Surviving First Year University

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Author: Lauren Williams | John Germov

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Surviving First Year Uni

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Other Allen & Unwin books by the same authors: Get Great Information Fast ( John Germov and Lauren Williams) M

Get Great Marks for Your Essays ( John Germov) M


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Surviving First Year Uni LAUREN WILLIAMS & JOHN GERMOV

ALLEN & UNWIN


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First published in 2001 Copyright © Lauren Williams and John Germov 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Williams, Lauren. Surviving first year uni. ISBN 1 86508 427 1. 1. Universities and colleges—Australia—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Germov, John. II. Title. 378.94 Set in 10/12 pt Plantin Light by DOCUPRO, Canberra Printed by Australian Print Group, Maryborough, Vic. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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Contents Contents

Figures Handy hints Acknowledgments Introduction: Packing your survival gear

vii ix xi xiii

1 Learning in the university environment: What to expect 2 Getting started: Orientation and student support services 3 Getting off to a good start: Planning and time management 4 How to get great notes from your lectures 5 Researching your assignments: Getting to know your library 6 Web surfing: Finding what you need fast 7 Academic writing and referencing: Essential survival skills 8 Writing essays, reports and reviews: The golden rules 9 Presenting with style 10 Working in groups 11 Passing exams

91 108 123 132

Further resources Index

155 159


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Figures Figures

1.1 1.2 2.1 3.1 3.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2 9.3 10.1 10.2 10.3 11.1 11.2

The learning cycle How would you approach this situation? University structure flowchart Assignment timetable Julie’s seven-day time-use record The Netscape browser showing the URL and the Get Great Information Fast home page Comparing search engine results The About.com Gateway A comparison of academic writing with popular magazine writing A reference list template using the Harvard style An assignment mind map Mind mapping for mind clearing Characteristics of good and bad presenters When to use audiovisual aids An example of a presentation assessment form The work-style quiz A teamwork contract: evaluating workload input by group members Levels of conflict Exam countdown Why recognition is easier than recall


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4 7 22 27 36 66 68 70 76 86 99 101 115 119 120 125 129 130 138 141

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Handy hints Handy hints

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Alison’s survival tip: Find a good time and place to study Getting active Melissa’s survival tip: Don’t give up Alison’s survival tip: Don’t go it alone John’s survival tip: Getting a parking space Make the most of your university website Anjanette’s survival tip: Be a student representative Annette’s financial survival tip Annette’s survival tip: Don’t be afraid to use your lecturers as a valuable resource Marcus’s survival tip: Think outside the square Emma’s survival tip: Prioritise daily A checklist for making the most of your time Common note-taking abbreviations Lauren’s survival tip for listening for hints Lyn’s survival tip: Distance education Alison’s survival tip: Do your readings Keeping a learning journal for problem-based or experiential learning Ask for library help Melissa’s survival tip: Make use of other libraries


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x Surviving first year uni

20 Major journal databases 21 Extra detail on the Internet 22 Major Gateways, Virtual libraries and Clearinghouses 23 Key reference sites 24 Jane’s referencing survival tip 25 Referencing direct quotes 26 Jane’s survival tip for the Vancouver system 27 Software referencing programs 28 Further help with essay writing 29 Ask to see some sample assignments 30 John’s survival tip: Computers aren’t fail-safe, so take precautions 31 Lauren’s survival tip for presenting 32 Lauren’s hand trick 33 Thirteen tips for top presentations 34 Anna-Leena’s survival tip for working in groups 35 Anjanette’s survival tip: Set up a study group 36 Beware the compulsory pass 37 Emma’s survival tip for exam preparation 38 Anjanette’s survival tip: Use acronyms as a memory aid 39 Lauren’s survival tip: Use past papers with caution 40 Beware the temptation to cheat at exams 41 The passing exams checklist 42 Reader bonus online


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Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

First thanks go to Jane a’Beckett for her assistance with typing and proofreading the book. Thanks also to Melinda Lang for her skilful word-processing. The teamwork contract in Chapter 10 was based on a similar tool used by Professor David Roberts. We also greatly appreciate the efforts of the following students and friends who contributed the advice and survival tips included throughout the book: Jane a’Beckett, Lyn Adamson, Anjanette Casey, Alison Graham, Melissa Jensen, Annette Murphy, Jane Potter, Jenny McMahon, Michelle Powers, Anna-Leena Risku, Marcus Smith and Emma Threlfo. Special thanks to Jan Williams, a dedicated mature age student, for her insistence that a book like this was important. We especially thank Elizabeth Weiss, our publisher, for her guidance and continued support of our work. We gratefully acknowledge the important contributions of Steve Campitelli for his illustrations, Simone Ford for editing, Robyn Flemming for copy editing and David Adamson for the cover design. Lauren Williams and John Germov University of Newcastle November 2000


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Introduction: Packing your survival gear Introduction

In my day, the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning. Learning was something you did only when the first three weren’t available. Bill Bryson (1989) The Lost Continent, New York: Harper & Row

Whether you’ve come straight from school or from years of being at home or in the workplace, the transition to university is a dramatic one. Most people expect university learning to be about knowledge, and a great deal of it is. However, there is another type of learning that is equally important in helping you to survive your first year of university—learning the skills that will help you to cope and succeed in the university environment. This book is a package of survival skills for this new and alien environment. These skills will help you not only to succeed at university, but also to have time left over for other areas of your life. The skills you need to master are likely to be quite different from those you learned at school. From the first day of lectures you will need to work out how to take notes, and soon after that how to summarise your lecture notes and readings. In the early days you are likely to take a library


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xiv Sur viving first year uni

tour, and will very quickly need to work out how to use this important resource. Within weeks you are likely to have your first assignment, which could well be an essay or a laboratory report. To pass such assessment tasks you need to learn how to find information relevant to your topic, as well as be aware of the standard and format required for your particular assignment. Soon you could be required to start working in groups or to give a presentation in front of your class. And before you know it, exam time will be upon you. It doesn’t matter whether you are a full-time student attending university on campus, or a student studying one subject by distance—if you don’t have time management skills, you’re likely to find the workload required of university study more like an overload. If this all seems daunting to you, don’t panic! Each chapter of this book addresses a skill that is vital to your survival in first year university. We have designed it to be user-friendly by keeping the language simple and the examples practical, with handy hints presented in boxes. We draw on our own experiences as both students and lecturers for the chapter content. To keep it up to date, we have included the survival tips of current students. The book is designed to be used in whichever way works for you. You can read it from cover to cover, or you can flick to the chapter that covers the particular skill you need to learn about at the time. You might even just laugh at the cartoons. We hope you enjoy your university experience. FEEDBACK: Send us your survival tips We welcome your feedback on any aspect of the book. Send us your tips on how to sur vive first year uni and we might even use them in the next edition of the book. You can send your comments to us via the publisher’s email address at: [email protected]


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1

Learning in the university environment: What to expect

Learning in the university environment

• • •

How does university differ from other learning environments? What is a learning style, and how does it influence study? What type of learning helps with exams? A little learning is a dangerous thing. Alexander Pope (1713) An essay on criticism, 2nd edition, London: W. Lewis

This chapter describes what to expect from university, especially how the university learning environment differs from what you might have experienced in the past. University study involves independent learning, which means that you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to motivation and self-discipline—no-one is going to pressure you to turn up to class, do the study that’s required and complete your assignments on time.

Learning about learning: Lectures, flexible delivery and the Internet You need to understand three things in order to get started at university:

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2 Surviving first year uni

• • •

the teaching modes commonly used at university your natural learning style and how it relates to various teaching modes how to develop effective learning strategies.

In this section we explain some of the most common teaching approaches you may come across at university, including: • • •

face-to-face methods: lectures, tutorials, workshops and laboratory sessions self-directed, experiential and problem-based approaches flexible delivery and the Internet.

Face-to-face methods: Lectures, tutorials, workshops and laboratory sessions The most common mode of learning at university is through the lecture format. A lecture usually involves a one-way delivery of subject content to all the students enrolled in a subject. However, few subjects rely on lectures alone; other opportunities are also provided for students to learn, especially in terms of being able to discuss or practise the subject material. In the sciences, this is done through laboratory or practical classes. Arts subjects are traditionally supported by tutorials. Tutorials are smaller groupings of students and allow two-way interaction between the tutor and fellow students. Tutorials usually consist of discussion of lecture and reading material, and may also include activities such as oral presentations and class exercises by students. Professional courses, particularly in later years, may also use workshops which encourage the practical application of your studies. Self-directed, experiential and problem-based approaches Self-direction represents a move away from the ‘telling mode of teaching’ to the ‘teacher as facilitator’ mode. Self-directed learning approaches tend to provide the student with signif-


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Learning in the university environment 3

icant influence over their learning process. For example, the student may be allowed to construct their own assessment topics and due dates. Self-direction requires access to resources and depends on the development of learning skills by the student—something that is unlikely to occur without considerable guidance. Experiential learning is a student-centred approach that emphasises personal experience as a key aspect of the learning process. It can take the form of simulations, games, role-plays and fieldwork activities. Recent developments in experiential learning are primarily due to the work of David Kolb. He suggests that learning is cyclical and based on four modes: • • • •

The effective mode: learning through immediate concrete experience. The perceptual mode: based on observation and reflection. The thinking mode: learning through abstract comprehension. The behavioural mode: based on active experimentation.

Kolb argues that for the cycle of learning to be complete, all four types must be experienced. Figure 1.1 shows a version of Kolb’s learning cycle, which conceptualises learning as a social process that involves people interacting with one another and their environment. An example derived from Kolb’s cycle that can be applied to student learning is illustrated by a subject in community nutrition. This subject begins with the formation of abstract concepts, delivered through lectures, the textbook and other readings. The next stage of planning and testing comes with a half-day visit to a community health centre, about which the students prepare a written assignment. Then the students go out on four weeks of fieldwork in a community agency for their concrete experience. Finally, they come back to class to reflect on their fieldwork experiences, and how this type of learning altered their understanding of the abstract concepts formed earlier. It is important to note that most individuals have a


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4 Surviving first year uni Figure 1.1

The learning cycle

Experimental learning

Observations and reflections

Planning and testing

Source:

Formation of abstract concepts

Adapted from D. A. Kolb (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

preferred type of learning, influenced by their personality characteristics. This means that at least one stage of the learning cycle will come very easily (seemingly ‘naturally’). Which type of learner do you think you are? Knowing your style is important, because you then also know that you have to work harder at the other three types of learning that don’t come so readily in order to complete the learning cycle. For example, if you love laboratory classes because it means getting in and doing something, you might find learning reflections a waste of time. Remember, by giving you different modes of delivery, the lecturer is trying to enhance your overall learning. See the section on p. 7 on learning styles for further detail. Problem-based learning (PBL) is most commonly found in professional courses such as law, architecture, social work and various health sciences. PBL involves combining the knowledge and skills you have learned and applying them to deal with real-life problems, usually in the form of a scenario or case study provided by your lecturer. PBL tends


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Professors Jorgenson and Wittingslow: Flexible Delivery Specialists

to involve group work and focuses on sharing the learning experience, as well as developing decision-making and problem-solving skills. When the skills require dealing with clients or patients, behaviour and attitude may be the focus of the learning process. Flexible delivery and the Internet Flexible delivery is becoming increasingly popular in universities and may increasingly result in self-directed learning, where students spend less time in lectures and tutorials. ‘Flexible delivery’ is a general term used to describe a range of innovations in the way university courses are delivered that provide more choices to students in the mode in which they study at university. For example, flexible delivery can refer to: •

the ability for on-campus students to undertake a subject in an off-campus mode, in a similar fashion to distance


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• • •

education or correspondence learning (that is, with minimal or no formal classes) the ability to complete courses in longer or shorter time frames the capacity to move easily between different courses or universities and choose the combination of subjects you desire the ability to gain access to advanced standing or credit for prior learning, particularly for mature age students with significant work experience or via articulation with other learning institutions.

The flexible delivery of university courses has developed in response to a number of factors, such as: • • • • •

the wide accessibility of the Internet, particularly the use of email and the web for the delivery of courses the diversity of the student population, which is increasingly made up of mature age students with work and family commitments the increase in university enrolments and decline in government funding, leading to more cost-effective methods and competition for student enrolments the increased use of fee-based courses and a resultant tailoring of course delivery to meet student needs the spread of student-centred teaching approaches.

The most noticeable form of flexible delivery-based teaching has been the use of the Internet to deliver subject content, such as lecture notes, readings and sometimes assessment. While flexible delivery has many benefits for the student, there has been some disquiet in academic ranks that it is being pursued as a way to cut costs or raise revenue, and may impact negatively on the quality of university learning and student experience. Nonetheless, its underpinning can be linked to the educational philosophy of self-directed learning.


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Learning in the university environment 7 Figure 1.2

How would you approach this situation?

You start a new part-time job in a department store to help fund yourself through university. Your job is in the kitchen of the cafeteria, and on your first day the supervisor shows you a donut-making machine that you need to learn to operate. Unfortunately, the super visor is called away to attend to a personal emergency, and the cafeteria opens in three hours. What do you do? Think about it, and then write your answer in the space provided here or on a separate piece of paper. What would you do? ............................................ ............................................ ............................................ Which type of action did you take? a Put the donut mix in and turned on the machine—how hard can it be? b Looked around for an instruction manual on how to operate the machine. c Sought the help of another member of staff and asked them to operate the machine so that you could see how it worked. d Thought about your own appliances at home and applied that knowledge to the donut machine. Asked someone to watch that you operated it correctly.

Styles of learning Your personality defines who you are, and to a large extent it has probably influenced your chosen field of study. But did you realise it can also have an impact on the style in which you prefer to learn? Read the scenario in Figure 1.2,


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then write down how you would approach the challenge in order to learn more about your own learning style. Although the exercise in Figure 1.2 is a very rough guide, it’s likely that your choice in this scenario reflects your learning style. The classification scheme below is based on that developed by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford (1992, The Manual of Learning Styles, 3rd edition, Maidenhead, UK: Peter Honey Publications). 1

2

3

Active learners: If you chose (a), you’re likely to be an active learner who likes to just get on with things. You often jump into situations without thinking them through. Active learners love experiential learning, such as that provided by role-plays or fieldwork. They are good at coming up with fresh ideas and getting things started. They will always speak up in class. They are not naturally good at quiet, individual, methodical tasks such as reading and analysing. They really need to work hard at developing patience for self-directed study. Theoretical learners: If you chose (b), you’re probably a theoretical learner who loves doing plenty of research and likes to work in a step-by-step way, preferably alone. Theoretical learners prefer structured lectures and do lots of reading to analyse how all the pieces of information in a topic fit together. They are good at working logically and conscientiously towards a well-documented outcome (but would always prefer a bit more time to make it perfect). They are not naturally good at learning that requires interaction with other students or lecturers, such as group work and interactive teaching methods, and will need to overcome their dislike of giving presentations. Reflective learners: A (c) response indicates a reflective learner who tends to think before they act, especially if they have time to critically analyse a problem. Reflective learners like to collect data themselves, then reflect on the results before coming to a conclusion. They like situations that allow them to sit back and observe, such as


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watching videos or observing others in group work. They will do well in problem-based learning provided they are given enough time to work things out. They won’t enjoy ‘off-the-cuff ’-type activities, such as refuting an argument in a debate, and will need to be organised in order to meet assessment deadlines. Practical learners: If you chose (d), you’re likely to be a practical learner. Practical learners love to apply what they have learned. They seek a practical outlet for theoretical learning and will do best in courses training towards a professional outcome. They enjoy problembased learning and case-study presentations involving ‘real’ problems, and especially enjoy workplace experiences. They dislike a highly theoretical approach and are only likely to appreciate the benefits of theory after they have seen how it can be applied in practice. They will need to develop tolerance in theoretical subjects, and learn to reflect and critically analyse from a theoretical perspective. M

4

You might relate strongly to one of these descriptions, or you might see elements of yourself in two or more categories. The important thing is to recognise your natural learning style and note both the strengths and weaknesses which result. This recognition might even direct your choice of subject or course, or it may just help you to work a little harder at things that don’t come naturally.

Effective learning strategies: Active and passive One of the key differences between university and other forms of education is the greater emphasis on active, rather than passive, learning. Let’s look at some examples. Shaun is a mature age student who previously worked as a builder. He is now doing a science degree and, despite never having done laboratory classes before, he does brilliantly in


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10 Sur viving first year uni

HANDY HINT 1: Alison’s survival tip: Find a good time and place to study Figure out where you work most efficiently—it may be in the library, alone in your room, or with friends—and try to arrange to study in these places. My favourite study environment is being at home alone in my pyjamas—comfort is important! Learn about your own style of studying. For example, I study most effectively in the morning, so I aim to get up early, go for a walk to clear my mind and then get stuck into it—leaving the rest of the day for me to enjoy. Don’t tr y to overdo studying. You need to be realistic about what you will achieve in a day. It’s better to get a few hours of quality study in, then leave it and go and do something else rather than waste a whole day being unproductive.

his lab write-ups while other students struggle. What is his secret? Instead of simply turning up, Shaun always prepares for his classes, especially his laboratory classes, by working through the laboratory manual and associated readings the night before to ensure he has a good understanding of what will be covered. Tess came straight from school to university and just scraped through the first year of a psychology degree. She had to read many articles for essays and other assignments, and she used a highlighter pen to note the important parts; however, that didn’t seem to help. Then someone showed Tess how to make notes from her readings, and to link those notes with other readings on the same topic. Tess is now getting better marks for her work because she has a better grasp of the literature. Shaun and Tess have gone to some extra effort to succeed in their studies. What is it that underlies the secret of this success? The difference may be viewed as the distinction between ‘passive’ and ‘active’ learning.


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Passive learning is when we process information at a superficial level. It includes sitting in lectures and listening to the lecturer, or reading an article or working through a practical exercise (a ‘prac’) by following what someone else is doing (or by using ‘prac’ write-ups passed down from previous students!). While these are still learning activities, they are easily forgotten. Active learning, on the other hand, is just what the name implies—a process in which you are an ‘active’ participant in your learning. A sure way to tell the difference is to think about the amount of effort involved. If the learning involves little effort, it is probably passive. Active learning clearly involves more effort, but it will pay off at exam and assessment time. The more your brain is involved in the learning process, the more relevant the information will be to you and the more of it you will remember. Much of what you study at university is about memory. The more relevant the information is to your own experience, the more likely you are to be able to remember it. Going through the process of active learning is what makes the information relevant. For example, in lectures Tess listens to the theory of how to counsel a client. Listening, and even note taking, is relatively easy and fairly passive. It isn’t until Tess goes home and rewrites the lecture in her own words— and therefore in a way that is relevant to her own experience—that it makes real sense to her. Rewriting the lecture allows Tess to interpret and reflect on the information she has been presented with. By doing this, the information is related to her previous experiences and becomes incorporated into her world view. Because it now means more to her, it will be more easily remembered and she will retain the information for a longer period. There’s an old Chinese proverb: I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand.


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12 Sur viving first year uni HANDY HINT 2: Getting active The following are all examples of passive learning. Take a sheet of paper (or write in this book) and write down how, by putting in a bit more effort, you can convert these passive tasks to active ones. Passive Example: Taking notes in lectures Reading the textbook Reading articles on a topic Studying for an exam by reading past papers Preparing to deliver a presentation by writing it down

→ →

Active Summarising lecture notes in your own words ...................... ......................

→

......................

→

......................

Active learning involves getting to the level of understanding, because you have had to ‘do’ something in the learning process that went further than merely hearing or seeing. Tess wished she’d known about this active learning at secondary school, and it’s a pity more people don’t. However, it’s never too late to start active learning and you’ve made a good start by reading this passage. Yet, remember that reading is a type of passive learning, so you are going to need to do more before this passage becomes meaningful to you. Work through HANDY HINT 2 to become an active learner. Many of the hints you will read throughout this book are based on the principle of encouraging you to be an active rather than a passive learner. Active learning takes more effort, but the success from your efforts will be almost immediate. So, activate now! The next chapter explains some of the practical things you need to consider in your first weeks at university, as well as the support services that are available to help you overcome any obstacles you may face.


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2

Getting started: Orientation and student support services

Orientation and student support services

• • •

What happens in orientation week? What support services exist to help students? How do you have a social life and still succeed at university?

This chapter explains how to overcome some initial fears and obstacles in those first few hectic weeks. We introduce you to student support services, and also suggest some ways to maintain a social life in your new environment.

The first weeks Surviving the first few days and weeks at university can seem daunting at first. Unless you’ve had some experience of university before, or a sibling or friend has recently been at university, you’ll be unsure about what to expect. It might make you feel better to know that most of the other first year students are in the same boat. Your early days at university are somewhat like the experience of starting high school. You went from the cosy environment of the final year of primary school to your first day at high school, where you were in unknown territory


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HANDY HINT 3: Melissa’s survival tip: Don’t give up In my first few weeks I remember thinking to myself, ‘Melissa, uni just can’t be as scary as it seems. Heaps of people get degrees, so if they can do it, you can too!’ It’s common to feel a little out of place at first—most people feel this way when they first start uni. So, don’t give up—remind yourself why you are at uni in the first place and what you hope to get out of it. If you do come up against a problem that you feel you can’t sort out, there are plenty of support services for students provided by your university and your student union.

and way out of your comfort zone. The first days at university can be even more disorienting and bring on the same apprehensive feelings (see HANDY HINT 3). Campuses are huge, timetables are confusing, and even if you’re lucky enough to have some friends go to the same university, chances are you’ll be in different classes. The situation may be strange for a while, but this chapter will help to make your first days at university a little easier. Get to know your surrounds: Making the most of orientation week In the week prior to the start of classes, universities have an orientation week (O-week). It’s important to attend O-week, as it’s a good time to get to know your way around the lecture theatres and classrooms, departmental offices, library, bookshop, student services and student union. Make sure you get a copy of a campus map. You’ll find that you may need to carry this map with you for the first few weeks (if not months) as you navigate your way around the various facilities. Don’t rely on asking other people where various buildings are—they are unlikely to know of any buildings outside the ones they use themselves.


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Orientation and student support services 15

HANDY HINT 4: Alison’s survival tip: Don’t go it alone First year can be quite overwhelming, so make sure you don’t go through it alone. You can make friends on the first day. Some of my best friends today are people that I met while sitting on the stairs anxiously awaiting a lecture. Everyone’s in the same boat. It doesn’t hurt to turn your head and say ‘Hi, I’m Alison. Are you waiting for Introductory Sociology?’ You might like also to organise social functions with fellow students, such as parties or regular get-togethers for coffee or drinks. Not only is this a way to make friends, it can also help you to establish future social and professional networks. While you don’t have to be friends with ever yone studying your course, your student body can be a great source of help and support once you’re working.

