London campus ELPT

After registration you will need to complete three sections in 90 minutes and after submit your test. Please be aware that after completing each section and moving to the next one you cannot return back for changes.

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING FIELDS

Procrastination is when you delay doing something you need to do. The common procrastination phrase is “putting it off until tomorrow”. Procrastination can mean the avoidance of any task, but areas arise frequently with students.

Procrastination commonly involves things such as missing deadlines. If you are regularly late with completing work, or have to make excuses or request extensions, consider this a procrastination problem. This can also include regularly being late for appointments or finding it difficult to arrive for lectures.

Working unproductively is another sign of procrastination. This involves when you sit down intending to work or read, but do not achieve what you intended, or do so little that the time would have been better spent doing something else. Procrastinators often delay starting a task because they are waiting for the ‘right time’ or ‘right conditions to work’. These and other avoidance tactics are the types of wrong thinking procrastinators need to be aware of in order to begin tasks.

We can often be more creative than usual when it comes to setting up a diversion that helps us to delay an unattractive task. This can include making telephone calls, doing housework or other chores that we suddenly make a new priority. Usually, we regret these unplanned diversions as we have lost an opportunity to make progress in the work we are avoiding.

When a deadline arrives, often with less than 24 hours, we do the dreaded ‘all-nighter’ to complete the task. We stay up into the early morning hours in order to complete the task and feel physically worse for it. If this pattern sounds familiar and is regularly occurring, it is time to take your procrastination problem seriously. Once the task has been completed (probably late) or not at all, we feel bad about ourselves. If we have completed the task, then we may feel we have done it poorly and it doesn’t reflect our true potential as we rushed it through at the last minute. If we have failed to complete the task, then we blame ourselves for being a failure.

A new study on procrastination from StudyMode, an international network that provides students with online learning tools, gathered its results by surveying more than 1,300 of the network’s student members in high school and college. Approximately 87 percent of those polled said they procrastinate on school assignments. Slightly more male than female college students reported procrastinating on work, even though 45 percent of those surveyed said they know “procrastination negatively impacts their grades very often or fairly regularly,” according to the study. Most students said they procrastinate either because they get distracted by other things, or because they get “overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.”  The study broke down what activities students choose over doing work. Unsurprisingly, procrastinating students spend much of their time watching TV or using social media — and only minimal time reading.

Students are biologically and socially wired to put off until tomorrow what we should do today, says Dr. Piers Steel, author of The Procrastination Equation. He argues the closer you are to the temptation of fun, the more likely you are to indulge. At university, where even the library is filled with friends and has a quality internet connection, a “short break” can easily turn into an hour wasted.

Research has also shown that the fear of failure corresponds with higher levels of procrastination, as we fear others judgement of our performance or talent. As for those who say they produce their best work under pressure. Prof Tim Pychyl, a psychologist at Carleton University in Canada, claims that the “adrenaline rush” is actually relief that the task is done. And, in what comes as a shock to no one, a link has been found between procrastination and Facebook use. It’s worth noting this study was released in 2008, before the likes of Twitter had joined the ever-expanding social media family.Steel sums it up well: “Students are caught in a perfect storm of procrastination.” Is that it, then? Are we doomed to all-nighters powered by nothing but blind panic and red bull? No, says Steel. But beating procrastination takes commitment.

But what can you do about it? Prof Pychyl insists that anyone can reduce procrastination if they follow certain steps.

One reason for procrastination is that the targets we set are often too big and vague, which makes them seem more intimidating and unpleasant. Breaking down a large task into clear and manageable steps helps to see what steps needed to be taken to complete a project. This helps overcome the difficultly of starting, and procrastination drops as a result. His research also shows that students who forgive themselves for procrastinating are less likely to delay in the same way on their next assignment. Prof Pychyl says procrastination can often reflect a deeper problem of lacking direction in life. We procrastinate on tasks that we see as boring or less meaningful. So remind yourself why you are doing something and how it fits in with your ambitions. Perhaps writing a good essay will help you get a good degree, which will help you pursue your dream of being a doctor.  By thinking in this way, the long-term benefit of doing your work can overpower the short-term pleasure of distractions.

Adapted from:

Procrastination: a student’s worst enemy?

