5 Minute Paper: How I Learn

I learn best by doing. Some of my most rewarding and rich learning experiences were hands-on exercises. In my pre-library life it was the crime scene to court exercise for the M.Sc. in Forensic Science program at the University of Strathclyde, where as a team we processed a mock crime scene, processed the evidence, and then spoke to it in court 3 months later in front of a real judge and student lawyers. In my library life it was my MLIS co-op at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. in their special library at Chalk River, doing real reference interviews with real scientists and engineers doing projects with concrete outcomes.

I find I learn best when I'm given a bit of the big picture, taken through a process at face value, and then analyzing that process afterwords with the "whys" and "why nots". This logical progression is probably not surprising as my highest score on the HRSDC quizzes were in logical/mathematical and visual/spacial.