Attend any sessions your department or course has arranged, even if it’s just a welcome barbecue. You may get to meet the staff at these occasions, as well as your fellow students, and the department might also use the session to convey important information to you, such as which tutorial groups or laboratory classes you’ve been assigned to. You would also be wise to go on a library tour, just to get a feel for the facilities (see Chapter 5). O-week is also a great opportunity to make new friends, as the student union will have provided a range of social activities, usually in the form of free bands. During this time, you can join various university-based social and sporting clubs run by students, which are a good way to meet people. If you are living in residential accommodation at the university, you will no doubt be made aware of the many social events available. Textbooks: Your first important task One of the first tasks you need to undertake is to obtain the textbooks for your subjects. This is both an important


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and expensive exercise. The on-campus bookshop is usually the best place to buy your textbooks because they’ll have the books in stock and often provide student discounts (even though other bookshops may also provide discounts if you produce your student card). Resist the temptation to buy your books before your first class. Wait for your lecturer or tutor to clarify the essential book purchases you need to make. For example, some subjects may list multiple texts; others may list recommended books that are optional purchases or from which you should only make one purchase; while still others may require you to buy the most recent edition of a particular book. You need to dedicate some funds to texts. While the university library should have copies of all the books set as texts in your subjects, it may only have a couple, so relying on library copies alone can be inconvenient because the textbook may not be available when you need it. To save money when buying textbooks, you can try to purchase secondhand books (most universities have an outlet for secondhand books on campus), but make sure the text you buy is the current edition being used in your subject. You can also consider sharing textbook costs with friends, or check the noticeboards near departmental offices as past students often advertise books for sale. Keep all your notes together in subject folders For each subject you study, have a separate folder in which you can keep all of your subject material together. A subject folder might include: • • • •

the subject guide (which includes information about the content the subject covers, assessment topics and dates, as well as contact information for your lecturer/tutor) lecture notes tutorial or workshop notes and exercises notes made from set readings and any answers to set reading questions


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HANDY HINT 5: John’s survival tip: Getting a parking space If you drive a car to university instead of using public transport, be aware that parking spaces are limited and often come at a price. Most universities charge students to park on campus, and fines for parking illegally can be hefty. To get a park on campus, and to avoid traffic jams, you’ll need to arrive before 9am. You might like to consider car pooling with friends. Your student union may also keep a register of people wanting to car pool and share expenses. Alternatively, you might find that public transport is your most cost-effective and convenient option.

•

a list of definitions of key words you have come across in lectures and readings.

Support services for students: Where to go for help Your university and the student union provide a range of extra services to help make your student and social life enjoyable. They will usually organise information sessions in O-week to introduce you to their services. Pick up their pamphlets for future reference. Student services Universities provide the following assistance and services to students: •

•

Counselling service: staffed by psychologists and social workers, they provide free and confidential services that can help with personal and study problems, such as relationship issues, stress management, relaxation, and even meditation techniques. Accommodation services: your university may have an


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HANDY HINT 6: Make the most of your university website Universities place a lot of information and helpful resources on their website. For example, you can find out about semester dates, exam times, university holidays, subject timetables and descriptions, university policies and scholarships. You can also access your librar y via the web and therefore do research any time of the day or night.

• •

•

•

•

accommodation office, or at least a written guide to help you find a place to live. Childcare services: there are usually university-operated or subsidised childcare centres available; however, places tend to fill up quickly. Careers and employment services: this is a free service offering career advice, résumé and interview techniques, access to employer recruitment programs, and advice on how to get relevant work experience before you graduate. Study skills: most universities have a learning/study skills centre that provides free help with all aspects of academic life, such as note taking, time management, essay writing, public speaking and exam preparation. Take advantage of these important courses throughout your first year of university. Computer access: if your computer skills are lacking, take advantage of the low-cost short courses most universities provide. Also, if you can’t afford your own computer, you can get computer access from university libraries and computer labs. All universities provide computer labs, but competition for a place can be fierce and may require you to book ahead. One of the benefits of computer labs is that a help desk is often available to help with any computer glitches you encounter. Internet access: universities also provide students with access to the Internet, particularly email accounts. Be


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HANDY HINT 7: Anjanette’s survival tip: Be a student representative Most courses have student representatives for each year of study to act as liaisons between staff and students. While being a student rep may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it can be a great way to make contacts among the staff and to gain valuable professional experience in your chosen field.

aware that email is not secure, in that its use can be checked. So consider what you write in an email as being like a greeting on a postcard—anyone can read it. HANDY HINT 6 notes some of the useful things you can find by accessing your university website. Your student union The student union is run by students for students. Many of the services you are likely to use on a daily basis at university are provided or subsidised by student unions. For example, student unions: • • • • • • •

act as advocates in unfair treatment/grievance procedures lobby for new services or improvements to existing ones provide entertainment for students in the form of bands, social clubs and sporting facilities provide access to subsidised services and products, such as cheap photocopying, faxing, printing, computer disks, condoms, sunscreen, self-help publications, and so on operate food and alcohol outlets on campus provide advice on obtaining financial assistance (see HANDY HINT 8) along with the national body of combined student unions, lobby government regarding university funding and access.


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HANDY HINT 8: Annette’s financial survival tip University can be a financially taxing time. Enquire at your department, student union or university scholarships office about whether any financial support is available in the form of scholarships, grants or bursaries. Your student union may also provide short-term small loans at low or no interest to meet unexpected bills. The union will also be able to advise on what government assistance you may be able to apply for.

In recent years there have been attempts by some federal and state governments to introduce voluntary student unionism—that is, allowing you to opt out of paying a student union fee. However, if you opt out, many of the things you take for granted will cost more or may not even be provided. For modest fees you get a lot of services that improve the quality of student life; something you can easily take for granted, especially as a new student. Furthermore, a weaker student body means that students have less influence over university and government policy. Student unions consist of representatives that are elected by fellow students—meaning you can always get involved if you so wish. Once lectures begin At university, lecturers and tutors are your primary source of academic help. If you have a general question, you may be able to ask it after class. However, if your question is more detailed, you should make an appointment to see your lecturer or tutor outside of class time. To ensure you get the greatest benefit from such a meeting, do some preparatory work beforehand. Here are some tips for meeting with your lecturer or tutor (also see HANDY HINT 9): •

Make a time to see your tutor/lecturer.


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HANDY HINT 9: Annette’s survival tip: Don’t be afraid to use your lecturers as a valuable resource Lecturers and tutors are there to help you understand the subject content and to help you with assessment tasks, so don’t be afraid to approach them for help and advice. When I have a specific question or problem, rather than just popping into their office unannounced or trying to get an answer from them on the run after a class, I’ve found it best to make an appointment to see them outside of class time. Sometimes, a simple phone call or email to your tutor is all you need to do to get answers to your questions. I’m always amazed at how few students do this.

• •

Before the meeting, jot down questions, issues or points you want to discuss and bring these along to the meeting. If you need some assistance with an assignment, do some basic reading on the topic and make a few notes on what you think the assignment is about and the issues you would like to discuss.

If the matter is about your course enrolment, you might need to take your enquiry higher up (see the next section on university structure).

Understanding the structure of the university The titles of university staff depend on their role and seniority in the university. While the organisational structures of universities vary slightly, the flowchart in Figure 2.1 provides an indication of the basic hierarchical structure of most universities.

Balancing university study and your social life Aside from intellectual pursuits, universities also offer a range of sporting and social activities. It’s important to aim for a


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22 Sur viving first year uni Figure 2.1

University structure flowchart Administrative positions in order of seniority Chancellor

The honorary head of the university who takes part only in public university forums such as graduation ceremonies.

Vice-Chancellor The chief executive officer of the university responsible for daily operations.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor

Pro-Vice-Chancellor

Academic Registrar

Senior academics usually in charge of teaching and research matters

Senior academics given specific administrative duties such as external relations.

Senior administrator responsible for non-academic staff, student admissions, examinations and graduations. Also known as University Secretary or Registrar.

Deans of Faculties Faculties (e.g. Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Health Sciences) are made up of related academic departments (e.g. Department of Sociology, Department of History). A Dean, usually a senior academic, is the head of a Faculty. Increasingly common is the use of schools within faculties to designate an administrative grouping of small academic departments.

Assistant Deans Academics appointed or elected to do specific tasks, such as dealing with international or postgraduate students.

Heads of Departments Senior academics who are the administrative heads of specific academic departments (also known as disciplines).

Academic positions in order of seniority Professor The highest academic rank.

Associate Professor Formally addressed as ‘Professor’

Senior Lecturer Lecturer Associate Lecturer (Tutor) Please note:

There are also honorary academic positions, usually called honorary associates or, in the case of professors, Adjunct Professors or Emeritus Professors, which are held by retired academics who still maintain a connection with a university. Academics are only referred to as ‘Doctor’ if they possess the qualification of PhD (Doctor of Philosophy). ‘Tutor’ is often the general term used for any academic responsible for a tutorial class. This flowchart simplifies the hierarchical structure of a university. For example, a Senior Lecturer can also be a Head of Department and a Professor can also be a Dean.


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HANDY HINT 10: Marcus’s survival tip: Think outside the square Your time at university may be the first period in your life that you are able to explore your interests and tr y new things, so keep an open mind and try something new to broaden your experiences. Whether it’s joining a sporting club, getting involved in the student union, writing for your student newspaper, taking part in an activist group for the environment, or whatever interests you, the key message is to give it a try. It can be difficult to move outside the comfort zone of what you already know and do, but university truly allows you to experience many of the things life has to offer. Take a chance—what have you got to lose?

balance between your study and social life. Not only are there personal psychological and health benefits from participating in sporting and social activities; making use of sporting facilities or joining a social club can also be a great way to meet people with similar interests and to make friends. Social clubs consist of cultural, political, religious and specific interest groups, as well as discipline-related ones such as law societies. As HANDY HINT 10 notes, the social aspects of university life can be some of the unsung benefits of the university experience.

Where to next? Once you know your university environment, you need to develop a range of survival skills. For example, it’s important to develop computer skills, as not only is it a crucial employment skill but it will also make your life as a student easier. Using a word-processing program will lessen your spelling errors and make it easier to edit and improve your work; most of all, your tutor will find your work easy to


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read and mark! In the following chapters, we show you how to develop the essential tools that should be a part of any university student’s survival kit. In the next chapter we show you how to organise your study and manage your time so that you can succeed at university and still have a life.


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3

Getting off to a good start: Planning and time management

Planning and time management

• • •

How do I get my assignments in on time without having to ask for an extension or pull an all-nighter? How can I find the time to get to the library when it seems like I’m just too busy? When do I get to have a life or get some sleep in between all my course work?

In this chapter we identify how to manage your time and workload effectively so that you meet the due dates for assignments and are well-prepared for exams. You’ll discover where you need more time in your day or week, and what activities you can cut down on in order to focus on getting your study completed as quickly as possible. There’s no getting around the fact that you need to plan, but if you manage your time you can make your work easier and less stressful. Who needs time management? It sounds like something high-powered business managers do. In reality, it’s something that everyone should do who wants to work efficiently, leaving more time for leisure and socialising. As students who are juggling multiple subjects, part-time work, family commitments, and sporting and social lives, you need it more than anyone.


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Getting organised in the first few weeks of lectures Having survived orientation week, the next step is to get through the first few weeks of lectures. You’ll be bombarded with subject handouts and a host of new information so it’s important that you get organised from the outset. Here are some practical suggestions on how to achieve this. Timetable your classes The first thing to sort out is your timetable. If you have access to the web you can check your timetable before classes start, making sure you have no ‘clashes’. If subjects do clash, you may wish to vary your enrolment to avoid clashes. You may not always attend lectures, but if you can never attend a lecture due to a clash you’re likely to have difficulty in that subject. Organise subject material into folders Buy a big lever arch folder for each of your subjects. If you are a person who responds to visual stimuli, try to purchase them in different colours. For example, in a first year Arts degree you might choose the following colours for your subjects: • • • •

English—yellow Sociology—pink Environmental Studies—green Psychology—blue

If you colour code from the beginning, you can buy all the relevant stationery for that subject in that colour. Then, into each folder put the relevant subject handout and lecture notes for each week. This way you can keep them in order. When it comes time to make summaries (see Chapter 4), they can be kept at the front of the folder. As you photocopy articles or obtain past exam papers, these


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Planning and time management 27 Figure 3.1 March

Assignment timetable Week 1: Week 2:

Choose topic for psych essay Do library and web-based research for psych essay Work on first draft of psych essay Show first draft of psych essay to tutor and obtain feedback Prepare final draft of psych essay 1500-word psych essay due

Week 3: Week 4: April

Week 1: Week 2:

can be kept at the back. Use file dividers to keep the material separated. You need to update the contents of these folders every week. It might seem like a hassle at first, but it will save you lots of time and panic looking for missing lectures or trying to find assessment instructions. Timetabling your assignments As soon as you receive your subject handouts you need to sit down and map out your assignment workload for the semester. Draw up a week-by-week chart of when assessment tasks are due, so that you can see all the tasks on one page. (Enter them in your diary by all means, but don’t rely on your diary alone. Imagine how awful it would be to turn the page and see you had a forgotten essay due that week!) Write down the due dates, preferably in the colour code for that subject. Then think about how long you need to work on that task—for example, you might start working on a 1500-word essay six weeks before it’s due. Break that task up into manageable chunks, such as preparing your first draft. Now go back to your chart and fill in those details. Your chart will look something like that in Figure 3.1. Next, go back and enter the assignment tasks for all of your subjects. You might find you have clashes, with a couple of assessment tasks due in the same week. This isn’t sufficient grounds to get an extension, but it does mean you need to


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HANDY HINT 11: Emma’s survival tip: Prioritise daily Plan not only your semester workload, but your weekly and daily workload as well. I start planning as soon as I get a copy of the subject outline. I read it from cover to cover and make a list of all the assessment due dates. I also set my own ‘due dates’, so that I complete my set reading and summarise my notes each week. I do this by making a list of tasks I need to do each day in order of priority. Each day I make a new list and re-prioritise my tasks. That way, I keep up to date as the semester progresses and I’m well prepared when exams come along.

start one of the tasks earlier to space them out. There is nothing to stop you handing in one of the assignments a week early! If you plan to hand in your assignments a week early, you have a buffer zone for last-minute computer glitches. (For more on academic writing, see Chapters 7 and 8.) Take one day at a time Once you have identified the tasks you need to complete each week, break them up into day-by-day activities. These ongoing tasks can also be written on your daily ‘to do’ list (see HANDY HINT 11).

Time management: Finding more hours in the day Time management is simply the use of tools to ensure, first, that you are allocating your time where it is needed most and, second, using that time productively. If you’re not already doing both, you’ll need to reorganise your time. Like Julie. Julie is a first year science student who lives at home with her parents and two younger sisters. She has a waitering job on Wednesday and Thursday evenings and plays hockey


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Planning and time management 29

on Monday nights. She spends the weekends with her boyfriend, Barry, who finished his teaching degree the previous year and lives and works in a town 50 kilometres from Julie’s university. Julie likes being at university, but she finds it hard to get her assignments done because of the long hours she spends at university in lectures and laboratory classes. She feels chronically tired from late nights doing assignments, working and socialising. To make matters worse, one of her sisters is in her final year of high school and is really struggling with chemistry. Jodie is always asking Julie for help, and Julie keeps promising to do it ‘when I have time’. But there never seems to be any time. Julie is a busy person who needs to organise her time if she is going to do everything successfully, including study, earn money, and maintain good relationships with her family, friends and boyfriend. Margaret is another busy student. She is married to a business executive and has two children, the youngest of whom has just started school. Margaret worked as a secretary at an accounting firm after leaving school, but she’s been out of the paid workforce for the past six years as a full-time mother. She has just commenced as a full-time university student studying for an accounting degree. However, she’s finding full-time study hard going. It’s only been six weeks, but already the assignments are piling up and there are so many other things she needs to do when she gets home. Margaret is a person with a fairly full university timetable, as well as a heavy load of personal commitments. She needs time management to help her get through, but she may also need to develop skills in negotiation and conflict resolution when her studies conflict with other aspects of her life. You might relate to one of these scenarios, or your time-related problems may involve a combination of these and other factors. Whatever the situation, there are a series of steps and a number of tools you can employ to manage


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your time, complete your tasks and get out of your present predicament.

Eight steps to finding more time Step 1: Assess your situation Take stock of your life. Start with the broad picture and list all the various commitments you have in life which take time (even the ones you haven’t gotten around to doing yet). Let’s look at the list Julie would write: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Timetabled classes: lectures and practical classes for four first year subjects. Assignments for those subjects. Working as a waiter. Member of the hockey team. Visit Barry on weekends. Jobs around the house. Help sister Jodie with her chemistry. Girls’ nights out.

Step 2: Add up how much time all of those commitments take on a weekly basis 1 2

3 4 5

Timetabled classes: lectures and practical classes for four first year subjects = 24 hours/week. Reading and assessment tasks for those subjects: 10 hours/ week. (Universities generally recommend you spend 8 hours per subject of self-study time = 32 hours/week.) Working as a waiter: two nights per week, Wednesday and Thursday = 8 hours/week. Member of the hockey team: play Monday night and train Tuesday night = 4 hours. Visit Barry on weekends: from 7pm Friday night to 7pm Sunday night = 48 hours/week (includes travel time).


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6 7 8

Jobs around house: 2 hours/week. Help sister Jodie with her chemistry: 1 hour/week. Girls’ nights out: 4 hours/week.

The amount of committed time equals 101 hours per week. Step 3: Add in time taken by all the other things you haven’t even thought of yet • • • • • • • •

Sleeping: 8 hours per night × 5 (the other two nights were counted while at Barry’s house) = 40 hours/week. Showering, dressing, grooming: 1 hour/weekday = 5 hours/ week. Eating: 2 hours/weekday = 10 hours/week (eating at Barry’s already counted). Travelling time to and from university/work/hockey: 1 hour/weekday = 5 hours/week. Managing life and finances: banking, opening and sending mail, paying bills, etc. = 1 hour/week. Talking to friends on the phone: 2 hours/week. Leisure time: seeing movies, bands, reading books/magazines = 3 hours/week. Any other regular activity? Julie does an aerobics class once a week = 1 hour/week.

Julie’s ‘other’ hours add up to 67 hours per week. Therefore, her total committed time is 168 hours per week. Step 4: Get real If you add it up, you realise there are exactly 168 hours in a week, so why is Julie short of time? Because the above list hasn’t left her enough time to do self-directed study and assignments, recommended at 8 hours per subject per week, totalling 32 hours. Currently, she only devotes 10 hours per week, so as soon as she hits a big assessment task she will need to ‘steal’ time from other aspects of her life. She might get less sleep, cancel her girls’ night out, ignore her family, and spend the time at Barry’s place working on the


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assignment. No wonder she feels like she never has enough time to do anything. Now go through and total your own hours. You might even find they add up to more than 168—so you have either invented time, added up wrongly or lied to yourself! Step 5: Summarise the problems By writing down how much time all her commitments take, including the recommendation for self-directed study, Julie can see that she is over-committed. Step 4 explains to Julie why she is tired and behind on her assignments, despite being a conscientious student. Julie’s key problems with her time are: • •

She has commitments every night of the week with hockey, her job and spending time with Barry. She doesn’t have enough time for doing assignments and self-directed university work, and therefore needs to steal this time from her sleep and from her leisure time when tasks become urgent.

If Julie keeps going this way she will ‘burn out’, as well as annoying her family who never seem to get any of her time. Because she can’t invent an extra 22 hours in the week, Julie needs to take control of her time by setting priorities. What tasks are you avoiding or putting off ? Write an honest list. M

Step 6: Setting priorities Write down the things that are important to you in descending order from most to least. Put the compulsory things first, like sleeping, eating and dressing—there are no useful ways to cut down on those things in the long term. Sure, you can exist on four hours’ sleep for a night or two, but do it for any longer and you dramatically compromise your performance and even your safety. Julie still needs 67 hours


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a week for everyday tasks. After this, her priority is to give more time to self-directed study. Step 7: Work out where you can cut down on time For Julie to achieve her goal, there are several things she needs to cut down on. She needs to redirect 22 hours from other activities to self-directed study by freeing several evenings per week. She could do this by: 1

Cutting down on one night of hockey. Exercise and team sports are important, but Julie can’t spare two nights per week. She could try to find a team that only played socially one night per week with no training. Saving : 4 hours—Tuesday evenings are now free (4 hours for self-directed study). Cutting down on one night of waitering and changing that night to Friday. To make up for the loss of income, she could do more jobs around the house for her parents for money or even be paid to tutor her sister in chemistry, which would give her more time at home. Saving : 8 hours—Wednesday and Thursday evenings are now free (6 hours for self-directed study, the rest of the time spent with family). Spend a bit less time with Barry. Julie could go to Barry’s after work on Friday night (11pm) and leave on Sunday afternoon (3pm). Saving : 8 hours—Sunday evening is now free (4 of those hours for her family, 4 for self-directed study). Include some self-directed study at Barry’s. They could each spend 4 hours during the weekend on study/work. Saving : 4 hours redirected to study. M

2

M

3

M

4

M

So, with her 10 original hours and 18 redirected hours, Julie now has 28 hours per week to spend on self-directed study. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t the entire 32. If Julie spends 28 hours every week on self-directed study, she will


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be up to date or ahead, getting plenty of sleep, and keeping up with her family and social commitments. Margaret also needs to go through this process and find where she is over-committed, although she is likely to find it more difficult to achieve 28 hours of self-directed study each week and may need to make do with 20. Step 8: Monitor your time use You need to check that you are putting all of your new resolutions into practice by keeping a time diary for a week or two. There are different ways you might do this. Here are a couple of suggestions. Those people who like to write lists might like to write down the actual activities on a record sheet like the one shown in Figure 3.2 (pp. 36–7). More visually-oriented people might like to use a colour-coded scheme, where you colour in the chart according to your colour classification system. For example, green means sleeping, eating, washing/dressing, etc., yellow stands for leisure time, pink for face-to-face contact at university, and orange for self-directed study, etc. After a week, review your record and see where you still need to make changes. Monitoring takes time, so make sure you allow about 15 minutes in the day for this task. Once you have your time well allocated, you can stop monitoring it. You only need to use this important tool again if you find yourself slipping out of control.