Knezevic,M., Guardian Education online, 9/05/2012, https://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2012/may/09/students- procrastinating-exams

Here’s What Procrastinators Are Doing Instead Of Schoolwork

Rebecca Klein, The Huffington Post, 27/05/2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/student-procrastinating-statistics_n_5399284Links to an external site.

Procrastination? I’ll get back to you…,Matt Pickles, BBC News, 04/01/2017

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38496775

Will robots replace humans? 

Humans are already no longer the dominant species on Earth. In 2014, the number of mobile electronic devices surpassed the number of people. If you include computers that are not mobile, the number of internet-connected devices will reach 34 billion by 2020.

Let’s consider only the most “intelligent” species of mobile device – the smartphone, which is basically a handheld computer running (almost exclusively) Android or iOS. Smartphones have come from nothing to near-dominance in a remarkably short time. The number of smartphones is projected to reach 6.1 billion in 2020, and will overtake the human population shortly thereafter.

Smartphones have high intelligence potential for two reasons: They have sensors (cameras, microphones, accelerometers, GPS, thermometers).They have real-time connections to immensely powerful server farms, which can operate without the battery power restrictions of phones. Many people living in advanced economies have already outsourced their memories and navigation skills to smartphones and cloud servers. The value-add of smartphones has been so great that we have gladly embraced them, despite the need to feed our little phones daily and constantly keep them connected through WiFi or 4G access.

So it is clear that we want personal computers that we can carry or wear all of the time. Will the same be true for robots? There are expected to be 31 million domestic robots in 2019, which is already far higher than the 2.6 million industrial robots projected for the same year.

We don’t want to do housework, and would gladly buy any robot that could be as useful as a dishwasher or a washing machine – but also adaptable to general cleaning. Driving is a huge waste of time that robot cars can do better, if we can teach them to do it. We are all living longer, and soon we won’t be able to look after all of those old people – either financially or in terms of available human labour. Automation of aged care will become crucial.

Modern office workers already have around 3–5 devices per person. Beyond that, exponential growth in the number of robots might be driven by the need for automated robot cleaning, repair and replacement – robots to fix robots. By that stage, we will could be onlookers in a robot society. Humans may be reduced to a fashionable hobby for robots, like a house plant or a pet.

Increasing numbers of businesses are now substituting humans with automated software to perform countless structured, routine administrative tasks which do not rely on human judgement.

However, rather than shiny robots moving around office buildings, as some may have imagined, the automation of certain tasks is made possible through existing software doing the job. These tasks involve transferring huge amounts of data from multiple sources such as email and spreadsheets to systems of record.

The jobs in question are high volume, highly repetitive and not suited to humans, who tend to make errors where robots do not, according to Professor Leslie Willcocks. “Robots are able to work on repetitive tasks tirelessly and continuously and in many businesses they are welcomed as valuable team members because they do the work that humans don’t want to do,” Professor Willcocks says.

Willcocks and his colleague Mary Lacity, a Visiting Professor at LSE, are researching the impact of “Robotic Process Automation” (RPA) in a number of UK companies and are finalising a book on the bigger picture of automation and the future of work, due to be published in February 2019.

The rise of machines isn’t just a movie plot. Professor Stephen Hawking says robots will replace humanity completely. The physicist said he believes artificial intelligence will eventually become so advanced it will essentially be a “new form of life that will outperform humans. “He says, “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.

However, the future of the labour market may not be as automated and job-crushing as previous research has suggested, according to a new report from Pearson that suggests the jobs of tomorrow are likely to be more technically demanding than they are today, but won’t disappear entirely.

The study – conducted by researchers at Pearson and Oxford University evaluated ongoing employment, demographic, inequality and environmental trends in projecting out how the labour markets in the U.S. and the United Kingdom are likely to evolve over the next several years.

“The future of work is brighter than it seems– it is not going to be human versus machine, but rather human and machine,” John Fallon, Pearson’s chief executive officer, said in a statement accompanying the report. “It is clear that technology is changing the global economy and labour markets, but we still retain the ability to control our destiny.”

“The bottom line of our research: we can all stop worrying about machines taking our jobs,” said a fact sheet accompanying the report. “Society will have to find ways to combine human and machine capabilities.”