The fear of ABP they say is the beginning of wisdom. A senior colleague reached out to me this week. His first point to call was to ask how I was coping with the program. Our discussions then went around ABP. He asked if I understood what was being taught in the ABP Class. To be honest, I was struggling to understand the course. The last class was the straw that broke my back.
We were giving an ABP assignment to do. This assignment took me over four hours to complete. I had high hopes when I submitted this assignment only for the hopes to be shattered in class.
When the ABP lecturer requested that we score ourselves, I could not even score myself. I felt like I had done rubbish. My workflow and process flow looked ridiculous. I left the class sad. This cannot be happening to me, I said to myself.
There is a process behind analyzing a case study. Where did I get it all wrong? I Questioned myself. decided I was going to watch ABP YOUTUBE videos and read up on articles, journals etc. that had to do with ABP. As the day went by, creating time to watch these videos became a huge task. I was overwhelmed with work deliverables and school deliverables. My next course of action is to be involved and actively participate in class. I decided I was going to voice out and ask questions.
The opportunity sprung up at the next ABP. We were asked if we understood the case that was treated at the previous class. I owned up quickly. I had to tell her my challenges. There is a proverb that says “you can never get missing if you ask for direction” I decided to go with this proverb in other to save myself from further ABP destruction.
She asked for the challenges. My challenge was getting the objective and criteria right.
I understood the background of the case, I could easily deduce the problem statement, but I got lost analyzing my criteria and stating the objective of the case. She asked me further questions on what I thought the criteria was on the last case. I listed five.
She took her time to analyze each of the criterion and pointed at how they all spoke to the two major criteria that stated in class. I smiled. She further explained to me that I needed to take my time in identifying the criteria and that once, that is carefully done, I would be sailing through the course.
ABP lecturer quizzed further. She wanted to be sure if I understood what she just explained to me, I tried again, but I missed it. She noticed that I was being methodical in my approach to ABP. I was looking for a sort of formular on how to go about sorting cases. She warned, Tosin, there is no formular to these things. It is not a one- way street. Just follow the principles and you will be fine.
I was the Focus of Today’s ABP and I think I enjoyed it.