Using time productively All of the abovementioned steps have been about allocating your time to the appropriate tasks. The other important aspect to time management is the need to use the allocated time effectively. That means having tangible outcomes for your time. One time waster is trying to work while things clutter up your mind. See Chapter 7 for hints on mind


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mapping to reduce mind clutter, so that you can focus on your self-directed study. Which brings us to Paul. Paul is a first year Arts student who lives in college accommodation on campus. He came straight from school to university. At school he had his time organised for him. Now he has a light load in terms of contact hours, with an expectation from his lecturers that students do a lot of reading outside class. Paul’s contact hours in lectures and tutorials only add up to twelve hours per week, yet he still seems to be behind in his studies, and finds himself doing ‘all-nighters’ to get essays done in time. It seems like just when he sits down to work of an evening, college gets noisy, and Paul needs silence in order to concentrate. Paul doesn’t have a part-time job, nor does he play any sports, but he has a group of friends who stay up late drinking coffee or go out to see bands several nights a week. Paul actually has little in the way of commitments and almost too much time on his hands. The problem with Paul is that he isn’t using the time he has productively. It may seem strange, but having too much unstructured time on your hands can be almost as difficult as not having enough. For example, on a Tuesday, Paul’s only commitment is a one-hour lecture from 11am to midday. This gives him a sense that he has at least seven other hours to get plenty of work done on the 4000-word essay he has due next week. With that sense of complacency, he unfortunately only achieves an hour or two of work. Why? Because he lets his day structure itself, rather than keeping control of it. Because he knows he has a late start Tuesday morning, Paul stays up late with his friends on Monday night. He likes being up late and then sleeping in the next day. He gets up just before breakfast in college, which finishes at 10am, then he gets ready and goes to his lecture. By the time he arrives back at college it’s lunchtime, and he sits at a table with friends until around 1.30pm. For a while after lunch he sits outside in the sun reading the paper, and then


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Lecture Study in library

Lecture

Study in library, then lunch

10am

11am

2pm

Lecture

Lecture

1pm

Lectures

Lunch with friends

12pm

Lunch, then study in library

Lectures

Work on group project

Lecture

Breakfast and organise for uni

Lecture


Wednesday

Aerobics class

9am

Tuesday


Monday

Julie’s seven-day time-use record

8am

7am

6am

Time

Figure 3.2

Practical class

Lunch with friends

Study

Lectures

Study in library

Lecture

Study in library Lectures

Study in library


Friday

Lecture


Thursday

Study

Saturday

Sunday

Travel home and do jobs around the house Jobs around the house Dinner with family

Study

Travel home, eat and get ready for hockey

Hockey comp.

Hockey comp.

Travel home and get ready for study

Study

Sleep

4pm

5pm

6pm

7pm

8pm

9pm

10pm

11pm

Practical class

Jobs around the house and/or grocery shopping

Sleep

Study

Study

Practical class

Jobs around the house

3pm

Sleep

Study

Study

Out with the girls

Out with the girls

Out with the girls

Out with the girls

Lecture

Lecture

Sleep

Study

Study

Study

Sleep

Drive to Barry’s

Work

Work

Work

Work

Help sister with chemistry Dinner with family

Eat and get ready for work

Travel home and organise for weekend

Study

Travel home and help sister with chemistry

Practical class

Practical class

Study

Study

Study

Drive home from Barry’s

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Paul: a young man with (way) too much time on his hands

gets down to work at around 2pm. Paul sits at his desk with the essay topic in front of him, looking back over his lecture notes and textbook. However, he realises that for this essay it’s essential to find other sources of information and that he really needs to use the library. But he feels it’s too late to walk back over to the other side of campus now and decides to leave it until tomorrow. So, he works on the plan


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HANDY HINT 12: A checklist for making the most of your time ✓ ✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

Analyse where you waste time in your day. For example, do you have a one-hour break between lectures that you use to get coffee? Think about how you could spend ‘gaps’ in your day more usefully. For example, go to the librar y in between classes, or go and sit in your next lecture theatre before class if it’s empty and do some quiet work. Make sure you always have some work with you to complete if you know you have a spare hour or in case a lecture gets cancelled. This doesn’t mean you have to carr y a whole pile of textbooks around. In fact, if you have too many tasks with you they can seem over whelming. However, you could carr y a few journal articles to read and summarise. If you are the sort of person who can work with noise around you, by all means go to the cafeteria for a coffee. But sit by yourself so that you can focus on your task. Tr y and spend the best part of the day at university. When you are in a university environment, you are more likely to do university work than if you arrive home in time to catch the afternoon soaps on TV! View university life like a full-time job—a place where you spend eight hours a day, not just the time you have in scheduled classes. If you do this, you can get most of your self-directed learning achieved during university hours, instead of having to stay up late at night. This way, you can still have a social life. To be an effective and productive time-user, you’ll need to find a place to ‘base’ yourself, where you feel comfortable working. If you are lucky enough to have a department which sets aside table space for student use, then use it. Other wise, find a favourite desk in the main library. That way, you’re sitting right in the middle of a fantastic resource if you need to research a topic.


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of his essay until around 3.30, when he runs out of things to do, then he reads a book until it’s time for the evening meal at 5pm. He then goes to see a movie with friends. Somehow, Paul has only managed to do as much selfdirected study in a day as another student who had a full eight hours of face-to-face contact. Structure your spare hours Paul needs to put some structure in his day so that he can start using his time effectively. By dividing his time into one-hour blocks, he can start to see every hour as an opportunity for productive time, rather than as something to be ‘filled in’ while waiting for a lecture. By getting up at 8am for breakfast, Paul could have at least two productive hours before his lecture. He could use this time to plan his essay and establish that he needs to use the library to gather source materials. If he worked this out in the first hour, he could have gone to campus early and used the library before his lecture. That way, he could go straight back to college for lunch after his lecture, then get a solid four hours of productive work done on his essay before the evening meal. After spending six hours on his essay, he could still go out to the movies. By dividing time up into manageable chunks, you’ll realise that you don’t have the whole day stretching in front of you waiting to be filled. In fact, if you plan out your time and stick to your plan, you’ll find that not only does study time pass quickly, but you have something to show for it by the end of the day. See HANDY HINT 12 for a checklist on how to structure spare hours. Now that you are aware of the activities that waste your time, you can reorganise your study time. The next chapter shows you how to effectively take notes from lectures, for your assignments and for exam preparation.


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4

How to get great notes from your lectures

How to get great notes from your lectures

• • •

How much of your lecture do you need to record, and what’s the best way to do it? How do you avoid rewriting everything when you take notes from written sources? How do you make summaries that will help you pass exams?

Whether you attend face-to-face lectures or study by distance, note taking is a skill you will need to master early on in the year if you are to survive first year university. In face-to-face lectures, a lot of information is presented in a short period of time and the challenge is to write enough of it down. When studying by correspondence or via the World Wide Web, or when reading articles and books, there is less immediate time pressure, and the challenge is not to write too much. Thankfully, these skills aren’t difficult to master if you follow some simple tips. Let’s take a look at the different note-taking situations.

Taking effective notes in face-to-face lectures The classic lecture takes the best part of an hour. During that time, information is presented verbally, and often also


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visually, by the lecturer. A significant amount of material can be covered in that time, especially if lecturers talk at the same time as they show overheads. The first tip is never to rely on your memory alone. No matter how interesting the lecture, you won’t be able to remember all the important points. Perhaps one or two things might stick in your mind, but this won’t be enough to get you through exams. You need to make a record of the information presented in the lecture. There are three main ways to do this: by hand, by computer, or by tape recording. Handwriting your notes: Be choosy The oldest method, and one that is always handy to have as a backup, is taking notes on paper. This requires you to make a handwritten record of the lecture. The advantage is that you have an instant hard copy of the lecture which will serve as the basis for your summaries later. The disadvantage is that you might not be able to write quickly or neatly enough to record all the important material. Taking copious notes also prevents you from listening to the next part of the lecture. Let’s look at tips to help you handwrite lecture notes: • • •

•

Don’t attempt to write down every word the lecturer says. Every time you write, you lose a little listening concentration. Try to listen, then write down key points. You’ll need to learn to write quickly. Abbreviations in note taking can help you to write quickly. There is no need to write every word out in full. You will eventually develop your own system. HANDY HINT 13 provides a list of some common abbreviations. Notice that lecturers use different styles and work out the best way to take notes for that style. For example, do they speak at the same time as writing an overhead? Do they tell humorous stories you don’t think to write


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How to get great notes from your lectures 43

HANDY HINT 13: Common note-taking abbreviations While you can make up your own note-taking abbreviations, the following list provides some common examples: Word

Abbreviation

and greater than less than equal not equal increase, decrease for example that is with compared with because between Any word ending in ‘ion’

& or + > < = ≠ ↑ ↓ eg ie − c cf b/c b/t or b/n truncate and superscript n (e.g. education: educ n) truncate and superscript g (e.g. educating: educat g) M

M

Any word ending in ‘ing’

M

M

Some words can be further condensed if you use them often (e.g. communication: commn).

•

down until you get to the punchline and realise (too late) that it was highly relevant? Beware the overhead trap! Next time you’re in a lecture, watch what happens when a transparency is placed on the overhead. Even students who were sitting back, almost asleep, will sit forward and start scribbling furiously! Trouble is, the overhead might only be a list of keywords put there to jog the lecturer’s memory. If you just copy the overhead, you’ll end up with pages of dot points and no useful insights or in-depth information. If this is the case, look at the overhead for the correct spelling of difficult words, by all means, but continue to listen to the lecturer and take notes from what he/she says.


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Wendell gets geared up for a ‘13-pen’ lecture

•

•

Avoid writing down things that aren’t necessary. Your hand will be tired enough by the end of the lecture without the strain of writing extra information. Definitions placed on an overhead come directly from your textbooks, so you don’t need to rewrite them. Just make a note—for example, ‘Definition of society see text p. 64’. It’s not uncool to sit close to the front of the lecture theatre! Sitting down the front means you can hear and see better, and you are less likely to be distracted by other students around you. It also makes it easier for you to ask questions in class, or to approach the lecturer at the end.


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• •

•

•

Make sure you’re geared up. Have enough paper, and take spare pens. Handwriting may be a low-tech method, but pen failure is always a risk! If the lecturer does put detailed information on overheads and you feel there was something vital you missed copying down, approach the lecturer at the end and ask for a copy. Some academics keep a copy of their overheads in the library, on a web page, or may even give them out before lectures to save you from writing them down. (This last strategy is less likely to happen in big first year lectures.) Keep a wide margin on the page for later notations. For instance, your lecturer may make a connection between a later point and an earlier one. You can go back to the earlier point and write in the margin about the way in which they are similar. These margin notes will help you later with making summaries. If there was something you didn’t quite catch in the lecture, ask a question. Or if this is too totally scary in front of 400 other students, go and ask at the end of the lecture. ( Just be aware that the lecturer may have to rush off to give another lecture.) Look around the room. If your tutor was also at the lecture, you can ask them in your tutorial. M

Typing notes directly into a laptop or palmtop computer Students fortunate enough to be able to afford this technology could use it to good effect in note taking. The main advantage is that the information is in electronic format, which saves rewriting when making summaries. The risk, as with any high-tech method, is that it may somehow fail— computers crash, run out of drive space, and batteries run down. This method is recommended if you are familiar with the technology and can type quickly. The same suggestions apply as with handwriting for choosing what to write down.


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HANDY HINT 14: Lauren’s survival tip for listening for hints Lecturers may, at any time and without warning, give you an exam hint! I have sat as a student in lectures when a hint was handed out, which I scribbled down furiously. I was amazed, therefore, to look around the room and see that no-one else was writing it down! The lecturer won’t necessarily say, ‘ This will be in your exam’, but they might say something like, ‘ This is important’ or ‘ Make sure you understand this’. Or if you’re in one of my classes, I say, ‘ You might like to write this down’! M

M

M

M

Tape recording Some people like to tape record the lecture and write up the notes afterwards. This has the advantage of unlimited opportunity to write down the important points—you could even transcribe the lecture word for word if you wanted to (although this would not be recommended—see the section on how to do meaningful summaries). The disadvantage of tape recording is that the recording might fail in some way—batteries tend to run down, tapes break, or you might be too far away to capture the voice of the lecturer. It won’t work at all if your lecturer refuses permission! Another disadvantage is that you could spend too much time on the transcription. And even if you tape the session, you won’t necessarily capture information presented on overhead projections. A good compromise would be for you to take notes in lectures, and have the tape as a backup for any points that you might have missed. This method is recommended if: • •

you write slowly or have a problem with writing your lecturer puts overheads up and speaks at the same time


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•

your lecturer presents a lot of information in the session. (More than three pages of notes would be considered a lot.)

Taking notes from readings presented in hard copy or on the web Universities are increasingly delivering courses in what is known as ‘flexible learning’, which is basically any alternative to face-to-face lectures. If you are sent lecture material in taped form, use the technique described above under ‘Handwriting your notes’. But if the course material is provided in written form, your note taking will take a different shape. It will still be important for you to go through and make notes, but you need to be careful not to spend too long about it. Follow these tips: • • • • •

Skim read through the material first to see what content is covered. Now read through it again with a note pad and pen, making a note of the key points. If you put things in your own words, you’ll avoid plagiarism in writing assignments, and it will make your exam studying easier. Avoid highlighter overload! Try to read without highlighting—all it does is give you a more colourful page and is no substitute for making notes. Get whatever extra information you can (see HANDY HINT 15).

By the end of this process you should have a condensed version of the lecture notes or reading, covering the key points. Remember to store these in the relevant subject folder. Once you have made your notes, whether from lectures or from readings, you are ready to transform them into summaries.


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HANDY HINT 15: Lyn’s survival tip: Distance education Lyn is a mature age student who studies by distance education or correspondence. This means she receives her lecture materials as a written package. The disadvantage with distance education is that you miss out on the live lecture performance that the internal students receive. To overcome this disadvantage, Lyn always requests a hard copy of the lecture notes from the face-to-face lectures if they’re available. Sometimes these can be obtained from the university website; other times, lecturers send their own notes. The good news for internal students is that the written material sent to students studying in distance education mode is often available to internal students for a small fee.

Pulling it all together: Summarising your learning As we saw in Chapter 1, Tess learned the important skill of putting notes and summaries into her own words, instead of relying on the words of others. At the end of each week of taking notes in lectures, she sits down and summarises the information. The advantage of this, when it comes time to study for exams, is that she already has the summaries done, in language she can relate to. Summarising your notes, texts or readings is another note-taking skill. We will go through the stages of this important process step-by-step. Step 1: Gather all the raw material Bring together everything you might need to put into a topic summary. At first year level, this is most likely to be your lecture notes (whether these are from live lectures, or readings based on courses via flexible delivery), textbooks; and any essential reading you were given or were advised to do (see HANDY HINT 16).


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HANDY HINT 16: Alison’s survival tip: Do your readings As the assignment workload increases, readings are often pushed aside and start to pile up by the end of semester. To avoid this, tr y to set aside one to two hours of reading time for each subject per week (maybe sacrificing TV time to do this). Reading is actually a pleasant way to pass the time and the benefits will certainly outweigh the effort. Lecturers usually emphasise the importance of readings for good reason—believe me, they can tell when you haven’t done them.

Step 2: Read through your notes Start with your lecture notes, then use other sources to get a feel for the scope of the information that will be covered in your topic summary. You’ll probably find that your lecture notes give you an outline, and that your text and essential readings fill in the detail and provide examples. Step 3: Structure the topic summary Decide on a structure for your summary—whether it’s the way information was presented in lectures or using key headings from the textbook doesn’t really matter, as long as it makes sense to you. However, using your lecture notes may prevent you from going off on a tangent. Step 4: Start summarising Using key headings arising from your lecture notes, make a summary of the key information contained in your lecture. Then go to the texts and other readings to add to the information under each heading. Remember, the aim of a summary is to shorten information, so if you find yourself rewriting everything you aren’t doing it right! Try to read a block of information, put it aside, reflect on what it means, then write one or two sentences about it. You should also


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HANDY HINT 17: Keeping a learning journal for problem-based or experiential learning Some courses, particularly the professions, may use problem-based or experiential methods that rely less heavily on lectures and tutorials. Problem-based learning, as the name implies, encourages students to learn through solving a problem or case study. When presented with the problem, students, usually working in small groups, discuss the steps they need to take in order to solve it. Experiential learning may take the form of fieldwork or practical workshops. These methods will obviously not give rise to pages of notes in the same way that lectures do. Instead, you could keep a learning journal to document the processes you undertake as a group, and for later reflection on how the processes added to your learning. Whether or not your learning mode is problem-based, a learning journal can be a useful way to reflect on your learning, and enhance your understanding and memory. You can develop a learning journal in the following way: • •

Wait until the end of the day to begin your reflection. Record your reactions to what you have learned by noting any things you liked or disliked about the material you learned. Reflect on why you reacted to the material in the way you did. Note down the most important thing you learned from the lecture, tutorial or reading.

include examples that were given in lectures or readings, since exam questions often ask for examples (see Chapter 11). You might be asking yourself, ‘Do I really need to go to all the trouble of doing a summary when I could just go through my notes with a highlighter pen?’ If you want to succeed, you will make summaries. In Chapter 1 we talked about the importance of active versus passive learning. Well, highlighting is a type of passive learning that doesn’t really


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help when it comes to the crunch, like during an exam. Preparing a summary the way we suggest here is definitely active learning. It doesn’t just take time, it takes effort. But the effort exerted means that your brain has processed the information more deeply, and it is much more likely to make sense to you and be remembered at exam time. HANDY HINT 17 provides a simple tip to further enhance your learning. By keeping a learning journal in this way, you will become an active learner; in so doing, you will increase your chances of remembering the material you have studied.

Keeping it together: Organising and filing your notes Notes are made to document your learning, and to give you material to study for exams. Because you need to be able to access these notes readily, it helps if you establish a system for filing and retrieving the information. The easiest way to do this for the first year student is to invest in one big ring binder for each subject. Then you can organise your lecture notes chronologically, with readings at the back and summaries at the front. This might seem like fun to control freaks, and like too much work to the rest of you, but come exam or assignment time you’ll be way ahead. The next chapter introduces another important academic skill— researching your topic.


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5

Researching your assignments: Getting to know your library

Researching your assignments

• • •

How do you go about researching assignments? How are university libraries organised? Where can you find relevant journal articles?

The university library will become one of your regular ‘hang-outs’ as a student. It is crucial that you take some time early in the first semester to learn what your library has to offer and how to use its search catalogues. This chapter will explain the basics of how libraries are organised, the range of information they contain and where to start looking for information for your assignments.

First stop: Take a library tour University librarians provide free library orientation tours usually during orientation week and the first weeks of each semester. Take the tour during orientation week to familiarise yourself with your university’s library. The tour will explain the range of material the library contains, how the material is catalogued, how to use the online electronic library catalogue, and how to access audiovisual and Internet-based


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Researching your assignments 53

material. Make sure you check if any self-help guides are available from your library, particularly discipline-specific ones that are likely to identify key information sources. These documents are worth getting because they can help point you in the right direction in your research on an assignment topic. Your library web page may also provide disciplinespecific information, such as links to relevant websites and lists of the key resources the library contains on particular discipline and subject areas. The online electronic library catalogue The days of the index card catalogue are gone. The library catalogue is now online—that is, it’s available electronically and accessed via computer terminals. Therefore, it’s important that you learn to use your library online system. The online catalogue is a searchable list of the content of the library for the following information sources: • • • • • •

books journal titles, but not the articles they contain (see the section below on how to find journal articles) newspapers, magazines, newsletters and bulletins multimedia such as CD-ROMs (compact disc read only memory), video- and audio-tapes reference material such as atlases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, yearbooks and technical manuals archival material, rare books, artwork and posters.

The detail provided by an online catalogue is listed below: •

•

The location of the material on the library shelf in the form of a unique identifier, given in whatever catalogue system that library uses (Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress). Whether the material is available, on loan, or has restricted access and usage. (For example, high-use and expensive items often have hourly time limits or cannot be removed from the library.)


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HANDY HINT 18: Ask for library help If you find that you’re having trouble working the library online system, take the librar y tour again if available. Other wise, don’t be shy about asking a fellow student or a librarian for help.

•

The full bibliographic details (such as author, title, publisher, place and date of publication) and whether the item is a hard copy publication or available as microfiche, CD or accessible via the web. Some online catalogues also include relevant web links.

Online catalogues allow you to search for titles, authors, subjects and keywords. With some catalogues you can use ‘Boolean operators’ to broaden or narrow your keyword searches. Boolean operators are command words that are used with two or more keywords, such as: • • •

AND: limits the search query to retrieving material that only contains all the keywords. OR: widens a search query by retrieving material that either matches all, some or only one of the keywords. NOT: excludes certain words from the search query.

Most online catalogues also allow you to use ‘proximity operators’, such as searching for keywords that are NEAR or NEXT to one another. More advanced catalogues provide such options in the form of drop-down menus or checkboxes, and may allow you to specify extra details such as searching for matches published in a certain year or available in a particular format such as CD-ROM.

How libraries catalogue their material University libraries generally catalogue their material according to the Dewey Decimal Classification system or the Library of Congress system. These systems indicate the


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location of an information source in the library in terms of which section of the library it is located and the position of an item on the actual shelf. The Dewey system uses ‘call numbers’ that represent certain subject fields. The system consists of the following ten basic categories: 000–099 100–199 200–299 300–399 400–499 500–599 600–699 700–799 800–899 900–999

Generalities Philosophy Religion Social sciences Language Pure sciences Technology/Applied sciences The arts Literature Geography and History

Call numbers can be further specified in the Dewey system with the use of decimal points and letters (based on the author’s surname) to further identify a particular item. For example, the call number for one of our other books, Get Great Information Fast, is 025.04 Germ. From the call number alone you can see it is catalogued under ‘generalities’ and that the first four letters of the first author’s surname are ‘Germ’. The Library of Congress (LC) system uses 21 basic letter categories which correspond to key subject areas as follows: A B C D E–F G H J K L

General Works Philosophy/Psychology/ Religion Auxiliary sciences of history History: general and old world History: America Geography/Anthropology/ Recreation Social sciences Political science Law Education

M N

Music and books on music Fine arts

P

Language and literature

Q

Science

R S

Medicine Agriculture

T U V Z

Technology Military science Naval science Library science


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To further specify an item, a second letter and then numerals are used and, if required, a mix of letters and numbers follow a decimal point. For example, the LC call number for Get Great Information Fast is LB1047.3G48. The book falls under the Education section in this cataloguing system. It’s worth spending a little time learning the basics of the catalogue system used in your university library, as it will remove some of the hassle of locating material.

The key places to start looking for information Before you go to the library to start extensive research on an assignment, there are some key sources you should look at first to develop a basic understanding of your topic, which will help to refine your library search. The first places to start looking for information are: • • • •

lecture notes the subject reading list introductory textbooks discipline dictionaries.

