Summary of the course taken

I have just finished my fourth year of an Audiology BSc but will be staying at the university for a further year to support students.

Audiology is the study of hearing and balance and it it also a health profession involved in testing people's hearing and dispensing hearing aids. I feel university has made me a much more confident and independent person both with people and technology. A big part of this was finding out I was dyslexia although I only got my equipment in my fourth year the good news is that my grades went up! When I did not know why I was struggling I felt I was 'rubbish' but now I know I am dyslexic I can accept my own differences.

Description of the strategies used.

I never had Microsoft Office on my computer so had to use Microsoft Works but recently I have downloaded Open Office and found this to be much better with many options such as highlighting and word prediction. It still does not always transfer documents into Word without mistakes quite like Works but the mistakes are fewer and easier to fix. When going from Works to Word fonts or highlighting and even alignments were changed. Open Office also automatically saves documents and if you computer crashes it will ask if you wish to recover the document when you reboot.

As Works did not have a thesaurus I used to go to Dictionary.com and I have found that Open Office's thersaurus is still not as good as Word so I am still using the web site for medical words.

I use Internet Explorer when I am on-line and I add tabs to the browser so that I do not have lots of opened windows. I can then see things clearly on one screen. I like Google maps for finding direcions to places I have never been to before but I prefer the satellite view as it gives you images of real landscapes so that if you are trying to find somewhere you have these visual landmarks to use. I also use Web of Knowledge to conduct research for my reports it is much easier than searching through Google.

One thing I have always struggled to use is Blackboard especially when all the other university website tools are so much easier to use! I find the navigation is incredibly difficult when looking for a specific thing. Why can't you search for a document in the same way that you can search for a item on the university intranet. The forums are useful however, the layout could be improved and threads for subjects need to be more explanatory.

The university offers so many student services and it made such a difference knowing I could find the support when I needed it. It has improved the way I have studied and learnt during the last part of my degree.