around a single word or text that placed in the center that associated with Ideas, Words and Tasks depending on the requirement, connections (branches) are added.    

Building an effective and attractive mind map using elements - Can use creative and colorful pictures, symbols, images along with few words or phrases to summarize information.

As a group component for the day, a practical home work given by the lecturer and asked to construct a Mind Map for "Systems" we learnt so far during our business modules.

Outcomes of the lecture:

There are different types of  learning tools that can be used according to people's preferences and enables them to learn more effectively than traditional learning ways.

Mind Maps is great tool than can be used by any type of learners since human mind can easily remember visualize elements than the textual elements.

Mind Map suited for any type of learning procedure and it customizable depending on the preferences.

Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I understood how people learn different things and aspects from environment external to them and how they identity and differentiate nature of each thing. Since this process happens psychologically in side our brain, the flow of handling this process can be apply to any academic subject to improve my learning procedure further more through mind maps due to fact that I realized that I'm more towards and prefer visual learning.

Lecture 2 - Team Work Activity

Today the lecture was conducted in a practical way that enables to develop our communication skills as well as to have a better understandability among people.

Learning from Class:

Lecturer divided the class randomly into 5 groups consist of 5-6 members in a particular group in order to conduct workshops when its required during the ARMPD module. As a result of this in My group there were six members (Taiyaba, Tarique, Jeewaka, Vinod, Saduni and myself).

Figure 1: Team Name & Logo (Sketch)

Figure 2: Team Flag

The first task was to come up with a name and a logo or a flag which reflects the personalities and characteristics of the members. As an active team all the group members were discussed and came up with a name called "The Furious" and a logo of a "Fist" that denotes extreme strength and intensity that reflects most of the member chracterstics  in our group as shown in Figure 1.

Later I made the logo/flag in graphical form as shown in Figure 2 in order to give more professional attitude towards our team.

As the final task for the day we had to briefly introduce the members who is sitting next to us. This was interesting activity according to my consideration because we got to know the unknown side of a known person into some extend through these activities as well as to have grater understandability of them. I introduced my teammate Vinod Perara to the class and other members and groups introduced their teammates as well during the final minutes of the lecture. After finishing the lecture we were able to capture our team spirit by taking group photo as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Team Members

Outcomes of the Activity:

Building a strong team spirit among the members and extend friendship boundaries further more beyond the limits that will allow to identify and share each members capabilities in a way that can be productively use to achieve class activities (workshops) successfully.

Reality of the Activity:

From this activity I learn that each member has their own way of doing things along with unique thinking procedure that comes from their life experiences and they are specialized in certain areas compare to others. In industrial level no one works alone they achieve certain objectives and goals as teams or groups. In order to successfully accomplish milestones each member has to identify and give their maximum capabilities in a way that benefits them self's as well as for the others. 

Lecture 1 - Introduction to Module

New beginning of new module that shaping personal abilities in professional aspect, that matches to competitive with potential industrial market opportunities by giving a personal aspect to the module.

Learning from Class:

Figure 1: Eranjan Padumadasa

Since this the first lecture for ARMPD (Applied Research Methods and Professional Development) MR. Eranjan Padumadasa the module lecturer shown in Figure 1 gave a brief introduction to the module and explained how its expands in form of theoretical aspect as well as in the practicality of those theories for real life usage. Along with that explanation, lecturer pointed out assignment criteria specifications that required for academic progression on this module.

Before moving into theoretical content in this module, lecturer discussed about Skill Domains that comes under Bloom's Taxonomy which divides educational objectives basically professional development skills into three stages that develops depending on the practice and usage of each personal.

Three Stages of Skill Domains:

1. Cognitive Skills (Hard Skills)

Cognitive Skill domain composed with knowledge, understand, evaluate and synthesis. Where it mainly focuses objectives concerned with knowledge and intellectual skills.

2. Affective Skills (Soft Skills)

This Skill domain relates to objective concern with interest, attitudes and values that mainly revolves around skills such as time management, punctuality and attentive to details.

3. Motor Skills

Motor Skill elaborated as efficient and smooth physical actions that incorporated with sequence of movements to master in a particular task.

Outcomes of the lecture:

Understandability of in and out scope of the ARMPD module and the academic expectation that requires for successfully completing this module.

Identification in taxonomies of learning behaviors of a person.

Reality of the lecture:

From this lecture I was able to capture the big picture of this module and the expectation of it that helps me to successfully coordinate the module work in the future.

Capturing skills that I need to build up and to improve in order to develop my learning behaviors in a way that can be use to achieve the goals of the learning process.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Happy to tell you all I'm starting my academic related blog mainly based on Applied Research Methods and Professional Development.