Always check your lecture notes to identify key authors, research studies and concepts you can use as keywords in searching your online library catalogue. In many subjects, you’ll be given a reading list or list of references, some of which may be placed on restricted access in your library (to guarantee that all students at least have access to some key sources). While these reference lists are not exhaustive or even compulsory, if they’ve been made available to you, it makes sense to use them. Consult a number of introductory textbooks in your academic discipline to see if they cover information related to your topic. Textbooks are usually written in a straightforward manner and provide an overview of key subject areas, which you can use as the basis for a more detailed search. Many textbooks provide further reading lists that can


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Key places to look for information

also be helpful. Along with textbooks, it’s worth consulting discipline dictionaries such as those for business, economics, biology, medicine, engineering, psychology and sociology. These dictionaries provide useful information on authors, concepts and theories in a particular discipline. They also refer to related topics and sometimes list further reading. You’ll find that reading the sources mentioned above will provide you with a good understanding of your topic, from which you can develop specific keywords for further library research using the online catalogue, journal databases (see below) and the web (see Chapter 6). Library catalogues can also be accessed via the web: • •

Australian university libraries: http://www.anu.edu.au/caul/uni-libs.htm Australian Libraries Gateway: http://www.nla.gov.au/libraries

Searching for journal articles Academic journals are a major source of up-to-date and credible information and will often need to be consulted for


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HANDY HINT 19: Melissa’s survival tip: Make use of other libraries You don’t have to confine your research efforts to your own university librar y. You can make use of other university libraries, as they are public spaces (even though you won’t be able to borrow things). You can also use state and local libraries. So, don’t be afraid to venture off-campus and make use of other libraries.

your written assignments. Academic journals exist for all disciplines and some examples include: • • • • • • • •

Nature Journal of Journal of Journal of Australian Journal of Journal of Journal of

Accounting and Economics Hospital Infection Modern History Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics Molecular Biology Sociology Systems Engineering

While online library catalogues list journal titles, they don’t specifically list the titles of the articles contained in those journals. To search for relevant articles, you need to use separate journal catalogues called index and abstract databases. These databases provide the full bibliographic details of journal articles, such as author, date, article and journal title, volume, issue and page numbers. Journal databases are updated on either a weekly, monthly or six-monthly basis. Index and abstract databases can exist in hard copy, microfiche, CD-ROM and online formats. Most libraries are making these databases accessible online via their library website. This provides the added advantage of 24-hour, multiple user and external access. While most databases are fairly intuitive to use and similar to each other, your library


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HANDY HINT 20: Major journal databases ABI/INFORM: business and management. APAIS: social sciences, politics, humanities, law and economics. ART Index: art histor y, films, painting, photography and related fields. CINAHL: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. CINCH: Australian criminology database. CONSUMER: consumer science. Current Contents: humanities, social and general sciences. EconLit: economics-related articles. ERIC: Educational Resources Information Center. Expanded Academic ASAP International: arts, humanities and social sciences. FirstSearch: science, social sciences, humanities and life sciences. FAMILY: Australian Institute of Family Studies. LLBA: Linguistics, Language and Behavior Abstracts. Literature Online: English and American literature. Philosopher’s Index: philosophy articles published worldwide. Medline: medical and health-related humanities literature. MLA Bibliography: Modern Language Association of America. PsycLit: psychology database. Social Work Abstracts: international social work database. Sociofile: sociology and related disciplines. UnCover: multidisciplinar y.

will provide you with printed instructions and possibly short courses on how to use them. Index and abstract databases can be found for all disciplines. HANDY HINT 20 shows a short list of the ones commonly found in university libraries. Which journals to use? The quickest way to discover what recommended journals to consult in your field is to ask your lecturer or tutor. They


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will be happy that you are taking an interest. Most libraries have a display area where they place the most current issue of a journal. A quick scan of the journal will give you a good idea of the type of articles it publishes. A word of caution though: don’t confuse academic journals with popular magazines that you can purchase at the newsagent. Academic journals are peer-reviewed, meaning the information they contain is generally supported with verifiable and credible evidence. While you may need to consult non-academic sources for various reasons, academic journals are where you will find authoritative information. The next chapter shows you how to use the web to find relevant information for your assignments.


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6

Web surfing: Finding what you need fast

Web surfing

• • •

What is the web, and how can it help you survive first year university? How do you assess the credibility of web-based information? What are some short cuts to finding information on the web?

The World Wide Web (the web) can allow you to access information from across the globe in an instant in the form of text, images, audio, video and animation. You can use the web to provide content for your assignments or to pick up further study tips; the web is simply another way of storing, finding and retrieving information. The great advantage of the web is the scope of information available, but its ever-growing scope also makes finding what you need difficult. This chapter will show you the short cuts to finding credible and relevant information on the web.

Using the web to help survive first year university The web has become an essential aspect of university study because it allows you to research your assignments at any


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hour of the day. If you have access to your own computer you can also do much of your research from the comfort of your own home. If you’re having trouble thinking of ways in which the web can be useful for university study, here’s a list of some of the information you’ll find: •

•

• •

•

• •

•

Library catalogues: 24-hour access to your university library catalogue, allowing you to search for books and journal articles via the university library website (and other university, state and national libraries). Your university website: look up student services, course information, university policies, contact details for lecturers, class and exam times, and in some cases your subject grades. Government information: government reports, policies, contact details and official statistics are now available for most countries. International organisations: organisations such as the AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), United Nations, World Bank, Community Aid Abroad and Greenpeace all provide helpful information and contact details. Professional associations: if you’re keen on going into a professional group, you can access websites such as the Dietitians Association of Australia or the American Sociological Association, and find membership forms and the services they offer members. News and financial services: you can have news headlines delivered via email, visit newspaper websites, or even access banking and stockmarket services in real time. Reference sites: just like the reference section in your library, you’ll find encyclopedias, dictionaries, language converters, technical manuals, street directories, phone books and maps. Study skills sites: student help sites that provide study tips, such as how to reference your assignments, prepare for exams and handle stress, are available free of charge.


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Web sur fing 63

• •

Specific academic subject sites: a host of specific sites on every academic subject imaginable, from aardvarks to zoology. Entertainment and leisure sites: art galleries, museums, literature, film, music, computer games and other forms of entertainment.

A common complaint by non-web users is that the web is full of junk or is just for computer nerds. While there’s plenty of junk on the web, and computer nerds abound, these aren’t valid excuses for ignoring the positive features of the web. The web will feature increasingly in our lives, especially as web phones and web television make their way on to the market. Therefore, it’s important to develop web skills and to make the most of the convenience the web can offer. And, most importantly, the web can be fun! How not to waste time on the web: Keep a web time-log Because the web can be fun and is so vast, it can be a great time-waster—it’s easy to get sidetracked by trivial issues that aren’t related to your studies. To avoid wasting time, it’s a good idea to keep a web time-log so that you can monitor how much time you’ve spent and assess how valuable your web research has been to your studies. Keep the following points in mind: • • • •

Have a clear idea of the information you’re looking for on the web. Record the time you start your web session. Make notes as you go along on what sites you liked and what search strategies worked or didn’t work. Record the time you end your web session and decide whether the time has been well spent.

Later in this chapter we’ll show you a number of ways to ensure that you find what you’re looking for on the web and avoid wasting time on junk sites.


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Judging web credibility Just about anybody can place just about anything on the web for your viewing pleasure or displeasure. Therefore, you should always exercise caution when using information from the web. Just because it’s on the web doesn’t make it true. To judge the credibility of web information, see if you can answer the following questions: • • • •

Is a publication date provided? When was the information last updated (if relevant)? Is authorship of the content clearly identified, and are contact details available? Do you know anything about the provider or creator of the information? Is the source authoritative? Can it be trusted? If the website reports research findings or obscure facts, are the research methods adequately described? Is the work referenced? Has it been independently peer-reviewed? (See Chapter 7 on using and referencing academic sources.)

Web essentials: Directions for those who’ve never surfed the web Even though people often use the words ‘Internet’ and ‘web’ interchangeably, they are not the same. The web is a major part of the Internet (the Net)—an international network of information exchange via computers linked through national and international telecommunications systems. The other parts of the Internet include: • • • •

electronic mail (email) mailing lists (email-based discussion groups) Usenet newsgroups (Internet-based discussion groups) chat rooms (known as Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, which allow real-time text or audio conversation with all the people in the ‘chat room’).


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In this chapter we will concentrate on the web, as this is the most comprehensive and reliable information source for university study. Access to the web is via a special software program called a browser, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer, as shown in Figure 6.1. Once in the browser, there are several ways to get to a website. If you know the web address of the website you want to visit, you can enter this in the browser address box (also called the ‘netsite’, ‘location’ or ‘go to’ box). A web address is known as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and looks like this: •

http://www.allenandunwin.com/estudy/infofast.asp

This URL will take you to a web page for one of our other books, Get Great Information Fast, which includes a host of helpful links to key information sources on the web. The


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The Netscape browser showing the URL and the Get Great Information Fast home page

first page or screen that appears when you enter a web address is called the home page. Figure 6.1 shows the home page for the Get Great Information Fast website. Another way to access a web page is to move from one web page to another by clicking on a hypertext link (also known as a hotlink). Hypertext links are highlighted or underlined text and graphics located on one website that are automatically linked to another web address. Using your mouse to place the cursor over a hypertext link, simply click the ‘right’ mouse button to be taken to the other web address


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HANDY HINT 21: Extra detail on the Internet If you’re interested in the history of the Internet, you can of course research it on the web! Tr y the Yahoo! list of links on Internet histor y: • •

Yahoo! Internet history hotlinks: http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/History

indicated by the hotlinked text or image. To return to your original page, use the ‘back’ button on your browser. Hotlinks are one of the best features of the web as they make it easy to navigate and save you having to remember and type many complicated web addresses.

What are web search engines? If you don’t know the web address of a website, there are web catalogues to help you find relevant information. Web catalogues operate in a similar fashion to library catalogues— you enter a search query such as a keyword, title or name, and see if any matches result. There are many web catalogues to choose from and not all operate in the same way or cover the same material. While web catalogues often share certain features and are fairly intuitive, there are a number of important differences that exist, such as those between search engines, subject directories, meta-indexes and all-inone sites. The first point to remember about any web catalogue is that they don’t search the whole web; they only search for matches to websites recorded in their database. Search engines like AltaVista (http://www.av.com) index their catalogues with the use of computer programs. Therefore, they tend to have a large number of websites in their catalogue which can result in many irrelevant matches to your search query. Subject directories like Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com.au) are


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Comparing search engine results

The search term ‘Henry Mintzberg’, a business author, was used with four search engines. The table below shows the varying number of ‘hits’. Search engine Search term Henry Mintzberg

AltaVista

Hotbot

Google

Fast Search

1325

500

1222

2795

While some of the hits among the different search engines will be the same websites, others will be different. Therefore, the moral of the stor y is that you may need to use more than one search engine to find what you’re looking for. Furthermore, the above search was per formed without using advanced options to limit the search in any way. If you need to increase the relevance of your search engine hits, most search engines provide advanced search options, such as limiting the search to the titles of web pages or to particular countries and regions.

indexed by people and therefore have fewer sites of higher relevance and quality. Meta-indexes such as Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com) send your search request to a number of engines at the same time. All-in-one sites such as Webtaxi (http://www.webtaxi.com) provide lists of search engine interfaces from which you can enter basic search requests one by one, all from one web address. Meta-indexes and all-in-one sites result in many irrelevant hits and should only be used when all else fails. Figure 6.2 compares the results of three search engines to show how the results of the same search request can differ markedly. Recommended search engines and directories There are many search engines and directories to choose from and they are constantly evolving, making it difficult to


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guarantee their performance over any length of time. However, we recommend the following based on their accuracy and comprehensiveness. Inevitably, there’s an element of subjectivity in which ones you’ll prefer; however, by starting with these you’ll have a good chance of finding what you’re looking for: • • • • • • • • •

AltaVista: http://www.av.com CNET Search.com: http://search.cnet.com Excite: http://www.excite.com.au Fast Search: http://www.alltheweb.com Go (formerly Infoseek): http://www.go.com Google: http://www.google.com Hotbot: http://www.hotbot.lycos.com LookSmart: http://www.looksmart.com.au Yahoo!: http://www.yahoo.com.au

While the above web catalogues are helpful, the rest of this chapter will show you a number of search techniques you can use to make your search results a lot more accurate.

Web search short cuts: Subject-specific sites Instead of using search engines or directories, there are a couple of short cuts you can use to find relevant, subjectspecific information on the web: 1 2

Gateways, Virtual libraries and Clearinghouses web rings.

Gateways, Virtual libraries and Clearinghouses Virtual libraries, Gateways and Clearinghouses—the terms are used interchangeably—index websites on specific subjects. Figure 6.3 shows an example of the About.com Gateway that has over 650 specialist sites that are individually managed by appointed ‘experts’ resident in over 20 countries.


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The About.com Gateway

Each site covers a specific topic, and all sites have a uniform, simple design, making them easy to use and navigate. Gateway, Virtual library and Clearinghouse sites save you time, because they act as filters for quality websites on specific topics and therefore enhance your chances of finding relevant information. They also tend to offer short descriptions of the websites they list, making it easy to choose whether to visit the sites. HANDY HINT 22 lists some of the most common Gateways, Virtual libraries and Clearinghouses, and you can find comprehensive lists of such sites at: • • •

CNET Search.com: http://www.search.cnet.com Go Gettem: http://www.gogettem.com WebData.com: http://www.webdata.com/webdata.htm


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Web rings A further way of identifying subject-specific sites is through web rings. A web ring is a list of subject-related websites, with each member site linked to an index. You are provided with a choice from a complete list of sites, randomly jumping around the ring or simply going from one site to the next, all the time staying within the ring of topic-related websites. While web rings are useful for these reasons, membership is usually open to all and therefore web rings can contain sites of variable quality. A list of all web ring sites can be found at: •

Web ring home page: http://www.webring.org

How to save and print web pages Once you’ve found a relevant website, there are a number of ways to save and print information contained on the site. If you’re working on your own computer, the first thing you should do is add the site to your Bookmarks (Netscape) or Favorites (Internet Explorer) folder, which automatically records the website address and title. If you’re using a public access computer, such as one in a university computer lab or library, you might be able to bookmark sites and then save the bookmark file to a disk. If this isn’t an option, either handwrite the web address, or copy and paste it into a word-processor document and then save it to disk or print. If you want to save or print the content of a web page, you can use one of the following methods: 1

2

Simply click the Print button on your browser. However, by doing this you end up printing everything on a web page, including graphics and disclaimers. If you don’t want to print a page or want to avoid printing everything on it, try the following. In the browser File menu, choose ‘Save as’. You can save the


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HANDY HINT 22: Major Gateways, Virtual libraries and Clearinghouses • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

About.com (most topics): http://www.about.com ADAM (Art, Design, Architecture and Media Information Gateway): http://adam.ac.uk ALEX (online full text of books): http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/alex The Argus Clearinghouse (most academic disciplines): http://www.clearinghouse.net BeCal (Belief, Culture and Learning Information Gateway): http://www.becal.net Biz/ed (Business and economics): http://www.bized.ac.uk Britannica.com Internet Guide: http://www.britannica.com EELS (Engineering Electronic Library): http://eels.lub.lu.se ESRC Research Guide to the Social Sciences: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/subject/socsci HNET (Humanities and Social Science Online): http://h-net2.msu.edu OMNI (Organising Medical Networked Information): http://www.omni.ac.uk Rough Guide to the Internet (most topics): http://www.roughguides.com/net ROUTES (Resources for Open University Teachers and Students): http://oulib1.open.ac.uk/ROADS/homepage.html SOSIG: Social Science Information Gateway: http://sosig.ac.uk/welcome.html The Big Hub: http://www.thebighub.com The Scout Report (social science, business, economics, science and engineering): http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/index.html WWW Virtual Librar y (most topics): http://vlib.org/Overview.html

page as a text file (.txt) that you can then open, format and print once inside your word-processing program. Note that images are not saved in this way.


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3

4

5

The simplest method is to copy and paste text from a web page directly into a word-processing document, which you can format and print in the usual way. Be careful when doing this, because material on the web is subject to copyright laws. Also, when copying information for assignments, make sure you properly acknowledge the source of the information and beware of plagiarism. (See Chapter 7 for how to reference the web.) If you want to save an image, place your cursor over the image and click your ‘right’ mouse button. Choose ‘Save image as’ (Netscape) or ‘Save picture as’ (Internet Explorer) from the pop-up menu. If you want to copy a whole screen, like the one we present in Figure 6.1, you can do this by pressing the ‘Alt’ and ‘Print Screen’ keys simultaneously on a PC, or ‘Apple’, ‘Shift’ and ‘3’ on a Mac. Then simply open up a word-processor file and press the ‘paste’ button or insert the ‘Picture 1’ file.

Further help with university study The web contains many sites that can help you to develop your study skills and make researching your assignments easier. The publisher of this book, Allen & Unwin, has also established the eStudyCentre, which is a free website for study advice and hotlinks to information resources: •

http://www.allenandunwin.com/estudy.asp

Furthermore, our sister book to this one, Get Great Information Fast (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999), provides further hints on how to use virtual and actual libraries to find information. You can find out about the book and sample its contents from the book’s website: •

http://www.allenandunwin.com/estudy/infofast.asp


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HANDY HINT 23: Key reference sites Governments and international organisations: • Governments on the web: http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en • International organisations: http://www.unsystem.org/index5.html Libraries: • Internet Public Librar y: http://www.ipl.org • Libraries of the world: http://www.sunsite.berkeley.edu/Libweb Newspaper and media sites: • Media links: http://emedia1.mediainfo.com/emedia • Newspaper websites: http://www.ipl.org/reading/news Reference collections: • Dictionary.com: http://www.dictionary.com • My Virtual Reference Desk: http://www.refdesk.com • Quotations: http://www.quoteland.com/index.html • Statistics on the web: http://www.cbs.nl/en/services/links/default.asp • Yahoo! reference listings: http://www.yahoo.com/reference Universities: • Australian universities: http://www.avcc.edu.au/avcc/uniwebs.htm • Universities worldwide: http://geowww.uibk.ac.at/univ

For further information hotlinks, see

HANDY HINT 23.

The next chapter shows the next stage in preparing assignments— becoming aware of the standard required for academic writing.


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7

Academic writing and referencing: Essential survival skills

Academic writing and referencing

• • •

What are the distinctive features of academic writing, and how do they apply to your assignments? What is plagiarism and how do you avoid it? What is referencing and how do you do it?

This chapter provides an overview of the key features of academic writing. It shows you the expectations of written work at university level, and explains how to analyse and reference your material. A large part of the chapter is devoted to one of the most important skills you need to master at university—referencing. All students in every university subject and discipline are required to acknowledge the sources of information they used to write their assignments. This chapter will explain why referencing is necessary and what it involves; it will also provide some examples of the most common referencing systems used at university.

What is academic writing? You’re probably aware that writing at university level is different from what you may have experienced at secondary


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1 2 3 4 5 6

A comparison of academic writing with popular magazine writing

Academic writing is based on:

Magazine writing is based on:

Formal expression and correct grammar. Critically analyses the literature. Reviews alternative perspectives. Evidence based on verifiable sources. Acknowledges sources of information. Uses credible and verifiable sources.

Emotive expression and informal language. Little analysis; mostly descriptive content. Tends not to address alternative viewpoints. Evidence based on anecdotal information. Sources often not acknowledged. Possibly biased sources of information.

school, because you are meant to write in an academic way. When you read an academic book you may find it difficult to understand at first, because the language differs from everyday usage such as that found in popular newspapers, magazines and novels. Figure 7.1 compares the key features of academic writing with writing commonly used in popular magazines. Figure 7.1 highlights that the key features of academic writing are: • • • •

The use of formal expression and correct grammar, avoiding the use of emotive expression such as slang, clichés and stereotypes. A critical analysis of the relevant literature on a topic, including reviews of alternative perspectives to that of the author. A clear statement of the author’s perspective based on the use of supporting evidence drawn from authoritative and verifiable information sources. The full acknowledgment of information sources based


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Academic writing and referencing 77

on an accepted system of referencing to allow readers to confirm and follow up on material presented. It is worth pointing out that we have used an informal and chatty writing style in this book to make it accessible to a wide audience, compared to a more formal academic style. Academic writing avoids clichés, slang and emotive expressions Academic writing attempts to be precise and to avoid misunderstanding. Therefore, the use of clichés, slang and emotive expressions is avoided. Clichés and slang are culturally specific phrases that lack precision and tend to involve emotive stereotypes. The use of slang and other forms of emotive expression can lead to bias and lack of clarity in your writing. Because slang expressions are vague and relate to a certain culture and time period, you never quite know whether people understand what the expressions really mean. For example, young people commonly use the phrase ‘that’s sick’ to mean ‘good’ or ‘great’, but it could easily have alternative connotations depending on the context in which it’s used. Emotive expressions contain a clue to your emotional reaction to something, illustrated through statements such as ‘his argument is stupid’, ‘the results were fantastic’, ‘the author is wonderful’. Such statements do little to convince your reader and tend to convey a lack of critical analysis on the writer’s behalf—an issue to which we now turn.

Critical analysis The cornerstone of academic writing is critical analysis—the ability to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the material you write about. Being critical means questioning the theories, research findings and conclusions made by the authors you read. The only way you can do this is by


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reading as much of the relevant literature on your topic as you can. By reading widely you will come across conflicting evidence and viewpoints. By reviewing the literature—that is, comparing the alternative perspectives you come across and coming to some determination about why certain information sources and explanations are more persuasive—you are doing critical analysis. There are no short cuts to critical analysis—it involves a considerable investment of your time—but as long as you apply an open, questioning approach to the material you use, you’ll be on track to fulfilling one of the key features of academic writing. In doing so, you’ll avoid writing in a biased way. ‘Bias’ refers to presenting only one viewpoint, without acknowledging that alternative perspectives or conflicting evidence exist. Stating your case: Argument, theme, thesis Your opinion about a particular topic, in terms of your preferred answer to an assignment question, is called your argument, theme or thesis. You can only develop an argument after reading the relevant literature and becoming aware of the different perspectives that exist. Therefore, don’t be concerned that you haven’t yet developed your argument in the early stages of the planning, researching or writing process. The argument you put forward is your considered opinion about a topic, based on your critical analysis of the literature. When you make an argument, it must be supported with credible evidence drawn from the literature you have read. Sometimes this may involve you supporting the particular theory or conclusion of a certain author. This is acceptable, providing you show why the argument you adopt is superior to contrasting arguments made by other authors or theories you have read. The next chapter will deal with specific forms of academic writing such as essays, laboratory reports and book reviews.


