The Manager's Good Study Guide - Softcover

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Reading as an interactive process. Purposes for reading should dictate how you read. Reading for study purposes will require you to read a lot of material. It will require you to learn from material. It will require you to understand material. It will require you to think hard and to relate texts to real life. In other words, reading for study purposes is active reading.

When you read about a management concept you will understand it by setting the new information in the text alongside the ideas and knowledge you already possess. In this sense reading is interactive. Additionally, you will read more actively if you interact with the text. Asking questions of texts, and in a sense entering into dialogue with texts, will help you to become fully involved with what you are reading. So good study reading is interactive in two important and related ways: a personal interaction is required with the text and an information interaction is required with your existing knowledge.

ACTIVITY

This Activity highlights the personal interaction required of good readers. The paragraph opposite is about the advantages of distance learning for managers. Before you start reading, consider the following:

1. What, for you, are the advantages of distance learning?

2. What, for you, are the disadvantages of distance learning?

3. For you, do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, or vice versa?

Now read the paragraph below and, bearing in mind your responses to the three questions above, see if the text persuades you that you are right, or makes you think about any new ideas, or simply confirms your views. Do you agree with the writer of the paragraph, or do you think she's 'got it wrong'? Do the advantages suggested apply to your own situation?

The advantages of distance learning for managers

Distance learning has a number of advantages for the busy manager. It can, almost always, give managers control of their learning. Unlike traditionally taught, face-to-face learners, distance learners are free to choose when and where they study. If managers are up to their necks in budget forecasts or resolving crises during one particular week, then, as long as they make up the time the next week, their study times does not have to suffer. Study can be fitted in and around the demands of a busy work schedule and, essentially, distance learners do not have to give up their jobs whilst they are studying. Unlike their counterparts who are taught face to face, distance-taught managers can usually relate what they study to their immediate work situation as they are learning. They can read about a management concept and then see if it makes sense at their place of work the very next day. Similarly, research in the workplace can be easily undertaken in support of course work and assignments, and constant exchanges of theory and practice are facilitated. Also, at the end of their studies, the distance-taught managers simply carry on working, whereas their colleagues who have been taught face to face may have to pick up the threads after a prolonged period of absence.

So, what do you think now? The paragraph might well have made you say 'Yes, but...!' or you might have agreed wholeheartedly with the writer. Inevitably, the paragraph leaves out the disadvantages. You might like to list a few now. To be a critical reader your own personal interaction can help you to see and to 'fill in' the gaps in the writer's argument. The same applies to all academic texts. Perhaps it's years since you read a textbook, and perhaps the concepts of management seem alien to you. Don't panic! You have work experience and practical understanding and skills, and you probably have your own ideas and views on management practices and techniques. Use them as part of your personal interaction with texts.

Key points

Reading is an active process. It is interactive in two senses: Personal interaction is required. Try to create a dialogue between yourself and the text.

An information interaction is required. Try to use the information and ideas in your head to check and to help you understand information in the text.