Days and weeks

In the previous blog I explained why I rejected e-learning in favour of a classroom based course to study for my NEBOSH National General Certificate. The next choice was block or day-release. The residential block release courses did sound appealing. Hotel life with no domestic responsibilities for five whole days – twice! Then I woke up from that dream. Cost, inconvenience to the family – need I go on?

Day-time block release was an option. But how do people learn best? We remember more if we learn step-by-step, have time to revise, and the opportunity to both analyse and synthesise what we have learnt. That is, to pull apart everything you know, and try and put it together again in a different context, preferably in several different contexts. From what I’ve seen of the NEBOSH exam papers, it’s what the questions do well – expect you to apply what you learn in a variety of different ways, not regurgitate what you’ve read or been told. But as well as careful planning of lessons by a knowledgeable and experienced tutor, this requires time for the student to study what they have learnt. There’s a limit to how much time there is in the evening and, once you hit 25+, to the capacity of the human brain to cram any more than a few hours of study a day in. It is also much less disruptive to other work to take one day a week off for ten weeks, than two whole week blocks. Probably because you fit the extra day’s work into the other four by working 20% harder (or 20% longer).

So I came to the conclusion I’d learn more if I had a week between each day long session to revise, analyse and synthesise, than trying to do five days as a block. Day-release seemed the way to go.