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Using academic sources of information It’s important to use authoritative, verifiable, academic sources of information to ensure that your assignment content is credible and persuasive. Academic sources of information tend to have the following characteristics: • • •

They are usually based in an identified academic discipline. Full bibliographic details are usually provided. Statements are supported with evidence, derived from research findings that have been published in academic journals.

Journal articles are key authoritative academic sources of information. Academic journals are distinguished from popular magazines such as Time, because they are peer-reviewed —that is, all the articles have been independently reviewed by academics prior to being published. While this process doesn’t guarantee that an article is beyond critique, it does establish a minimum standard for the reporting of research results, the proper acknowledgment of sources, and the logical discussion of relevant literature that is likely to enhance the credibility of the information presented.

What is referencing? When you write an assignment, much of the content will be based on a summary and interpretation of information drawn from other authors’ work. To do this you will generally consult books, articles and websites to find information about the topic. When you base your written work on the work of others, you must acknowledge the source of your information—this is known as referencing. Referencing involves using an accepted system for showing the source of the information used in your assignment.


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Why referencing is important There are three main reasons for referencing the sources of information contained in your assignments: 1

2

3

To avoid plagiarism (theft of another author’s work)— considered a serious offence which can result in failing a piece of work or even expulsion from university. To increase the credibility of the statements you make by showing they are based on independent and verifiable sources. To provide your readers, including the marker of your assignment, with a means to confirm your sources or to follow up information they find interesting or may wish to question by locating the original source.

What should you reference? You need to reference: • • • •

concepts and theories research findings, statistics and little-known facts direct quotes paraphrased information.

Students are usually careful to reference statements taken word for word from another author, but they often neglect to reference paraphrased information—that is, information written in your own words, but derived from identifiable sources. Most of the content in your written assignments will consist of the interpretation of information from the work of other authors, and even though you use your own wording, a reference to the original source is still required. This seems odd at first, because it may differ from what you did in secondary school, but it’s essential to reference information that is paraphrased. This means that most of the paragraphs in your written assignments will contain at least one reference—this is absolutely normal, and you should be wary of paragraphs that don’t have a reference. You


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won’t lose marks for over-referencing, but you will for failing to reference. Therefore, the general rule to follow is ‘if in doubt, reference it’! Plagiarism: A serious offence Plagiarism is the use of another author’s concepts, theories or research findings without a suitable acknowledgment. At first year level, this is often done by accident because you are learning how to acknowledge sources properly. At university, plagiarism is considered a form of theft of the intellectual work of another person and is a serious offence. Plagiarism can lead to reduced marks for or failure of a piece of work. In significant cases of plagiarism, or for repeat offenders, the final result can be expulsion from university study altogether. Therefore, it’s crucial that all students learn how to reference their material appropriately. Be careful when copying information from the Internet. With a few mouse clicks you can easily copy huge chunks of writing, but such convenience can lead to plagiarism and copyright infringement. If you need to use material from the Internet, you shouldn’t cut and paste it; instead, paraphrase it. You also need to reference information taken from the Internet, so always record the bibliographic details and the web address, as well as the date you accessed the site because Internet information is frequently updated. When copying images such as artwork or graphics from the Internet, you must always seek permission from the creator, as legal copyright applies to most work displayed on the Internet.

Referencing in three easy steps Referencing has three key steps: 1 2 3

Record bibliographic details. Consistently use a recognised referencing system within the text of your written work. Compile a reference list.


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Step 1: Record bibliographic details The first step in referencing is keeping a record of the bibliographic details for all of the books, journal articles, websites and other information sources from which you take notes. Bibliographic details include the author/s, title, date of publication and other publication details. For example, the bibliographic details of a book are found on the preliminary pages before the contents page. If you check the preliminary pages of this book, you’ll find all the bibliographic details you need to compile the following reference: •

Williams, L. and Germov, J. (2001) Surviving First Year Uni, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. The bibliographic details for a journal article include:

•

Germov, J. and Williams, L. (1996) ‘The sexual division of dieting: Women’s voices’, The Sociological Review, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 630–47.

Note that date, volume and issue number information is contained on the front cover of most journals. When taking notes from a journal article, especially if you are going to make a photocopy of it, remember to record such details before returning the journal to the library (see HANDY HINT 24). Step 2: Use a recognised referencing system within the text of your work The second step in referencing is placing the references in the text of your written assignment. A number of different referencing systems exist and tend to be associated with particular academic disciplines. For example, the discipline of Psychology uses the American Psychological Association (APA) system, Language and Literature studies may use the Modern Language Association (MLA) method, Law and History prefer the footnoting technique, the Social Sciences tend to use the Harvard or Chicago in-text style, and most


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HANDY HINT 24: Jane’s referencing survival tip When you are taking notes, keep track of the information source from which you have taken them. For example, if you are taking notes from a book, write the bibliographic details of the book at the top of your notes to avoid getting them confused with notes you have taken from another book. Most lecturers know the key information sources for their subjects, so accurate referencing is essential.

of the sciences use the Vancouver system. We cannot provide a complete description of these referencing systems here, but we do offer some basic examples of each in the rest of the chapter. Try not to become confused about the different referencing styles. They all contain essentially the same bibliographic details, but they arrange them in different formats. Step 3: Compile a reference list or bibliography At the end of your assignment, you need to provide a list of all the information sources you cited throughout the text. This reference list or bibliography (aside from the Vancouver system, described below) is organised in alphabetical order based on the surnames of authors.

In-text referencing: The Harvard, Chicago and APA formats The Harvard, Chicago and APA in-text referencing systems are very similar and involve minor stylistic variations. In all three systems, references are placed in the text of your assignment. For example, when author surnames are mentioned as part of the sentence, a reference might appear as follows:


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•

Williams and Germov (2001, p. 82) state that ‘different referencing systems exist and tend to be associated with particular academic disciplines’.

When the author surnames are not part of a sentence, the same reference could be written as follows: •

It is important to use a discipline-specific referencing system because ‘different referencing systems exist and tend to be associated with particular academic disciplines’ (Williams and Germov 2001, p. 82).

As the above examples show, using the Harvard, Chicago or APA systems requires you to reference information by including the surname of author/s, the year of publication and the page numbers in the text of your assignment. Other bibliographic details, such as the title, publisher and place of publication, are included in a list of references or a bibliography (the terminology varies according to the discipline) at the end of your assignment (see Step 3). HANDY HINT 25 provides some advice on how to reference direct quotes. Some academic disciplines or university departments may require you to use a specific referencing style, such as APA, or even prescribe that you write your references in a particular fashion—for example, by specifying that you use colons instead of commas for your in-text references. The APA system is especially prescriptive about how references are written and you should consult an APA guide for further information. If you are studying subjects in a number of disciplines, you may find that you need to use different referencing systems for each one. For example, an Arts student may need to use the APA system for a Psychology lab report, the Harvard in-text referencing system for a Sociology essay, and footnotes for a History essay (described below). If you are unclear about the referencing format to use in a certain subject, consult with your lecturer. Some university depart-


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HANDY HINT 25: Referencing direct quotes Direct quotes are statements taken ‘ word for word’ from another author. Keep the following points in mind when using direct quotes: M

1

2 3 4 5

Keep direct quotes to a minimum. As a general guide, they should not be more than 10 per cent of the word length of your assignment, because if you just copy slabs of direct quotes it becomes difficult to assess your understanding of the information presented. As much as possible, paraphrase the information instead and provide a reference. Always use the exact wording and spelling of the original source quoted. Always include the page number/s with the reference. If direct quotes are less than 30 words long, place them in quotation marks. When direct quotes are longer than 30 words, instead of quotation marks, indent the quote from both the left and right margins. Use single spacing for the quote.

ments produce writing and referencing guides for students or can refer you to an appropriate self-help book in the library. Figure 7.2 provides a sample reference list in the Harvard style that can be used as a template for referencing the main types of information sources you are likely to use.

The footnote system The footnote referencing system uses superscript numbers inserted throughout the text of your assignment that refer to a ‘note’ recorded at the ‘foot’ of the page on which the reference appears. The footnote is where the bibliographic details of the information source are provided. For example: •

Williams and Germov state that ‘different referencing systems exist and tend to be associated with particular


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A reference list template using the Harvard style

Book Williams, L. and Germov, J. (2001) Surviving First Year Uni, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Germov, J. (2000) Get Great Marks for Your Essays, 2nd edition, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Note: Some books are published in second, third or more editions. A new edition refers to the republication of a book where the content and page numbers have changed from the previous edition. Therefore, it’s impor tant to note which edition of a book you actually used in your reference list. There is no need to record whether the book is a first edition or a new ‘impression’ or ‘reprint’. A new impression or reprint of a book simply means that a book has been reprinted because the previous print run sold out.

Chapter in an edited book Williams, L. and Germov, J. (1999) ‘ The thin ideal: Women, food and dieting’, in J. Germov and L. Williams (eds) A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite, Melbourne: Oxford University Press M

Journal article Germov, J. and Williams, L. (1996) ‘ The sexual division of dieting: Women’s voices’, The Sociological Review, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 630–47 M

Website Germov, J. and Williams, L. (1999) Get Great Information Fast [website], http://www.allenandunwin.com/estudy/infofast.asp, date accessed: 25 August 2000

Film or documentary video One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Los Angeles: Fantast Films/United Artists, VHS, 133 minutes

CD-ROM Niles, A. (ed.) (1995) CD-ROM Book Index: An International Guide to Full-text Books on CD-ROM [CD-ROM], Medford, NJ: Learned Information

Sources without authors or full publication details Globecorp (2001) Annual Report: GlobeCorp, Geneva, Switzerland: GlobeCorp ——(n.d.) Successful Cheating at University, pamphlet [no publication details given]

Newspaper article Tolduso, I. (2000) ‘ The conspiracy against students’, The Washington Post, 1 April, p. 1 M


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academic disciplines’.1 However, Tolduso suggests there is no longer a clear link between disciplines and referencing systems.2 The first time a source is referenced in a footnote, you must list the complete bibliographic details. However, for subsequent references to previously footnoted sources, you can use the following Latin abbreviations: • •

ibid. means ‘in the same place’ and is used to refer to the same reference in the previous footnote. op. cit. means ‘in the work cited’ and is used to refer to a source already referenced in full earlier in your assignment, but different from the one directly above it.

Expanding on our example above, Latin abbreviations could be used in the following way (note that the footnotes would appear under a line at the bottom of each page): 1 2 3 4

Williams, L. and Germov, J. (2001) Surviving First Year Uni, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, p. 82. Tolduso, I. (2000) ‘The conspiracy against students’, The Washington Post, 1 April, p. 1. ibid., p. 2. Williams and Germov op. cit., p. 82.

Always remember to include the name of the author along with the op. cit. to avoid any confusion. When there is more than one book or ar ticle by the same author, the actual title of the publication is included along with the author’s surname.

Footnotes are numbered consecutively, and the same number is never repeated. An alternative to placing the footnotes at the bottom of each page of your assignment is to use endnotes. With this system, all the footnotes are collected and combined in a list of referencing ‘notes’ at the ‘end’ of your assignment. While endnotes are more


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HANDY HINT 26: Jane’s survival tip for the Vancouver system When using the Vancouver system, insert the endnote numbers last. If you include them before you have finalised your work, the numerical order will be affected when you change the sequence of sentences or paragraphs. Record references as author names and dates until you are certain that the sequence of your work won’t change. If you can avoid the time-consuming experience of re-referencing your entire work—do!

convenient when writing, always check with your lecturer if you are allowed to use them. Whether using footnotes or endnotes, you still need to include a bibliography at the end of your assignment (as described earlier in this chapter).

The Vancouver system The Vancouver system is often used in science disciplines. It also uses a numbering system, but the numbers appear in brackets and aren’t superscripted. The numbers relate to references that are placed in a numbered reference list at the end of your assignment. There is only one number for each information source. Therefore, when a reference is cited for the second, third or more times, it is given the original number. Using the Vancouver referencing system, your in-text references would look as follows: •

Williams and Germov state that ‘different referencing systems exist and tend to be associated with particular academic disciplines’.(1) However, Tolduso suggests there is no longer a clear link between disciplines and referencing systems.(2) Nonetheless, Williams and Germov suggest it is important not to confuse the styles of different referencing systems.(1)


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HANDY HINT 27: Software referencing programs If you do subjects in a number of academic disciplines, you may be required to reference in a number of the above formats. If this is the case, you’ll be happy to know that software programs can be purchased that can convert your work to different reference formats and can automatically compile a reference list. Consult your university computing centre or bookshop for advice.

Unlike the footnote method, the Vancouver system uses non-consecutive numbering of references in the text of your assignment. This is because the full bibliographic details of each numbered reference are specifically linked to a source in the reference list at the end of your assignment. A Vancouver reference list would look as follows: Reference list 1 Williams L. and Germov J. Surviving First Year Uni. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001. 2 Tolduso I. The conspiracy against students. The Washington Post, 1 April.

A final referencing checklist Use this referencing checklist before submitting your work to avoid the most common mistakes where marks are often lost: ✓ ✓ ✓

Have you included the page numbers for direct quotes and identified them by either quotation marks or indented long quotes? Are there paragraphs containing no references? If so, consider if you have appropriately referenced your paraphrased information. Have you included all of the information sources that


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✓ ✓

were referenced in your assignment? Unless specifically requested, don’t include sources that weren’t actually referenced in the text of your assignment. Have you provided the full bibliographic details for your information sources, and have these been given in a consistent manner? Is your reference list in alphabetical order? (This applies to the Harvard, Chicago, APA and footnote systems.)

The next chapter shows you the basic features of writing essays, reports and reviews.


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8

Writing essays, reports and reviews: The golden rules

Writing essays, reports and reviews

• • •

What are the essential features of essay and report writing? What are some tips to get you started? How do you write book and article reviews?

This chapter outlines the golden rules for the most common forms of written assignments at university: essays, reports, and reviews of books and articles. We also show you how to get started on the writing process, overcome writer’s block, plan your assignments, do drafts, proofread your work and stick to word limits. The chapter concludes with an assignment submission checklist. Throughout your university career, no matter what subjects you’re studying, you’ll be required to do some form of written assignment. The fundamental purpose of any type of writing assignment is to improve your communication and critical analysis skills. A written assignment provides evidence of your understanding of a certain topic. It also documents your ability to research relevant information and apply it to a given topic by synthesising, organising and referencing your material in a concise manner. Therefore, written assignments provide you with life-long learning skills by honing


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your ability to communicate your thoughts in a systematic and logical way.

What are essays? Essays are a common form of assessment at university. The purpose of an essay is to answer a specific question within a given time frame and word limit. You are required to provide supporting evidence for the statements you make, and to critically analyse competing explanations or theories based on wide reading of the relevant literature. The content of an essay must be referenced using an accepted format (see Chapter 7 for referencing help). The essay format The basic structure of an essay involves three parts: the introduction, the body of the essay and the conclusion. Sometimes you are also required to include an abstract—that is, a short summary of the essay that is usually a paragraph in length and included on a separate page before the introduction of the essay. Introductions serve the purpose of clarifying an essay topic so that the reader has a basic understanding of what will be covered in the remainder of the essay. The introduction is normally between half a page and one page in length, depending on the overall word limit and the complexity of the topic. The body of an essay represents a series of paragraphs in which you provide supporting evidence and explanations of the issues based on your reading of the relevant literature. The body is the main part of any essay, and it’s crucial that the information presented is continually related to the essay topic and your argument. The length of the body of the essay depends on the total word limit. The conclusion of an essay is a short summary, usually in one paragraph, of the key features of the evidence presented to support your case and to answer the question.


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Writing essays, reports and reviews 93

HANDY HINT 28: Further help with essay writing If essay writing is a major part of assessment in the subjects that you’re studying, you can get extra advice and helpful tips from: Germov, J. (2000) Get Great Marks for Your Essays, 2nd edition, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Unless you are specifically requested to do so, the use of subheadings in essays is optional. If you do use subheadings, be sure that the material before and after a heading is logically connected. HANDY HINT 28 directs you to further help with writing essays.

Book and article reviews A book or article review is similar to an essay, but instead of answering a question, you write an essay on a specific book or article within a given word limit. Like an essay, reviews have an introduction, a body based on supporting evidence and relevant wider literature, a conclusion, are referenced and include a reference list. The word limit for reviews is usually shorter than for essays, so direct quotes should be kept to a minimum. The content of your review should be referenced in the usual fashion. A review consists of both a descriptive summary and an analysis of the material. In assessing a review, marks are awarded for: • •

Evidence that you understand the content of the material. This is the descriptive part of your review and should be no more than 50 per cent of the total word length. The analysis of an author’s findings and/or argument by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of what an author has written.

Therefore, to properly review a book or article, it’s essential that you read other relevant literature on the topic.


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You can only review something by making comparisons with what other authors have said, and thus wider reading is a key requirement of reviewing the work of others. The review format If specific guidelines are provided in your subject, make sure these are followed. However, the following format provides a basic guide for writing book and article reviews: •

•

•

•

•

Title page: Include the complete details of the work being reviewed, such as author/s name, date of publication, title, place of publication and publisher or, if reviewing a journal article, list the author/s, date, article and journal title, volume, number and page details. Introduction: Your introduction should refer to the name of the author/s and the title of the work you are reviewing. It should also briefly describe what the work is about—that is, the author’s central argument or theoretical perspective. Description and analysis: Describe the work, noting the key issue or question addressed, the author’s main argument, the methods used, the research findings, and the theoretical perspective where relevant. Make comparisons with other literature on the same topic. Conclusion: In the final paragraph, sum up your review with a brief statement on the quality of the work in terms of its main findings/argument/theory and relevance to the wider literature on the topic. References/bibliography: Include the full details of the information sources you referenced in your review (see Chapter 7 for help with referencing).

The essential features of report writing Report-based assignments are common in subjects where some form of research—such as fieldwork, observation or


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laboratory experiments—is undertaken. If you are required to write reports, you will usually be given guidelines for the preferred report format. Ensure that you follow these guidelines to the letter, because marks are often deducted for not using the preferred report format. While there is no single, accepted format for writing a report, this section covers the features most reports are required to include. The report format A report format involves dividing your assignment content into designated sections, identified by subheadings. Note that report formats can vary, so you should always check with your lecturer about the desired format. The following list provides an explanation of the key features of most reports: • • • • •

•

•

Report title: Usually a short description of what the report is about. Introduction: A brief overview of the topic or research problem being investigated. Literature review: A brief description and analysis of the relevant literature that summarises the current state of knowledge on the topic you are investigating. Research question or aim: A short statement of the research question, problem or aims of the study (sometimes included at the end of the introduction). Method: An exact and specific description of the actual study undertaken, including information on how the data were collected, recorded, analysed and are to be presented. Results: A detailed description of the findings of your study. This might be in written form only, or in the form of tables and/or graphs which are also explained in writing. Note that your lecturer may specify guidelines for the formatting of tables and diagrams for you to follow. Discussion: An analysis (as opposed to description) of your results by comparing them to the other studies and


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•

•

•

•

theories summarised in the literature review section. Your discussion should highlight any similarities and differences between your findings and others reported in the wider literature. In the discussion, note any limitations to your methodology and speculate how these may have affected the results. Conclusion: Drawn from the analysis of your results, make some conclusions by relating your findings to the original research question/s. You might also indicate directions for future research. Recommendations: Depending on the nature of the report, you are sometimes required to note the implications or possible applications of your findings. This might be under a separate heading, or included as part of your conclusion. References/bibliography: Include a full list of all the information sources referenced in your report according to the preferred referencing system (see Chapter 7 for help with referencing). Appendices: Sometimes information that is important for readers to know, but not directly relevant to the body of the report, is placed at the end in an appendix. For example, it is common to include information letters and consent forms given to participants in the study, or to include the detailed features of the survey or measurement instrument used (where relevant). If there is more than one appendix, the appendices should be numbered consecutively.

Some report formats may also require the following features to be included: • •

Contents page: A list of the headings and subheadings contained in the report, including page numbers. Terms of reference: A statement of the scope and objectives of the report established by those setting the assignment task.


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HANDY HINT 29: Ask to see some sample assignments Most lecturers keep copies of good assignments from past students. If you are unclear about what is expected of you in a particular assignment, it’s reasonable to request to see samples of previous work. This can often help you to understand what is expected of you in a particular subject, discipline or assignment task.

• •

Acknowledgments: A short paragraph in which the help of certain people and institutions is noted. Abstract: A short summary of the report that is normally on a separate page.

How to get started: From little things, big things grow Trouble getting started? Staring at a blank page? It’s not uncommon to find it difficult to start the writing process. However, this section will give you some tips to help you get started and overcome procrastination and writer’s block. The key skills needed are: • • • • • •

interpreting the topic constructing a plan separating the writing process into creative and editing phases doing a number of drafts proofreading sticking to the word limit.

How to interpret a topic The first step is to do some preliminary reading on the topic from which you can develop a plan and narrow down your search for relevant material in your university library. It’s


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common to know very little about a topic at the start, so before you commit much effort to the writing process, you need to have a basic idea of what the topic is about. Start by defining any keywords in the assignment question. Keywords are concepts, theories and phenomena that are often specific to an academic discipline and can be defined using a discipline dictionary and introductory textbooks. A discipline dictionary provides definitions of common concepts and theories in a certain discipline. For example, you can find specialised dictionaries for most disciplines, such as biology, economics, education, law, medicine, nursing, politics, physics, psychology and sociology. You should also scan the contents and index pages of introductory texts to help you define and clarify the topic (see also Chapter 5 on librarybased research). Once this is done, you can construct a plan for your assignment. The plan of things to come: Don’t miss this crucial step Many first year students fall into the trap of starting an assignment without first doing a plan. A plan is important, because it allows you to form a clear idea of what your assignment is about and the type of information you need to find. There are a number of ways you can write an assignment plan, but we suggest an easy method is to use the mind-mapping approach. Mind mapping involves brainstorming the topic on a piece of paper. Start by writing down the assignment question in the centre of a page, then jot down everything you can think of that might be relevant—concepts, definitions, ideas, authors and theories. Once you have something on paper, you can then begin to organise it into a logical order (see Figure 8.1). Your plan needs to be able to answer the following questions: •

Who? Always keep your intended audience in mind. In most cases, your assignment content will need to be


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Writing essays, reports and reviews 99 Figure 8.1

An assignment mind map

Define keywords

Known facts

Assignment topic Relevant concepts

Relevant authors

Possible explanations or theories

•

• • •

discipline specific. Therefore, make sure you use key books and articles from the relevant discipline. What? You need to have an idea of the types of information you need to include in your essay. Will research findings, certain theories, or government policies need to be included? Where? Does your material have to be country or region specific? Are comparisons with other places required? When? Consider whether historical detail needs to be included. Is it important to specify time periods, or do you only need to deal with current events? Why/how? What explanations or theories are relevant to the topic? Most academic writing consists of critical analysis, which often takes the form of answering why or how questions.

