I am sitting my CIPD PDS Learning & Development elective for the 3rd time in May 2006. Can anyone give me any study tips? I've gone down the road of reading / summarising Rosemary Harrison's book, but feel that this is taking too long, plus I've done this before and it obviously hasn't worked! I also intend to go through People Management for relevant articles. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Muriel McCullins
One Response
Studying
Muriel
For some good general advice and tips on studying have a look at: http://www.palgrave.com/skills4study/html/studyskills.htm
More specifically, starting with Rosemary’s book is exactly right. You might also want to consider Human Resource Development by Reid, Barrington & Brown.
People Management is probably not the best magazine for L&D articles. Try Training & Learning or Training Journal.
Having been through the exam a couple of times you will have a feel for the types of questions that come up. Based on that, you might want to consider identifying your weaker areas. Is it being able to come up with practical options, justifying your answers with theory or known best practice, or being able to quote examples? Is it related to workplace learning, learning design, evaluation, managerial aspects, national initiatives or strategic issues? This might give more focus to what you need to study in more depth. For example, if you are not too hot on learning theory you might want to find out more about Andragogy, Accelerated Learning or look at the CIPD’s How do People Learn report.
Best of luck
Graham