Learning Technology and Problem Solving Through Hands-On Learning

I’ve been so focused on the routine of going to class and doing homework that the weeks are just flying by. I realized how fast time is going when I looked at my calendar and saw that it will be spring break soon. That means we’re near the halfway point of the spring semester.

During last week’s Document Management class, we got some hands-on time with a pretty cool scanner located in our classroom. It’s very user friendly and has a lot of nice features, like scanning multiple documents at once and automatically saving them as individual documents. We each took a turn experimenting with the settings.

Since my Document Management class is small, as an activity, we created an online file structure that is password protected that only we can access. We had to draw up the file structure before we created the folders, and we had to come up with file naming rules. We put class-related PDFs into those folders. It was a pretty good simulation of what it would be like to work in an office where you use a shared network.

Our class file structure on a shared network

In my Team Building and Problem Solving class, we are starting to incorporate what we’ve learned about teams and what we’ve learned about problem solving. In our groups, we’re creating agendas, meeting minutes, and ground rules. We’re also researching, writing problem statements, and doing root cause analyses. It’s a systematic way to problem solving I’ve never learned before. I can see how it’s helpful, especially for businesses that need to deal with complex issues.

How is your semester going? What do you have planned for spring break?