By mapping out the answers to the above questions in your assignment plan, you’ll have a clear idea of the information you need to find (see Chapter 5 for help in this regard). You can also look at what needs to be included,


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and determine the order in which these points would be most logically presented. Once you have found the relevant information and taken notes, it’s time to start the writing process. Let the creative juices flow A common mistake when you begin to write is to try and construct a perfect sentence, with perfect grammar, spelling and word usage every time. Writing is a process that gets better with time, particularly with revising and re-drafting what you have written. If you keep working on an individual sentence until it’s perfect, you’ll get bogged down in the nitty-gritty and end up writing very little. The best thing to do is to separate the creative and technical aspects of the writing process. How do you do this? The key feature of writing is to write! It sounds easy, but it’s harder than you think. Aim to get as much down on paper as you can, without reading over it and trying to immediately correct what you’ve written. It’s important to let your creative juices flow uninterrupted and to leave the editing until you have something substantial down on paper. This is because writing—that is, creating statements of your thoughts and synthesising the notes you have taken from your wider reading—is very different from attending to technical aspects like spelling and grammar. If you attempt to create and edit at the same time, you’re likely to take much longer to write your assignments, or you could be faced with writer’s block. By following the above advice and letting your creative juices flow, you’ll overcome the problem of writer’s block. However, sometimes an impediment to your creative juices can be a lack of concentration, and this is where the mind-mapping technique can help you further. After finding a quiet space in which to write, it’s common to suddenly find your head filled with plenty of thoughts that have nothing to do with writing your assignment. If you find this


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Writing essays, reports and reviews 101 Figure 8.2

Mind mapping for mind clearing

Check to see if we’re still going to see the band tonight

Remember to call mum

My thoughts What will I have for lunch?

Need to get petrol for the car

Need to take the dog for a walk

is the case, jot down your thoughts in a mind map. Once again, start with a circle in the middle of a blank sheet of paper and write something like ‘my thoughts’ in the middle of it. Then, note all the thoughts that are preoccupying your mind, such as going out tonight, calling your partner, doing some shopping or walking the dog. See Figure 8.2 for an example. Once you’ve recorded your thoughts on paper, you can stop thinking about them and start focusing on your assignment. If further stray thoughts pop into your mind, simply add them to your mind map. If you follow the advice to ‘clear your mind’ and ‘just write’, writer’s block will be a stranger to you. First, second and third drafts Aim to write at least three drafts of any written assignment, even though the actual number of drafts is really up to you. The first draft is simply converting your notes into the proper sentences and the basic format of the assignment, be it an essay, report or review. Use your plan to provide a


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basic structure to your writing. Don’t worry about spelling and expression at the first draft stage—the most important thing is to convert your notes, thoughts and assignment plan into basic sentences and paragraphs. It’s a good idea to have a short break after you’ve written the first draft. Writing is a very personal process, and sometimes it can help to distance yourself from what you have written to gain a little objectivity. By doing this, you can come back to your draft with a fresh mind and evaluate the relevance and quality of your writing. The second and third drafts involve refining your assignment structure, expression and argument. Check that you have answered the question, followed your plan and adhered to any specific format guidelines. It might also help to give someone else your second or third draft to read for their feedback. However, don’t give them a rough first draft if you ever want them to help you again! Proofreading: The fine tooth comb approach Never submit any assignment until you have proofread it. Once you’ve finished writing, it’s easy to feel so relieved that you just hand it in without checking what you’ve written. Worse still, you may not have left yourself enough time to proofread your assignment before handing it in. A computer spell-checker is insufficient to pick up the use of incorrect words (correctly spelt), the wrong references, sloppy expression, lack of supporting evidence and whether or not your pages are in the proper order (see HANDY HINT 30). Lack of proofreading will almost certainly lose you marks, which would be a shame considering the work you’ve put in already. Many students rush to submit their assignments without checking if any pages are missing or whether their printer ran out of ink! The best way to proofread your work is to imagine using a fine tooth comb approach, slowly checking your writing line by line. It helps if you can leave some


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HANDY HINT 30: John’s survival tip: Computers aren’t fail-safe, so take precautions Computers are fallible machines, so it’s wise to take some basic precautions. Computers crash and disks become damaged, so always have two backup copies of any work you do on a computer—one on disk and the other on your computer hard drive. Get into the habit of regularly clicking the save button on your word-processing system. If you use a shared computer, be careful to save your document to your own disk and preferably print a hard copy of your work after each session on the computer.

time between when you finish writing and when you start proofreading. Otherwise, your familiarity with your work may result in you glossing over sentences and missing mistakes. The importance of word limits Word limits on assignments are set for a purpose. They are used to provide an indication of the amount of work required for an assignment and to encourage you to develop the skills of writing economically and concisely. Treat word limits as word targets, and aim to write as close to this limit as possible. If you write significantly less or more than the word limit, you may be penalised. Writing too little means you have probably treated the topic superficially. Writing too much shows a lack of discipline to the guidelines and to the most relevant content in covering the topic. Don’t be fooled into thinking that an alteration to font size or line spacing will trick a marker into believing you’ve met the word limit. The word limit is there for the purpose of encouraging concise and relevant writing. Part of your assessment is based on your ability to answer a question or cover a topic in a given word limit. That’s why you will lose marks for abusing word limits.


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Meeting deadlines and avoiding excuses Aim to submit your assignments by the deadline, otherwise you’ll probably lose marks. Due dates are part of the assessment criteria for any assignment. Due dates encourage you to develop time management skills (see Chapter 3) and are also used for treating students fairly. For example, if one student is allowed much more time to submit an assignment, then this is unfair to all the other students. The granting of extensions is rare, but there may be times when circumstances mean that you need to request an extension to the due date. The general practice is to consult with your lecturer or tutor well before the due date and request an extension. Some lecturers or academic departments may formalise this procedure and require that your request be put in writing on an extension form obtainable from the departmental office. Be prepared to provide supporting evidence for the reason you give for an extension, such as a doctor’s or counsellor’s certificate. Avoid making up excuses, and give academics credit for their years of experience—they have heard every excuse. Here are our top ten student excuses: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

My car was broken into and everything was stolen. My flat/house was broken into and everything was stolen. I’ve had to move house unexpectedly. I lost all my stuff somewhere (usually the library). The dog ate it. My little brother/sister/cousin spilt stuff all over it. My disk is corrupted. My computer has a virus. The printer ran out of ink. A relative died unexpectedly (usually a grandparent).

While such tragedies do occur and can be a legitimate basis for an extension, such excuses have become so common that increasingly students are asked for verification, usually


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from a family doctor or family member. Besides, if you’re well organised, you’ll have the assignment ready well enough ahead of time so that last-minute hassles won’t put you behind.

What markers look for: Assignment submission checklists Before you hand in any written assignment, use the following checklists as a final quality check and as indicators of what markers commonly look for: Basic format requirements: ✓ Have you met the required word target (that is, is your word total within 10 per cent of the target)?


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✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

Have you proofread your assignment and corrected any mistakes? If specific assignment guidelines exist, have they been followed? Are the pages of your assignment numbered and stapled together? Avoid submitting your assignment in bulky folders or folios unless you are requested to do so. Have you attached a cover sheet to your assignment listing the question/topic/title, your name, tutor’s name, tutorial time, subject name/code and the due date? For handwritten assignments: is it written on one side of the paper only (for legibility)? For typed assignments: many universities are now environmentally conscious and encourage students to submit assignments on recycled paper that has been printed on both sides (however, please check with your lecturer or tutor first). Have you used 1.5 or double spacing and left a wide margin (4 centimetres) for marker comments? Have you attached your reference list/bibliography? Have you kept a copy of your assignment just in case it’s lost after it’s submitted?

Introduction: ✓ Have you interpreted the question or topic? ✓ Have you provided an overview of what your assignment will cover, including any theories/explanations addressed (where relevant)? ✓ Is a clear statement of your argument/theme/thesis provided (where relevant)? ✓ Are any key concepts used in the assignment question defined (where relevant)? Body: ✓ Does your you would ✓ Have you ments you

content reflect what your introduction stated cover? provided supporting evidence for the statemake?


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✓

Have you analysed your material and compared relevant theories (where relevant)?

Conclusion: ✓ Have you provided a brief summary of the evidence and argument presented in your assignment? ✓ Have you answered the question? ✓ Have you avoided including new information in your conclusion? References/bibliography: ✓ Is your material properly referenced? ✓ Are all the references cited in your assignment listed in your reference list/bibliography? ✓ Have the full details of the information sources you referenced in your assignment been provided in your reference list/bibliography? (See Chapter 7 for help with referencing.)

Getting feedback on your assignments: Learn from past mistakes One final piece of advice regarding assignments is to learn from your mistakes. It’s surprising how many students don’t collect their assignments at the end of the semester to read the marker’s comments. If you’ve lost marks on an assignment, the marker should have given you an indication of why and where you went wrong. If not, or if comments are unclear, make a time to discuss your assignment with your marker. The important thing is not to make the same mistakes again, and the best way to do so is to collect your marked assignments and use them as a guide to improve your next written assignment. The next chapter provides tips on another type of assessment task—giving presentations with style.


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9

Presenting with style

Presenting with style

• • •

How do I get my message across verbally? How can I overcome my nerves at the thought of standing up and presenting to a group of people? What’s the best way to use visual aids?

If you are asking yourself any of these questions, chances are you have been given an oral presentation as an assessment task. This chapter shows you how to get maximum marks for minimal pain in oral presentations.

Why oral presentations? All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players . . . William Shakespeare, As You Like It

The oral presentation format is used to varying degrees, depending on the area of study. Presentations may be used in university study for the following reasons: •

to encourage students to develop a skill they will use in their professional careers


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Presenting with style 109

Frank ‘The King’ Petraglio presents in style

• • • • •

to share in-depth information gathered by one student with the remainder of the class to provide variety to tutorial time to assess students’ presentation skills for the assessor to observe student knowledge directly for students to experience asking and answering questions.

You will notice that the main reason is NOT to terrify students out of their wits! We will deal with the issue of how to boost your confidence later.


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What form do presentations take? Oral presentations may take different formats, depending on the objective of the assessment task. 1

Single person delivery format: In this format you stand before your class or tutorial group and speak for a specified period of time. You might be asked to present a summary of information you have gathered on a particular topic. Alternatively, you might be asked to critically review an article or report. You may also be required to answer questions at the end of your presentation to see how well you think on your feet. If you are involved in an area where presentation skills are vital, such as communications or media studies, you might even be asked to give the entire presentation ‘off-thecuff ’, which is one you can’t prepare for. The debate: A debate is a type of presentation, but instead of working as an individual you are presenting as part of a team. You may even be assessed as a team rather than as an individual. A debate centres around a topic, made in terms of a statement—for example: ‘Scarce health resources should be used in preventing illness rather than treating the sick.’ Topics are usually controversial, but always have shades of grey—that is, there are arguments for and against the statement. There are two teams per debate: one team making the argument in support of the statement (known as the affirmative or government team), and the other team arguing against the debate topic (known as the negative or opposition team). In a debate, part of your assessment includes presentation of the information you have gathered to support your argument. However, you will also need to think on your feet in refuting (arguing against) claims made by the opposing team. The oral examination: Some disciplines of study, such as medicine, employ an oral exam, known in Latin as viva M

2

3


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voce. This is where a student sits in front of a panel of academics and answers whatever questions they put. The idea behind this type of test is that they can examine how the student performs under pressure, and also search for gaps in knowledge which may not have been conclusively tested in a written exam. While this can be a very intimidating form of presentation for a student, the hints in this chapter, especially in terms of confidence, can also be applied to preparing for the oral exam.

Substance and style To get good marks in presentations, you need to do well in both substance and style. ‘Substance’ refers to the content of what you are presenting and relates to how well you know your topic. ‘Style’ refers to the way the content or message is delivered. Both are crucial for good performance and are often interrelated. For example, if you know the subject matter very well (substance) you can take confidence from that, which will improve your style and enhance your performance. Let’s look at these elements in more detail. The substance of presentations As defined above, ‘substance’ means knowing your subject matter. This does NOT refer to memorising your talk or presentation, which is actually an aspect of style. It means researching your topic so that you become an authority on the subject. Nothing is so transparent to an audience as someone who doesn’t really know what they are talking about. All the style in the world can’t make up for lack of familiarity with subject matter. So, make sure you know what you need to say about your topic (see Chapters 5 and 6 on researching your topic using the library and web before proceeding).


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Planning your presentation: Getting the substance right Before you even start to worry about presentation style, you need to devote yourself to the substance of your message. Imagine that you are painting a verbal picture of your topic that the audience will build up piece by piece. To do this successfully, you need to be clear about who your target audience is. Try and put yourself in their place. What would you like to hear if you were in their shoes? Consider their level of previous knowledge about the topic, their education level and the relevance the topic might have for them. What should they learn first to enhance their understanding of the rest of the material? This is known as targeting your audience. Your aim is to persuade the audience to your point of view. This is true even if you’re doing a factual presentation, in that you’re trying to convince people of the importance of what you have to say. The first stage of planning is mind mapping what needs to be covered (see Chapter 8 for how to do mind mapping). Then look at your mind map and try to imagine a logical flow to your argument. Use your mind map to put your points in order. The amount of detail you go into will vary according to the time allocation you have for the presentation. You should avoid trying to cram in too much information. If you have fifteen minutes allocated, write the talk as if it were for ten minutes for your first practice round. This allows you to add important points you have missed or which require further clarification. You will usually not be penalised for going slightly under time, while you may be harshly penalised for going over. Try to start with a ‘hook’. A hook is something that grabs the attention of the audience, and tells them why they should listen to you. For example, a good hook in presentations to students is the phrase, ‘Would you like to hear what you need to study to pass your exams?’! Next, think


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about the body of your presentation with the aim of maintaining audience interest. You need to plan to heighten that interest every seven minutes or you will ‘lose’ the audience. Add something of relevance to them where possible. Try to keep jargon to a minimum. You’ll learn how to add interest through your delivery style in the next section. Finally, plan to close in a way that will leave the audience with a vivid picture or an emotional response, so that they take away a reaction to your presentation. Once you have a plan of what you want to say, you need to decide whether to write your presentation out in full, or just use key points to jog your memory. Unless you are already an accomplished presenter, you are probably best starting with a fully written presentation. This approach is mandatory if you are required to hand in a written version of your paper. However, if you do decide to write your talk out in full, DON’T fall into the trap of reading it word for word. This is boring to the audience, because it makes it difficult for you to have eye contact with them. By all means, look down at your paper from time to time to make sure you are covering the topic, but keep looking up to maintain eye contact with the audience. The more you practise your presentation beforehand, the less you’ll need to look down at your paper. Once you are more confident in presenting, you might forgo the word-for-word script in favour of key points written on small cue cards. Now that you’ve planned your content, you need to consider the style in which you will deliver it.

Focus on style: The science and art of presentations To say that presentation delivery is both science and art means it relies on both a logical component as well as a less predictable component. To follow the logical component like a formula gives a certain result. The rest is that ‘something extra’ brought by an individual which comes with


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the art of acting or performance. Here we look at how you can optimise both aspects. Dissecting presentation skills As a university student, you are in a good position to be able to identify the key elements of good presentation style, even if you have never given a presentation before. How? By an important form of learning called modelling. If you are an on-campus student, you have attended hours and hours of lectures. Think for a moment about the best lecturer you have. Write down four things that contribute positively to their delivery style. 1 ...................... ......................

2 ...................... ......................

3 ...................... ......................

4 ...................... ......................

You can also learn what not to do from those with poor skills. Think of the worst lecturer you have seen and write a list of four things NOT to do when delivering a presentation. 1 ...................... ......................

2 ...................... ......................

3 ...................... ......................

4 ...................... ......................

Now, rephrase these negative behaviours into positive presentation skills using Figure 9.1. Identifying key elements of effective presentation delivery is an important step in setting your own goals for developing your presentation skills. Before we go any further, you should take a few minutes to analyse your own presentation skills and set three key goals to improve or develop them. They can be in an area in which you know you need to improve, or those which


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Presenting with style 115 Figure 9.1

Characteristics of good and bad presenters

A bad presenter • Flicks hair all the time • Talks too quickly ...................... ...................... ......................

A good presenter • Doesn’t make repetitive and distracting gestures • Talks in a clear tone, etc. . . . ...................... ...................... ......................

you have observed in others to be very important. Here’s an example to get you started. Remember Julie from Chapter 3? These are her goals: 1

2

3

To develop the confidence to present without appearing nervous (because when I’ve presented in the past my hands shook and I could hardly see my notepaper). To stick to time limits in presentations (because I either get cut off or take longer than I should in my presentations). To avoid saying ‘um’ too often.

Later we will see how Julie can address these goals. Now write down your own goals. 1

..........................................

2

..........................................

3

..........................................

Let’s look at how to meet your goals by examining key features of importance to presentation style and hints on how to optimise them. 1 Physical presentation: Make sure that your clothing, jewellery and hairstyle don’t distract the audience.


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HANDY HINT 31: Lauren’s survival tip for presenting I’m usually a little nervous when I start to present, so I make my introductor y sentences something I’m comfortable saying, to ease myself into the flow. Depending on the audience, I might reintroduce myself, or say how pleased I am to be there, etc. That way, if the audience is still settling down through my opening remarks they haven’t really missed anything and they are ready to focus on my message.

2 Opening : Choose your first words carefully. Use the opening as an opportunity for the audience to get used to the way you speak and for you to get over those first few anxious moments (see HANDY HINT 31). 3 Organisation: You should appear well informed on the topic, and prepared to present your knowledge to the audience in a logical way. 4 Speech: Pronounce your words clearly, make sure your voice is sufficiently loud, and put enough inflection in the pitch of your voice to avoid monotone delivery. 5 Be entertaining : The use of humour helps. Show enthusiasm and passion for the topic. 6 Empathy: Try to form a connection with the audience by showing that you understand where they are coming from. 7 Audiovisual aids: Use them when you need to, but don’t hide behind them (see section below) 8 Body language: Try to achieve good eye contact with the audience, be conscious of your posture, avoid annoying habits such as flicking your hair, and don’t over-use hand gestures. 9 Stick within time limits: Practise giving your presentation to make sure you get the timing right. 10 Confidence: This is such an important aspect that we will consider it in more detail below. M

M


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Confidence: What you don’t have, fake! If you think back to the lecturers whose presentation style you admire, you will probably notice that they have one thing in common: they exude an aura of confidence when presenting. Confidence is a very attractive quality and persuades the audience to trust what the presenter says. You might be surprised to know that even people who exude an aura of confidence may actually be anxious on the inside. Therefore, the important thing if you don’t really feel confident is to act confident. All you need to do to act confident is to put yourself into a role before you present. Imagine yourself as a student who is very confident in presenting, one who has been doing so successfully for years. Imagine what it would be like to be that student. Picture yourself as that student. Practise in front of a mirror; what would that student look like? Would they have confident hand gestures? How would they stand? Still in front of the mirror, imagine that you are looking at a confident student, someone who is always comfortable with presenting, until you can see yourself as that student. When next you come to present to an audience, put yourself in the role of that confident student. It might be an act, but the audience won’t know that. Do whatever else makes you feel confident, such as wearing a favourite outfit or lucky charm. There are other things you can do to increase your confidence. First, try to focus on the importance of the message you want to get across, rather than on the fact that you need to deliver that message. It’s the meaning that you need to communicate. Second, be well prepared. It isn’t enough to ‘merely know your stuff ’; you also need to practise, practise, practise! The more times you practise, the more familiar the actual presentation will feel as you do it, and the more natural and confident you will appear. If Julie does this, she’ll feel more confident, as well as getting her timing right. Practise in front of the mirror or, better still, turn family or friends into your audience and get them to give you constructive feedback. M


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HANDY HINT 32: Lauren’s hand trick For those really anxious moments, try this trick. Hold out your left hand, palm down. With the thumb and forefinger of your right hand, press that sensitive area between the thumb and forefinger on your left hand. Press that point until it hurts. Keep pressing for 60 seconds. It’s not a form of torture designed to take your mind off the presentation! After about 30 seconds, you should feel a lessening of the pain. This is because pressing on this point causes endorphins, the body’s pain-killing chemicals, to be released. These chemicals are extremely power ful and you’ll find that they’ll calm you down. This is a good trick to use in the 60 seconds leading up to the beginning of your presentation.

When you are trying to create an aura of confidence, there are certain things you should try to avoid that are ‘dead giveaways’ of nerves. This is the advice that meets Julie’s first goal. If she’s so nervous that her hands shake, she should avoid using a pen to point to diagrams on an overhead projection. Nothing shows nerves so much as a shaky hand! You also need to be conscious that you don’t speak too quickly, which is another sign of nerves. Write the word ‘slow’ or ‘breathe’ in the margin of your notes to remind you in those first anxious minutes. See HANDY HINT 32 for another way to reduce anxiety. Try to relax and enjoy the experience—your confidence will develop with practice. Uses and abuses of audiovisual materials Be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that you need high-tech audiovisual aids to give a good presentation. At best, audiovisuals enhance your presentation by showing in pictorial form what you can’t convey in words. At their worst, however, they are a distraction that blocks your


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Presenting with style 119 Figure 9.2

When to use audiovisual aids

Audiovisual

Use it

Don’t use it

Overheads

• To show how to spell jargon or complicated phrases.

• If you need detail.

Slides

• If looking at detail in a picture, e.g. a map, diagram or graph.

• For anything else.

Video/film

• To illustrate motion.

• To show anything static. • For a single speaker (a ‘ talking head’).

• For close-ups.

• As a cue for your presentation.

M

Audio-tapes

• When playing interviews where respondent’s tone of voice is important. • To play music.

• When you could read quotes yourself and convey the same message.

Handouts

• For any detailed information that the audience needs to keep.

• During your presentation if it will distract attention from you—give it out at the end.

contact with the audience. Remember that the purpose of your presentation is to communicate a message to your audience, and at the same time demonstrate your skills in order to obtain a decent mark for your efforts. As a rule of thumb, less is more with audiovisuals. Use them with caution and only when you can’t convey your message by your voice alone. Figure 9.2 outlines when to use what type of audiovisuals.


