Features of the study materials
This course aims to challenge you with relevant, WHO-focused information that is designed to improve your professional writing skills. It aims to encourage you to reflect on your current work-related writing practises and to help you approach them more effectively.
Learning objectives
The beginning of each module presents some specific learning objectives that explain what you should learn from the module. You will also have your own individual learning objectives. Once you have completed the module, we encourage you to review the module objectives and your personal objectives and reflect on whether you have achieved them.
Activities
Many of the pages in this course are interactive, and provide examples, exercises and activities. There are four types of activities in the course:
- Practice: These activities are for self-study purposes. In most cases, you can simply enter your answers right on the screen. You should not send your responses to these activities to your tutor. (Send only completed assignments to your tutor). For these activities you will be able to compare your answers with those that we have provided as model answers.
- Reflection: These activities are aimed to get you to stop and think about the topics you have been reading about, to give personal responses to the material, to test your knowledge, and to analyse case material. No model answers are provided for these activities; everyone's response will be different.
- Preparation: These activities help you prepare your assignment work for each module. By working on these activities as you proceed through the module, you will have done most of the work needed for your assignment by the time you reach the final screen.
- Assignments: These constitute the documents and exercises that you will send to your tutor for feedback. Upon reviewing your assignment, your tutor may decide that you have satisfied the assignment requirements or you may be asked to revise and resubmit all or part of your assignment. Revision in response to feedback is a significant skill in writing effectively; please do not be concerned if your tutor asks you to revise, since it represents an opportunity for learning. See the next screen for the specific criteria for successful completion of the assignments.
The learners who have been the most successful in improving their writing skills throughout COL courses are those who devoted time to working carefully through the activities. We hope you will complete all the activities. In most cases, we provide model answers and/or comments on the activities. The activities are most valuable if you complete them yourself first, before reading our comments.
