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Skills Check 0

The Skills Check is a short survey which should take you no more than 3 minutes to complete. Once you have completed the Skills Check we provide you with a personal learning plan targeted to your personal study needs and goals.

Sign in to work on the Skills Check.
  1. Home
  2. Core skills
  3. Forums
  4. Benefits of forums

Benefits of forums

  • You get support when you need it (and in exchange give support to others).
  • You have a richer vein of experience to draw on, because you can pool examples, references and ideas.
"It keeps you in touch, stops you deviating off route."
  • A group can often produce better work than an individual. One person might put forward a thought or idea, often not completely formed or finished. Someone else picks up on it and takes it forward - that sparks off more ideas in others. Between them the group creates something much better than any one person could have done on their own.

Learning by 'talking' is more powerful for most people than learning by reading. You think about things more deeply, and are more likely to remember the information.

The best way to check your own understanding is to explain something to others. Explaining to your fellow students is good practice for the kind of explanations you will probably have to do in assignments.

You keep in more regular contact with your tutor and fellow students.

The Computing Guide has 'how to' instructions for accessing and using the OU's online forums (see the current Computing Guide and the new Computing Guide).

Download a copy of the original online forum paper (PDF, 55KB 10 pages).