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An example of a presentation assessment form Presentation assessment and feedback sheet Student name: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Presentation assessment criteria

Comments

Voice and mannerisms • Voice: speed, variety, clarity • Body language • Eye contact with audience Structure and content • Introduction, logical flow, conclusions • Relevant content • Within time limit Audiovisual aids • How were they used? • Were they clear, distracting or enhancing? Questions and discussion • Ability to answer questions and handle discussion General remarks Mark/grade:

Marker:

Assessing presentation style The assessment of presentation skills is one aspect that often terrifies students. Just when you sit down from the presentation feeling the worst is over, you realise you are about to get feedback in one form or another. You will usually be given a mark, which gives you some feedback in terms of how well you performed, but it fails to give you a way to improve. A more useful type of assessment is a commentsbased form that focuses on giving constructive criticism. Figure 9.3 provides an example of a presentation assessment


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HANDY HINT 33: Thirteen tips for top presentations ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Set goals for how to develop/improve your presentation style and strategies for how you will address those goals in this presentation. Know your subject material well, so that you can speak with authority. Consider your target audience and pitch your talk at the appropriate level. Plan your material so that it’s delivered in a logical sequence. Prepare your presentation in a manner that suits your style, whether it be cue cards or a written speech. Practise your presentation AT LEAST FIVE TIMES before delivering it, in front of a select audience if possible, to get it within the designated time. Do something to make you feel special on the day of your presentation. Fight last-minute ner ves by taking mental time out and taking some deep breaths. Communicate with the audience rather than talking at them. Make eye contact. Be yourself. Smile. Use audiovisual aids with caution. Stick to the time limit, and treat question time as part of your presentation. Evaluate your performance by asking a friend or colleague to give you constructive feedback. Reset your presentation goals according to this feedback so that you can perform better next time.

form, noting the range of criteria on which student presentations are usually assessed. As the form indicates, presentations are assessed both on content and style. If your lecturer doesn’t use a comments-based form, there is nothing to stop you doing so. Ask one of your friends to give you comments in a constructive way. You can even ask them to focus on a specific aspect. For example,


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Julie might ask a friend to count how many times she says ‘um’. It’s natural to want to be given positive feedback, but the fact is that being told ‘you were great’ isn’t very helpful to your future skills development. The trick in giving feedback is to say something positive first, then introduce an element the person can focus on next time. For example, ‘You spoke in a really clear voice, and next time you might slow the pace a little’. Remember this also when you are receiving feedback. Try to hear the positive messages as well as the constructive suggestions. Don’t be overwhelmed that your presentation wasn’t perfect—they never are. Even seasoned presenters can learn something from the audience. If you listen to feedback and get enough practice, you’ll be a seasoned performer yourself by the end of your university career. See HANDY HINT 33 for some final tips for making the most of your presentations. The next chapter demystifies another important survival skill— working in groups.


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10

Working in groups

Working in groups

• • •

What skills do you need to work in a group? How can you establish group rapport and ensure the workload is shared evenly? How can conflict be resolved?

Written and oral assessment tasks at university may rely on students working in groups or teams. Applying this strategy to assessment tasks is usually an attempt to help students establish important skills for their future careers. However, teamwork may come as a rude shock within an education system which is geared to rewarding the individual. Therefore, you need to strike a fine balance between getting on well with group members and making sure you get the highest grade possible. If groups are working well, then good group process should result in an optimal grade. But how can you achieve this? To answer this, we need to examine group structure.

What are groups? The theory of group work relies on the creation of a new, separate entity: the group. While a group is comprised of


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individuals, it develops a life of its own. At its best, a group is a system where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Put another way, a group of six people working together can achieve more than six individuals working in isolation. This is certainly true for groups which function well. However, you may have been unfortunate enough to be a member of a dysfunctional group—literally, one which does not function well—where less might be achieved than if people were working individually. To try and keep your group healthy and functional, you need to understand something of ‘group process’. This is a term for how a group functions. There are two key aspects to the function of a group: 1

2

Task-oriented functions: These involve the actual work the group was created for in the first place. Task roles include organising or directing the work of the group, and keeping the discussion on track. Group-oriented functions: These maintain the group as a separate functioning entity and prevent it becoming dysfunctional or breaking down into individual units. Group maintenance roles include encouraging everyone to participate equally and maintaining a positive environment.

Some people may act in each of the two roles—for example, organising and motivating the work of the group. A group leader (if you decide to have a leader) would need to focus on both task and group processes to ensure that there is a balance between the two. The role that people assume when first entering a group will depend on their past experience with groups and their personality. How does personality relate to group work? Find out by thinking about what you would do in the scenario described in Figure 10.1. The work-style quiz isn’t about moral judgments and there is no right or wrong answer. It’s about choice. If you chose option 1 or 2, you are a more task-oriented person. This doesn’t necessarily make you a bad friend; it just means


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Working in groups 125 Figure 10.1

The work-style quiz

You have an essay due by 9am Monday and it’s now 8pm Sunday. You have the essay well planned, you’ve collected great information, organised it well and you’ve written the first draft. However, you realise there is still a long night ahead of you to get it finished. The phone rings. It’s your best friend, who has just broken up from a sixmonth relationship. She wants to come over and cr y on your shoulder. You say (choose one): 1

2 3 4

I’m sorr y, I really can’t do that right now. I have this essay I need to finish, but I’ll see you after I hand it in tomorrow. Nothing (you let the answer-phone pick up and record the message). Come on over, I’ll make some hot chocolate (and plan to finish the essay between midnight and dawn). I’ll come over to you and stay the night (and plan to tell your lecturer the next day that your dog got run over and you need an extension).

that you value the importance of finishing a task and getting the mark you deserve for your work. You are more likely to take a task role in a group, such as listing or directing tasks for group members or making sure the work is done to a deadline. If you chose option 3 or 4, you value keeping people happy more highly than having a task finished on time or to a high standard. This may mean that people rely on you to fill this role, which is fine, except that sometimes your own work suffers. If this is the case, you are more likely to take a group process role in group work, such as keeping up morale or resolving conflict. You should be able to see from this exercise that it would be a disaster to have a group comprised of six people who were all task-oriented, and equally disastrous to have a group comprised of six people who were all group


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HANDY HINT 34: Anna-Leena’s survival tip for working in groups If you have a choice, make sure you work with the right people. This might mean being ruthless in not working with those people who you know don’t pull their weight. You also might need to be forthright in getting yourself into a group of people who you expect will work well together.

process-oriented. Too many task-oriented members would give you a group likely to break down or work as six individuals. Too many process-oriented members would give a group that had a lot of fun, and felt comfortable, but didn’t achieve much in the way of outcomes. Obviously, a mixture of personality types—and thus group roles—is important. How can you strike this balance? If at all possible, choose the people you work with and do it carefully. Your best friend may not necessarily be the best person for you to work with, especially if you have similar personalities. The above exercise illustrates that it is complementarity which makes for a good group dynamic, so try to find a mix of task- and process-oriented people.

Achieving group rapport The extent to which you need to establish group rapport will depend on the size of your task. A one-off group exercise obviously needs less work than a team working together for a semester. But at the very least, even a one-off group needs members to share vital information about themselves with other members, such as their name, background, and the skills they bring to the task. This might take the form of an icebreaker, where you take it in turns to speak. It could be an introduction about yourself, or it could be in answer to a fun-type question like, ‘What’s your favourite food and


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Working in groups 127

why?’ This is a group process-related activity. In the early stages of a group, more attention should be given to process. After you’ve broken the ice with other group members, you are still in the early stages of group formation. The next step is also process-oriented, and involves making explicit the roles of each group member, possibly electing a group leader, and agreeing on the way in which your group will work. After this, you are ready to start on the task by setting clear goals with respect to the task. Working in a team that possesses a complementarity of skills means that every individual doesn’t do an identical work task. A person taking a task role may assume leadership and organisational functions. Tasks should be equivalent rather than identical, with individuals encouraged to contribute their strengths. For example, you may have been placed into a debating team to address the topic of health insurance. One of the main group goals could be to come up with strong arguments on the role of the State in providing access to health services; so, to win the debate, you will work together as a team to find and organise the information and arguments. In a team of four (three debaters, one reserve), one student might have access to the Internet through a home computer, another might agree to look up books and articles in the library, a third might interview people, while the fourth keeps track of what everyone else is doing and starts putting the argument together. Ensuring people do their share of the work The most common complaint from students about working in groups is that not all members pull their weight evenly. The concern is not so much that the group will fail in their task objective, but that the marks of those who worked hard will be ‘dragged down’ by those who didn’t work so hard, or that students who didn’t work hard will get good marks (that they don’t deserve) due to the extra efforts of others.


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Have you ever experienced this frustration? What can you do about it? The first point is to recognise that it’s extremely common. Imagine trying to find five other people with exactly the same work ethic and standards as yourself. However, it might indicate that your group didn’t spend enough time establishing clear roles for each member. If so, this should be done as soon as the problem is recognised. With some negotiation, you can aim for people to make an equal contribution to the specified task. Here are some steps towards achieving this. 1 2

3

4

Acknowledge the aim of the group in terms of the anticipated task outcomes. Acknowledge the existence of the group itself. Perhaps get people to share their fears and hopes for group work, and discuss how to overcome their fears and realise their hopes. Try to do this in the early stages of group formation. Again, come to a group agreement, this time about the process the group will use. For example, ‘We’ll contribute fairly to the group’, ‘We’ll meet every week’, etc. Make sure every member agrees to undertake a specific task and specified level of outcome. Make a list of the tasks and processes the group needs to do. Allow each member to have their preference noted. Be prepared for things to go wrong, and develop a process for how to handle them when they do. To try and prevent things going wrong, you could use a contract such as that in Figure 10.2.

Progressing the task of the group When you are clear on who is doing what, and the group is working smoothly, you can devote yourself more to the task. While members may have individual roles, the group should still meet on a regular basis to discuss progress. To


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Working in groups 129 Figure 10.2

A teamwork contract: evaluating workload input by group members

In a group work situation, it’s possible that not ever yone will pull their weight all the time. Marks for this project are based on what is submitted jointly. The task will be graded, and each member will receive the same grade, EXCEPT when individuals haven’t contributed equally. Please evaluate (honestly) your contribution, and that of others in your team. Remember, the aim is to achieve equal contributions. Project title: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Project team: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ideal contribution

Student name 1 ..............

25%

2 ..............

25%

3 ..............

25%

4 ..............

25%

Team

Actual contribution

100%

100%

Comments: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................................. ................................................. Signed: . . . . . . . . . Name (please print): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

make these meetings effective, you should keep a record of the main points discussed, especially with regard to agreed actions. In a formal setting, this record would be called meeting minutes. If your team is working on a project over more than about a week, such minutes are vital. You should buy an exercise book to record these minutes, together with time lines, in the one place. An early group task should be to establish how frequently


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Levels of conflict

Discomfort Incident Misunderstanding Tension Crisis

the group will meet, where they will meet, and how people should prepare for each meeting. All this needs to be recorded in your exercise book. As part of the planning, you need a time line. You usually know when your task needs to be completed, because you have a deadline for handing in the work. Write down that deadline at the bottom of a page. Then work backwards to see what will need to be achieved week by week to make sure the task is finished on time.

Resolving conflict Conflict resolution is a whole topic in itself and is outside the scope of this chapter. However, there are a few conflict resolution principles which you can adopt to enhance the working of your group. First, conflict isn’t necessarily a negative thing. You can use conflict as an opportunity to clarify a situation or negotiate change. Second, conflict doesn’t mean an out-and-out fight. There are several levels of conflict, as outlined by Cornelius and Faire (1989) and which are depicted in Figure 10.3. We usually think of conflict as being tension or crisis, and group function would certainly be compromised during these stages. However, if you can learn to identify conflict in the earlier stages, by checking communication between group members, you can use conflict positively to clarify the group process.


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Working in groups 131

HANDY HINT 35: Anjanette’s survival tip: Set up a study group A good way to enhance your learning is to have a study partner or to establish a study group of two or three people. In this way you can all share information and ideas, which can help you overcome any problems and also save you plenty of time. For example, even though each person shares the results of their research, they can still write up their assignments individually. Not only can study groups provide intellectual support, they can also provide emotional and motivational support when it’s needed.

Take the example used above of the four members of a debating team. With three people performing in the actual debate and one person as backup, there is potential for conflict in the group. The person chosen as backup may quietly resent this role, while one of the people chosen to perform in the debate may have preferred the support role. Tension could easily result if the backup person, disenchanted with their role, doesn’t make an equal contribution. The key to preventing tension would be for each person to openly state at the outset which role they would prefer. If no-one wants the backup role, then at least the person who ends up doing this can negotiate some concessions. Despite the potential hazards, group work can be a rewarding experience. Some courses of study rely heavily on this process, and you may need more than this introductory reading (see the ‘Further resources’ section of this book). Now that you have learned about how to work more effectively as a group member, you can practise your teamwork and negotiation skills in your next group task. You might even organise a study group voluntarily (see HANDY HINT 35). The next chapter shows you how to succeed in exams.


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11

Passing exams

Passing exams

• • •

How do you make sure you’re prepared to sit an exam? How can you make sure you get the grade you want and need? How do you avoid stuffing up while in the exam room?

If you’ve come to university straight from secondary school, you no doubt survived some of the most difficult and stressful exams possible. The good news is that you made it—congratulations! The bad news is that exams are still a major part of assessment for most university subjects. If you’re a mature age student, you might be turning to this chapter in a state of panic because you haven’t sat for an exam in a long time. Don’t panic! It’s never too late to master good exam technique. This chapter will show you how to prepare for exams without last-minute cramming. You’ll learn how to survive exam anxiety and get the outcome you deserve.

Why do we have to sit exams? There are many reasons why exams are used as a form of assessment, including:


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Passing exams 133

• • • • •

to test knowledge under pressure to test skills and knowledge of individuals under controlled conditions to standardise exams from year to year to provide standardised assessment procedures tradition: exams are set because they have always been set.

Some of these reasons are more easily justified than others. As for any type of learning, the assessment task should reflect the skills and knowledge lecturers want students to attain. The closed book, fixed time, supervised exam would seem to best fit the first reason—testing knowledge and skills under pressure. However, this is usually not the intention. Lecturers don’t set out to induce stress in students (believe it or not!). The real reason for most exams is the second option—the need to be able to test students as individuals under controlled conditions. As we explained in Chapter 10, it’s common practice to have students work in groups or teams, which often means tasks are also assessed in this way (that is, you get an average mark for the team). So, an exam is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your capabilities as an individual. You may have already completed some tasks individually, such as essay or report writing. The mark you received will have been given to you in good faith—that is, as if all the work was your own. However, the lecturer is also aware that you might have had help from a friend or relative, or you might have a copy of work submitted by someone who had done the subject in previous years. The point is that it’s impossible for an essay marker to know how much is your own work. Hence the exam, which must be all your own work, is your opportunity to show your lecturer what you know. This chapter will help you to do that to the best of your ability.

When to start preparing for exams: The time is now! For some students, exam preparation starts the night before a paper. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work


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out that these students are unlikely to survive first semester, let alone first year! So, when should you start preparing for exams? The answer is on the very first day of lectures. Two things will happen on this day that are vital to exam success. First, you should be given some sort of handout by your lecturer stating if and when you will be sitting an exam, and how much that exam will contribute to your overall assessment. When you have this information, you can begin setting your exam goals (which we’ll get to in a minute). The second key event that happens on your first day of lectures is that you’ll start taking lecture notes. Good notes are vital to successful exam preparation, and if you haven’t already done so, go and read Chapter 4. If you are well into the semester, don’t panic, but do go and read that chapter anyway. It’s never too late for you to start taking better notes, or making those notes into comprehensive summaries, which are key ingredients for exam success. Setting goals for your exams Exam goals relate to how well you want to do in a subject. Some subjects are crucial to your advancement through your degree, and you would be wise to aim for high marks in those subjects. Others might be elective subjects you do along the way that you’ll never have anything to do with again. While your aim is always to pass such subjects, you might decide that a high grade isn’t a high priority. Of course, this also depends on the type of person you are. If you’re cursed with being a perfectionist, you will want to get the best possible marks in everything! But if you want more in your life than just study, you might aim a bit lower. So, how does goal setting work? For most subjects, a pass is good enough. It lets you go on to the next level of your course and it means you don’t have a failure on your record. It won’t win you any awards, but it’s decent. However, you need to be clear on what the pass mark for the subject actually is. If the pass mark isn’t stated in the


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subject handout, then check with your lecturer. The usual pass mark is 50 per cent, but this isn’t always the case. For example, in some subjects, especially those with lots of students, results may be scaled up or down to fit a normal distribution. Some subjects, especially those relying on practical skills such as clinical skills in the health sector, may set 60 per cent or higher as a pass mark, based on the notion that students who only know half of what they should can’t be let loose on patients. Next, you need to work out how many marks each assessment task contributes to the total score for a subject. The box below provides an example of cumulative assessment for a subject. Assessment tasks Reflection Goals and objectives Report Presentation Exam

Mark allocation 10% 10% 20% 20% 40%

Total

100%

You can see here that the continuing or cumulative assessment tasks—the assessment done throughout the semester—are worth 60 per cent of the subject. This means that if you do really well at these assignments, you can walk into the exam being pretty confident of passing the subject. For example, let’s say Sharon achieved the following results for her cumulative assessment tasks: Assessment tasks Reflection Goals and objectives Report Presentation

Sharon’s marks 8/10 9/10 18/20 17/20

Total mark prior to exam

52/60


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This means that when Sharon walks into the exam at the end of the year she already has 52 per cent. If 50 is the pass mark and the subject isn’t scaled, she could get a zero score in the exam and still get a pass for the subject. This could allow Sharon to redirect her efforts to other subjects where she might need to make up marks. Let’s take another example, Alex. Unfortunately, he hasn’t done so well on his continuing assessment tasks and his marks look like this: Assessment tasks Reflection Goals and objectives Report Presentation

Alex’s marks 4/10 6/10 9/20 8/20

Total mark prior to exam

27/60

As Alex prepares for the exam, he knows he is sitting on 27 out of 60. He needs at least 23 out of 40 to get a total of more than 50 to pass the subject. To be on the safe side, he really should aim for at least 26 out of 40 for the exam. This means he’ll need to put in a much better performance than he has to date. For students who aren’t confident about sitting for exams, you can see why it’s very important to do well in continuing assessment tasks. (Of course, by the time you finish working through this chapter, you’ll be confident about how to succeed at exams!) If you’re struggling with a heavy workload or running out of time to study for exams, you can use exam goal setting to work out which subjects you need to give most effort to in the lead-up to exams. HANDY HINT 36 explains that in some subjects it may be compulsory to pass the exam, irrespective of your overall mark for the subject. Once you have set your goals, the next stage of exam preparation begins. This focuses on the type of exam itself,


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HANDY HINT 36: Beware the compulsory pass Some subjects not only rely on an examination to contribute to the final mark—THEY MAKE PASSING THE EXAM COMPULSORY. You need to be very clear on whether this applies to your subject. If this was the case in the above examples, Sharon would need to get 20 out of 40 in the exam to pass both the exam and the subject, even though she would end up with a total mark of 62. David would still need to get 23 out of 40 for the exam so that he could pass the exam, giving him a total of 50 for the subject.

because the nature of the exam determines the way in which you need to remember your material. Understanding how memory works is vital to good exam preparation.

Planning your exam timetable Get a copy of your exam timetable as soon as the university releases it. First check that you don’t have any clashes. If you do, go and see the lecturers concerned to see what you can do. Next, draw yourself up a timetable for the entire exam period, and any vacant study time the week or so before. See HANDY HINT 37 for Emma’s tip on exam preparation. Your timetable might look something like Figure 11.1. Disruption to exam preparation: What to do Even the best plans don’t always work, because life has a way of interrupting us. In the lead-up to exams you might experience illness or some other type of event that may affect your exam performance. For significant distractors you should apply for special consideration. This is a formal process where you fill out a form stating your problem and


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Environmental Studies

Revise English

Final week of exams

1.45–5pm Sociology exam

Revise Sociology

Monday

9.15am–12.30pm English exam

Environmental Studies

Revise Psychology

Last day of lectures

Tuesday

Exam countdown

Exam week 2

Exam week 1

Last week of lectures

Figure 11.1

9.15–11.30am Environmental Studies exam

Revise Environmental Studies

PARTY!

Study for Environmental Studies

Study for Psychology

Spend day sorting lecture notes and updating summaries

9.15am–12.30pm Psychology exam

Thursday

Wednesday

English study

English study

Sociology study

Psychology study

Friday

Spend 4 hours on English

Relax

Spend 8 hours on Sociology

Weekend

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HANDY HINT 37: Emma’s survival tip for exam preparation When exam time is approaching and you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of you, make an exam timetable using the following steps: Step 1: Write down what you need to do for each subject. For example, summarise notes, do mind maps, read articles and make notes, practise multiple-choice questions, and go through three past exam papers (if available). Step 2: Get a large sheet of paper and draw a series of squares to indicate the days left until your exam. Mark your exam dates and times on the paper, then allocate days and times to each task you listed in step 1. When you add a task to your timetable, tick it off your original list until all the tasks you listed are added to your timetable. This timetable puts ever ything into perspective and will give you confidence, as you’ll feel more organised and able to get through your workload.

provide evidence to justify it. These forms are then considered in allocating grades. If you think you need special consideration, here’s what to do: 1

2

3

See your lecturer and course coordinator AS SOON AS you are aware you have a problem. Find out the process for applying for special consideration and get their advice. Don’t leave it until after the exam or it won’t count for much. If it’s a medical problem, obtain a doctor’s certificate. If something has impacted on you emotionally, see a university counsellor and have them write a letter. Try not to panic—study to the best of your ability in the remaining time.


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All exams aren’t equal: Understanding types of exams The way you study for an exam will depend on the exam type. In turn, the type of exam used will depend on the nature of the subject. For example, Humanities and Social Science subjects might rely largely on essay-based exams, while Maths and Science subjects might rely on solving problems. Having said that, you should realise that this is a generalisation—you might just as easily get an exam essay in Biology as in English, and get multiple-choice questions in Sociology. What is important is that you know well beforehand the format of the exam so that you can use an appropriate study strategy. The format should be specified in your subject guide. If not, ask your lecturer. This section runs through the key features of the following main exam formats: • • • •

multiple-choice exams short answer exams long answer exams essay exams.

Multiple-choice exams Description Multiple-choice exams involve questions for which there are four or more optional answers. You need to indicate the correct answer to the question. For example: The night before exams, you need to: (a) (b) (c) (d)

study all night so that the knowledge is fresh in your mind the next morning go out and see a band, because it’s important to relax get a good night’s sleep it doesn’t really matter what you do, since you are going to fail anyway.


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Passing exams 141 Figure 11.2

Why recognition is easier than recall

Recall James: I’ve forgotten the name of your sister’s new boyfriend. What is it? Kate: I can’t remember either. This requires Kate to recall the name out of the blue. Recognition James: Was the name of your sister’s new boyfriend Richard or Robert? Kate: It’s Robert. When we retrieve a memory by recognition, we take a single step in the memor y process—checking a possibility against what is remembered. Recall, however, relies on two steps in the memory process—first, generating a series of possibilities, then checking which of these possibilities is the right one. Recall is thus a more difficult process and more likely to fail.

