First week of second semester

          My first week was normal. In first week, I got to know about the modules which I am going to study during this, second, semester. There are four modules among which Personal Development for Computing is the module to which this blog is related. In first week, I studied about marking scheme for the module and also about the presentation which I will be giving during this semester which was of course a group presentation. I also got to know how to get notes for the module. In the workshop we were asked to give brief introduction about a skill among various skill listed.

         Among those seventeen skills I chose the thirteenth skill which was ‘the ability to deploy information retrieval skills’. In my view, this skill refers to one’s ability to fetch the relevant data and information from different databases, books, journals, surveys, etc for any kind of project using different techniques and tools. It is assumed to be a preliminary skill required for completion and success of any project as well as in all decision making even at home. Projects initiated by the team without this skill will mostly result to complete failure.

           As a computing student, I will be dealing with various projects, presentations, report writing, etc which makes me familiar to this skill. I will have to do research to obtain information and data required for any project from different sources by using different tools like search engines, books, etc, which may or may not be reliable. So while studying computing I will have to deal with such information gathering situation frequently which eventually will help me to develop my information retrieval skill. I also will also have developed the ability to analyze the gathered the information critically which is also the part of the skill ‘information retrieval skill’.

         For example, in an office a project is started by a team and a person without this skill got the task to gather all the information and data required for that project. In that case, the project’s outcome will not be the same as expected by the client and worst case the projects will fail. However, if the person had had the information retrieval skill, the result might have become better.

          In conclusion, this skill is a fundamental requirement for the success of a project, in decision making, in critical analysis of information and in selection of the right tools to fetch the relevant data from various sources.