The correct answer won’t always be so obvious! In some cases, you’ll be required to mark your responses on the question sheet, while other times you may have a separate answer sheet. Type of learning required Multiple-choice questions can be used to test everything except the ability to make a logical argument (for which you need an essay question). However, in the way they are usually written they rely on recognition rather than recall. This means that you need to know your subject matter well enough to recognise the right answer when you see it, which is an easier form of memory than having to recall something when given no clue to start with (see Figure 11.2 for the difference between recognition and recall). This doesn’t mean that studying for a multiple-choice exam is easy. Because


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each question is quick to answer, examiners can fit a lot of questions into the exam time. This means the topic can be covered in great breadth. Study strategies for multiple-choice exams You need to achieve maximum breadth, but not too much depth. What to do: Read and summarise all your lecture notes. Also summarise the relevant chapters from your textbook (see Chapter 4). Work through past papers if available. What NOT to do: Go off on a tangent, doing extra reading on one topic area. During the exam : Allocate your time, making a note of which question you should be up to after each ten-minute interval. If an answer to a multiple-choice question isn’t immediately obvious to you, skip it and go on to the next question. Don’t try to guess the answer immediately, as later questions may relate to earlier ones and could spark your memory. Put a big mark next to the unanswered question so that you can easily go back to it later, once you’ve answered all the others. If you’re using a separate answer sheet for the exam, make sure you also leave any unanswered questions blank, otherwise your correct answers could be mismatched to the wrong questions. M

If you get stuck: In setting multiple-choice exams, the examiner tries not to favour one answer; that is, they try and distribute the answers equally between the option A, B, C or D. So, even if you don’t know the answers to any questions, as long as you go through and mark them all ‘C’ (or any other letter you favour as long as it’s consistent) you should get about 25 per cent. Of course, we recommend that you do know most of the answers, but this principle of consistent lettering can be applied to those you haven’t remembered by the end of the exam. If you leave it blank, you get nothing. If you take a guess or use consistent


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lettering, at least you have a chance of getting some marks (except in the case of negative marking; see below). Special cases: • Some examiners might write multiple-choice questions to test your recall rather than recognition. To get an idea for the level required, check past papers or ask past students. If a paper relies on recall, study as per ‘Short answer exams’ (see below). • Note that there might be more than one correct answer, and the trick is to find the one that’s most correct. • A really tough type of multiple-choice exam is one that incorporates negative marking. Negative marking means you will lose marks for any answer you get wrong. So, unlike the usual form of multiple-choice question where it pays to have a guess, with negative marking it actually costs to have a guess. Negative marking is mostly used where the questions and answers are about facts that are unequivocal and not open to interpretation. To prepare, do the same as for general multiple-choice questions, except learn your facts to the extent that you can state them confidently. A tip is to cover up the answers as you read the question and get your brain to generate an answer (using recall). Then check to see whether your answer is one of the options listed. You can be more confident of your answer and less likely to follow false leads this way. Negative marking is a fairly tough strategy which can really add to exam stress. It’s important to remember that examiners are doing it to sort out those who really know their stuff from those who take lucky guesses. Short answer exams Description Just as the name suggests, this type of exam consists of a series of questions that only require concise answers, usually in the form of a definition. For example: What is ascorbic acid?


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(The answer might be worth one to five marks and only up to three lines.) Type of learning required Rote learning of key definitions is essential. You must also understand the underlying basis for these definitions. Study strategies for short answer exams You need recall rather than recognition, but rote learning makes this type of memory process possible. See HANDY HINT 38 for Anjanette’s survival tip on using acronyms as a memory aid. What to do: When studying, make a list of key terms in your subject area, and write definitions in your own words while referring back to definitions given in class or in discipline dictionaries or textbooks. Test yourself by writing those definitions under exam conditions. What NOT to do: Don’t try to learn so many definitions that you can’t remember any! Pick out the key ones instead (past exam papers might give you a clue). Don’t write more than you need to. If there are only three lines available, don’t squish your writing up or scribble in the margins. This is annoying to markers, and takes time away from other questions. During the exam: If you are allowed to make notes on scrap paper during reading time, use the opportunity to jot down keywords for short answer questions. Do as many as you can while things are still fresh in your memory. You can write them into sentences during the exam. Long answer exams These are similar to short answer questions, but require you to know more detail about the topic. You still need to learn key definitions, but must also read further to be able to expand on the topic. For example: Define ascorbic acid and describe its function in the human body.


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HANDY HINT 38: Anjanette’s survival tip: Use acronyms as a memory aid Acronyms—a combination of the first letters of words to form an abbreviation—can be a handy memor y prompt when doing exams. For example, I can still remember an acronym I used in a first year exam for a biochemistry glycolysis pathway—HPPG—‘Hair y People Play at the Gym’(!). If you’re not a ‘ word’ person, try associating images or pictures with pieces of information you need to remember. When doing the exam, conjure up the picture and hopefully the information will be retrieved. M

(You may be provided with a word length limit or a limited amount of space—usually half a page to a page in length.) The essay exam Description Essays written under exam conditions are meant to conform to the standard essay format—that is, they should have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. However, you don’t need to reference your material. Essay-based exams usually take two basic forms: 1

2

The closed book exam: You don’t know what the questions will be, and you can’t bring any books or notes into the exam with you. The open book exam: You can take books or notes into the exam room and refer to them during the exam. Sometimes you are shown the questions in advance, so that you can prepare fully for the essay. A variation of the open book exam is the take-home exam, where you have a short period of time in which to submit an essay.

Type of learning required The basic purpose of this type of exam is to examine your skills and knowledge under pressure; it also acts as a means


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to verify essay authorship. Exam essays assess the usual essay skills, including the ability to synthesise and apply information to analyse a topic and answer a question (including how well you articulate your ideas and argue a case). Study strategies for essay exams These are the opposite to multiple-choice questions, in that essay exams examine depth, not breadth. You need to understand a few topics at a complex level. What to do: Prior to the exam, summarise your notes and use ‘memory joggers’—that is, group your information under key headings that can help to jog your memory during the exam. By reading over your notes a number of times and remembering the key headings, hopefully thinking of the headings will trigger your memory into action. Practise writing essays under exam conditions and use past exam papers to do so, if available (see HANDY HINT 39). What NOT to do: Don’t try and memorise an entire essay for the exam. Learn the key points you need to make in essay format. Now you can begin to write. During the exam: Interpret the essay question, noting any keywords. Brainstorm the question, quickly noting relevant points that come to mind, making use of your memory joggers. When the exam begins, make a written plan of your essay. Do this in reading time if possible. Remember to apportion your time according to the marks allocated. Provide as much relevant and detailed information as you can. Try not to write in a messy scrawl. You don’t want to lose marks because your lecturer can’t interpret the squiggles that are meant to pass for your handwriting! There is no need to reference your material. Don’t spend all your time on one essay if you have three to do. If you do run out of time, use point form as a way to summarise what you intended to write (it may earn you one or two extra marks).


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HANDY HINT 39: Lauren’s survival tip: Use past papers with caution Past papers are a great way of practising exam technique and checking if you are prepared to sit the paper. They can also be used to get a flavour for the exam, but don’t make my mistake! I failed an exam in first year Geology by overly relying on past papers to ‘pick’ what might be on the exam. In looking at past years, I concluded I only needed to study half the topics. The gamble didn’t pay off, since the exam paper I sat was quite different from previous papers and I could only answer two out of the six questions. After failing the paper miserably, I made sure I planned and allocated my study time more evenly next time.

Short-term exam preparation The night before a morning exam Study up until dinnertime. Sit down to a good meal, but don’t drink any alcohol—it might relax you, but it also impairs short-term memory. After dinner, don’t do more than read over your summaries before turning in for an early night. Avoid TV, computer games and prolonged conversations that might distract you from the subject of the exam. Relax and enjoy the opportunity to get a good night’s sleep. In the morning Wake up two hours before you have to leave. Use one hour of that time to carefully read over your summaries and practise any rote learning. Try to eat a good breakfast that’s high in carbohydrate (your brain needs glucose to work). Fruit juice with cereal or toast is ideal. Try not to drink too much coffee. One cup will act as a stimulant; more than that will cause dehydration, which decreases concentration.


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In the exam room Take a bottle of water if this is allowed. Water helps you to maintain hydration. Don’t drink too much, though; you don’t want to spend precious exam minutes going out to the toilet! Exam technique No matter how well prepared you might be for your exam, it’s still possible to stuff it up! Even the most intelligent student can fail an exam by ignoring the basics of exam technique. The main reason these students give is that they ran out of time. For example, Geoff was a bright student who deserved to do well in his exam. However, he had only answered two out of the five questions he needed to answer and failed the exam. Geoff was in a panic after the exam finished. When asked what had gone wrong, he said that he had really studied for the first question in detail and ended up spending more than an hour of a two-hour paper on that question. By the time he was almost finished the second question, he realised his mistake as time had almost run out and he panicked, unable to complete any of the other questions. Unfortunately, stories like Geoff ’s are all too common. To avoid stuffing up during the exam, this is what you need to do: M

•

•

Set the time allocations according to marks. If the question is worth 10 per cent of the total exam mark, then it deserves only 10 per cent of the time available for answering. For a three-hour paper, you would allocate a total of 18 minutes for a 10 mark question. Write the time allocations on the margins of your paper, noting what time the clock should read by the time you finish that question. Do this in the allocated reading time. Make sure you take an accurate watch into the room in case you are seated in a place where you can’t clearly see a clock.


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Classic exam preparation technique

•

Use your reading time to make sure you clearly understand the questions. If you’re allowed to write on scrap paper during reading time, use that time to plan out answers to as many questions as possible. This doesn’t mean that you should waste time writing out one answer in full. Rather, write notes and keywords for all of the questions, while your revision is still fresh in your memory.


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•

•

•

•

• •

•

Follow these time allocations strictly. Just because you see a question you know you can answer well, it doesn’t mean you should spend more time on it. Even if you know that topic well, you are likely to get 9 out of 10 if you spend the allocated 18 minutes on the answer. If you spent 40 minutes on the answer, the maximum you can get for that one question is still only 10 out of 10. So you have wasted 22 minutes of precious exam time for the sake of one mark, and have lost at least 10 marks for the question you won’t get time to answer. False economy. If you answer a question in less than the allocated time, but feel you have covered most of the important points, move on. You might need the extra time for a harder question. If you come across a question that you can’t answer at all, try not to panic! Just leave it and move on to the next question. You can always come back to that question at the end. Even if you still don’t know it then, you can take a guess. Think like a marker. Markers might have hundreds of exam papers to read. They will usually have a standardised marking scheme—that is, they are looking to allocate a set number of marks if you have mentioned certain keywords. To give them what they want for short and longer answer questions, make sure you include definitions of keywords in the answers. Try to write neatly—printing is preferable. Markers can’t give you marks for words they can’t read. Don’t waste your precious time with ‘waffle’ in an exam. A marker can see straight through waffle. Get straight into the answer. If you don’t know the answer, you are better off writing a couple of keywords and saving time by moving on to the next question than trying to fill up a page with waffle. As a marker, there is nothing worse than trying to wade through waffle to find an answer. Answer in point form if you can. It’s easier to cram


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•

•

more information in if you don’t have to worry about sentence structure. However, only do this if you have checked with your lecturer that point form is an acceptable way to answer your exam questions. Of course, you can’t do this for essay-style questions. Always use the final five minutes of the exam to check over your paper. Look for obvious errors, such as having skipped a question. Read over your answers to see whether you have anything extra to add. Take a guess at any multiple-choice questions you were unable to answer. Check that your name and student number are on the paper! Don’t gamble on only studying some topics and not others in the hope that your chosen areas will all be on the exam (see HANDY HINT 39).

After the exam Now is the time to relax. Go and have a drink with your friends. Debrief over the exam by all means, but try not to listen too much to what your friends thought were the correct answers. This could induce post-exam depression! If you are really concerned, go home and look at your textbooks or notes. Then, forget all about it. You need to forget in order to focus on your next priority. This might be another exam, or the important business of taking a break. Besides, the exam results won’t be back for weeks. When the results are back, check them to see if the result accords with your own idea of what you thought you might get. If there is a huge discrepancy—for example, by a couple of grades (not marks)—make a time to see your lecturer and go over the paper. This is especially important if you have failed the exam. Don’t expect any extra marks out of this procedure, but do expect to learn where you went wrong. It’s not the end of the world if you fail an exam at university; some of the best of us have! Instead,


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HANDY HINT 40: Beware the temptation to cheat at exams Exam cheating is an unfortunate part of university life. There are lots of different ways to cheat—all of them stupid unless you’re trying to get yourself thrown out of uni. Some people write on themselves or keep notes tucked in their clothes. Others might look at the paper of a person near them. These strategies don’t usually help much, except for the odd question. You certainly can’t base a three-hour paper on looking over another student’s shoulder. And what if they’ve got the answer wrong? More thorough and criminal cheats may steal exam papers from lecturer’s offices and copy them. Students that resort to cheating do so because they’re not ver y bright, too lazy to have done the work, or both. Usually lecturers are aware of these students, and will be surprised and suspicious if they do extremely well on just one paper. This level of cheating won’t just get you thrown out of university—it might get you turned over to the police. So, stay away from people offering to sell you exam papers. Aside from the moral argument against cheating, another reason not to cheat is that it doesn’t help you sur vive first year uni. Even if you don’t get found out, the bottom line with cheating is that you don’t know your stuff. A pass mark in a well-written exam indicates you know only half of what you should. If you have to cheat to pass you don’t even know half. This lack of knowledge will let you down, especially if that subject is built upon in later subjects. Besides, by the time you finish reading this chapter you’ll realise you don’t need to cheat to pass exams.

use it as a learning experience. Look back over this chapter to see where you might have gone wrong in terms of preparing for or sitting the exam. Make sure you take advantage of any formal learning opportunities at your university. For example, most universities have student study


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HANDY HINT 41: The passing exams checklist ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Clarify the pass mark for your subject and set your goal mark for your exam. Check whether it’s compulsory to pass the exam before you can pass the subject. Find out from your lecturer what format the exam will take. Work through your summaries in revising topics. Commit definitions (and anything else you need to know by heart) to memor y. Work through past papers (if available) under exam conditions. Get a good night’s sleep and have a decent breakfast before the exam. Stay away from anxious classmates. Stick scrupulously to the allocated time. Check back over your exam paper in the final five minutes of the exam. Reflect on how to improve your exam performance the next time around. Relax and move on!

skills or learning centres that run courses on how to pass exams successfully. Make sure you attend these well before your next exam period. HANDY HINT 41 provides a final checklist for passing exams. For more help, consult the ‘Further resources’ list. HANDY HINT 42: Reader bonus online As a special reader bonus, you can access a free chapter on preparing for second year by visiting Allen & Unwin’s online eStudy Centre at:

http://www.allenandunwin.com/estudy/secondyear.asp


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Further resources Further resources

Websites A highly recommended website is Allen & Unwin’s eStudyCentre, a free online service for study advice, study skills and hotlinks to information resources: http://www.allenandunwin.com/estudy.asp Other recommended study skills sites include: • • • • •

Dictionary.com: http://www.dictionary.com The Internet Public Library: http://www.ipl.org Librarians’ Index to the Internet: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/internetindex My Virtual Reference Desk: http://www.refdesk.com Yahoo! reference listings: http://www.yahoo.com/Reference Referencing websites:

• • • •

MLA: http://www.mla.org/main_stl.htm APA: http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocAPA.html Chicago: http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/guides/chicagogd.html Harvard: http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/library/findinfo/handouts/harvard.html


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Books The following books are ones that we’ve found helpful. While in some cases these books overlap with ours, they also cover some aspects in more depth and address some issues we haven’t been able to cover here, such as part-time study or studying as a mature age student. Essay writing Creme, P. and Lea, M.R. (1997) Writing at University: A Guide for Students, Buckingham: Open University Press Germov, J. (2000) Get Great Marks for Your Essays, 2nd edition, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Gibaldi, Joseph (1995) MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 4th edition, New York: Modern Language Association of America Murray-Smith, S. (1988) Right Words: A Guide to English Usage in Australia, Melbourne: Viking Doing research Blaxter, L., Hughes, C. and Tight, M. (1996) How to Research, Buckingham: Open University Press Cryer, P. (1996) The Research Student’s Guide to Success, Buckingham: Open University Press Germov, J. and Williams, L. (1999) Get Great Information Fast, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Referencing American Psychological Association (1994) Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 4th edition, Washington, DC Australian Government Publishing Service (1994) Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, 5th edition, Canberra Gibaldi, Joseph (1998) MLA Style Manual and Guide to


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Further resources 157

Scholarly Publishing, 2nd edition, New York: Modern Language Association of America Iverson, Cheryl et al. (1998) American Medical Association Manual of Style: a Guide for Authors and Editors, 9th edition, Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Peters, P. (1995) The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press University of Chicago Press (1993) The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Exams Orr, F. (1997), How to Pass Exams, 2nd edition, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Group work Benjamin, J., Bessant, J. and Watts, R. (1997) Making Groups Work: Rethinking Practice, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Cornelius, H. and Faire, S. (1989) Everyone Can Win: How to Resolve Conflict, Sydney: Simon & Schuster Hamer, K. (1994) Leading a Group: A Practical and Comprehensive Handbook, 4th edition, Maroubra: self-published General study guides Brem, B. (1998) Returning to Learning? Studying as an Adult: Tips, Traps and Triumphs, Sydney: Allen & Unwin Buzan, T. (1993) The Mind Map Book, London: BBC Books Marshall, L. and Rowland, F. (1993) A Guide to Learning Independently, 2nd edition, Melbourne: Longman Northedge, A. (1990) The Good Study Guide, Milton Keynes: Open University Press Wallace, A., Schirato, T. and Bright. P. (1999) Beginning University: Thinking, Researching and Writing for Success, Sydney: Allen & Unwin


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Index

Index

abbreviations, 43 abstract and index journal databases, 58–9 academic writing, 75–9 argument, 78 bias, 78 clichés, 77 critical analysis, 77–8 emotive expressions, 77 slang, 77 sources, 79 theme, 78 thesis, 78 see also journal databases accommodation services, 17–18 active learners, 8 active learning, 9–12 analysis, critical 77–8 APA referencing system, 83–5 argument, 78 article reviews, 93–4; see also written assignments

assessment, presentation, 120–2 bias, 78 bibliography see referencing book reviews, 93–4; see also written assignments brainstorming see mind mapping browser see web careers and employment services, 18 Chicago referencing system, 83–5 childcare services, 18 clichés, 77 critical analysis, 77–8 Dewey Decimal Classification system, 54–6 direct quotes, 85

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downloaded documents, referencing, 81 drafts, 101 due dates, 104–5 email, 64 essays exam, 145–7 structure, 92 subheadings, 93 see also written assignments exam hints, 46 exams after the exam, 151–3 checklist for passing, 153 compulsory pass, 137 disruptions, 137–9 essay exam, 145–7 exam technique, 148–51 goals, 134–7 multiple-choice exams, 140–3 preparation, 133–4, 147–8 purpose, 132–3 short answer exams, 143–5 timetable planning, 137–8 types, 140 experiential learning, 3 extensions, 104–5 face-to-face learning methods, 2 flexible delivery, 5–6 footnote referencing, 85, 87

group work key aspects, 124 process, 124–6 rapport, 126–7 resolving conflict, 130–1 sharing workload, 127–30 task-oriented members, 124–6 Harvard referencing system, 83–6 home page, 66 hotlinks, 66–7 hypertext, 66–7 information, where to look, 48 Internet, 18–19, 64; see also flexible delivery interpreting a topic, 97–8 journal databases, 58–9 Kolb’s learning cycle, 3–4 laboratory sessions, 2 learning cycle, 3–4 experiential, 3 modes, 3 problem-based, 4–5 self-directed, 2–3 strategies, 9–12 styles, 4, 7–9 learning journal, 50 lecture notes see note taking lecturers, 20–1


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Index 161

lectures, 2 library catalogue, 53, 57, 62 classification systems, 54–6 tour, 52–3 virtual libraries, 70, 72, 74 Library of Congress classification system, 54–6 meta-indexes, 68 mind mapping, 101 newspapers, web-based, 74 note-taking, 16–17 abbreviations, 43 from readings, 47 handwriting notes, 42–5 recording lectures, 46 typing notes, 45 oral presentations, 108–9; see also presentations orientation week, 14–15 passive learning, 9–12 plagiarism, 81 practical learners, 9 presentations assessing, 120–2 audiovisual materials, 118–19 confidence, 117–18 feedback, 120–2 format, 110–11

key features, 115–16 oral, 108–9 planning, 112 style, 111, 113–14 substance, 111 priorities, 32–3 proofreading, 102–3 referencing, 79–90 direct quotes, 85 how to reference, 81–3 reasons for referencing, 80 what to reference, 80 see also APA referencing system; Chicago referencing system; footnote referencing; Harvard referencing system; plagiarism; Vancouver system reflective learners, 8–9 reports format, 95–7 writing, 94–5 see also written assignments resources, 155–7 reviews see article reviews; book reviews sample assignments, 97 search engines, 67–9 self-directed learning, 2–3 social life, 21, 23 structure of university, 21–2


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student support services, 17–20 student union, 19–20 study group or partner, 131 study skills, 18 styles of learning see learning styles subheadings, 93 subject folder, 16–17, 26–7 summaries, 48–51 textbooks, 15 theoretical learners, 8 time management, 25, 28–40, 104–5 timetable, 26 tutorials, 2 Uniform Resource Locator (URL), 65 Vancouver system, 88–9 web access, 65 addresses see Uniform Resource Locator all-in-one search sites, 68 browser, 65 catalogue, 67 clearinghouses, 70, 72 evaluating information, 64 gateways, 70, 72 government, 62, 74 home page, 66 how to reference, 81

hypertext or hotlinks, 66–7 international organisations, 62, 74 meta-indexes, 68 news and financial services, 62 newspaper and media sites, 74 printing web pages, 71–3 professional associations, 62 reference collections, 74 referencing, 81 saving web pages, 71–3 search engines, 67–9 study skills sites, 62 time log, 63 time-saving tips, 63 university web sites, 62, 74 virtual libraries, 70, 72, 74 web rings, 71 word limits, 103 workshops, 2 written assignments drafts, 101 due dates, 104–5 feedback, 107 interpreting a topic, 97–8 planning, 98–100 proofreading, 102–3 what markers look for, 105–7 word limits, 103 writing, 100–1


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