Dr. Rachel – "A little learning is a dangerous thing…"

Writing Online Exams

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills 9th April 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, Digital, exams, Lightning Sessions, online, online tools, revision, self-care, time management, university, wellbeing 0 Comment

Online exams might be new to most of us, but they’re no more difficult than traditional exams. While there are some challenges, like sorting out your tech set-up, there also are some unique benefits, particularly in terms of wellbeing.

In this Lightning Session, we cover all aspects of writing online exams, from putting your wellbeing first to managing your time to handling tech errors. Watch the recording, then scroll down for our top tips!

1 Write Healthy

Traditionally, exams were short and intense. While some online exams will just be 2-3 hours, many others will give you a much longer period, anywhere from 12 hours to a week! If you have one of these longer exams, it’s vital that you don’t work constantly during that period. In fact, it’s often best to write the exam in a 2-3 hour period, just like before.

Here are a few wellbeing tips for extended online exams:

Set up your space. Find a quiet spot, and make sure your desk is tidy. Gather everything you need, like pencil and paper, and make sure your phone is on silent or in another room.
Establish boundaries. These can be interpersonal (make sure your family or flatmates know not to disturb you) or personal (decide what time you want to stop working every day, and stick to it).
Eat, sleep, and exercise. Make sure your exam doesn’t interfere with these important activities. You should also drink lots of water and eat healthy snacks during the exam, and even take quick breaks to stretch or meditate.

2 Write Smart

Running out of time during an exam is a major worry for many students. Even in a longer exam, it’s important to know how to plan out your exam to get the most out of your time.

Read the full paper. Before starting to write, make sure you know exactly how many questions there are and which ones you’ll answer.
Make a plan. It’s helpful to allocate a certain amount of time to each question, ideally based on how much the question is worth. If you’ve got one question worth 30% and one worth 70%, then you don’t want to run way over time on the first question and end up only half-finishing the longer one.
Know how to avoid plagiarism and collusion. You can read more in our Collusion vs. Collaboration guide, but the key thing is to follow the Academic Misconduct Statement you’ll find in your exam module. This says that you aren’t allowed to talk to anyone (including friends, family, coursemates, or university staff) about your exam. Sending a friend an encouraging “I know you can do this!” text before the exam starts is okay, but definitely steer clear of any chat about which questions you’re answering or what sources they’re using.
Finish Well. Leave a significant chunk of time at the end to go over your exam. This allows you to fix any errors in your work, and it also means that if something goes wrong during the upload, you still have plenty of time to fix it.

3 Troubleshooting Your Tech

If something goes wrong during your exam, don’t panic! There are all sorts of ways to fix any error that comes up. Here of the first things you should do:

Read the error message. Error messages on My Dundee are generally fairly good at telling you what the problem really is, so take a minute to read it carefully.
Clear your cache and cookies. If you’re getting an unusual login pop-up, follow these instructions to clear your cache and cookies, or try using an incognito browser.
Try a different browser. Often, simply switching browsers will get around unusual errors.
Save as a different file type. If your file won’t submit, switching to another format (such as PDF) often helps. You can do this easily in word with the “save as” function.
Compress your images. If your file is too big to upload, follow these directions to compress images in your word document.

We hope this Lightning Session has made you feel more confident about writing your online exams! You can find more top tips in our Writing Online Exams Guide, or in our Revision Bites resource.

Revising for Online Exams

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Study Skills 9th April 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, Digital, exams, Lightning Sessions, online tools, recall, referencing, retrieval, revision, self-care, time management, university, wellbeing 0 Comment

Revising for online exams involves many of the same techniques and strategies as in-person exams. It’s important to focus on active rather than passive learning and to practice information retrieval and recall. If these terms are new to you, then check out our Effective Revision lightning session, or our Revision Bites resource for more information.

That said, there are several key differences between online and traditional exams. For starters, online exams tend to be “open book,” meaning you’re allowed to use notes and textbooks during the exam. This may feel like it makes the exam easier, but, actually, it means that the focus shifts from memorising to understanding. Rather than cramming your head with facts, your revision should be about making connections and figuring out how to use the information.

Also, the technological aspect of online exams may be daunting for some of us, particularly if we’ve got slow devices or internet. Fortunately, there are several ways you can test the technology ahead of time so you can have more confidence on the day!

To learn more, watch the recording of our Lightning Session, then scroll down for our top tips!

1 Revise Healthy

Revision can be a stressful time, so it’s important to prioritise your wellbeing during these weeks. Here are a few top wellbeing suggestions:

Take breaks! When you feel your focus lagging, get away from the screen for a little bit. A quick cup of tea, a brisk walk, or even a few minutes enjoying your hobbies will rejuvenate your mind.
Establish boundaries. Ideally, you’ll have a separate place to work (ie, a desk rather than your bed) away from where you typically relax. At the end of the day, leave the work behind and focus on relaxing, instead!
Remember to eat, sleep, and exercise. Research shows that healthy food improves your brain function, while exercise and sleep are essential for memory consolidation.

2 Revise Smart

The most important thing is to know the format of your exam. How many questions will there be, and will they be short-answer or essay length? Will you have a choice between questions? Are you expected to refer to secondary sources, and, if so, do you need to provide full references? If you’re not sure about your exam format, then you should check My Dundee and email your tutor if you have further questions.

Once you know the format, it’s important to focus your revision on understanding, rather than memorisation. If your exam is open book, you don’t need to cram facts into your head! Instead, make sure you have well-structured notes that are easily searchable (ctrl + F is your friend!). If you need to reference, make sure you have a full bibliography of all your sources before the exam begins. Having a solid grasp of how your module fits together and knowing where to find everything is key for an online exam.

3 Test Your Tech!

To make sure everything goes smoothly on the day, you should use your practice exam module to get familiar with the tech before the exam. You can find your practice exam module on My Dundee, but if it’s still locked, you can see what it will look like in the recording of this Lightning Session.

It’s important to practice uploading your exam paper, just to test how long it takes. This will also let you know if you’ve got the right kind of file. It’s also best to do your test using the same equipment you’ll use for the exam; there’s no point making sure everything works on your phone if you’re actually going to write the exam on your laptop!

We hope this brief overview helps you prepare for your upcoming exams! For a more comprehensive guide, see our Revising for Online Exams resource, or check out our Writing Online Exams Lightning Session!

Revision Research

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Library, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills 7th April 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, Digital, exams, library, Lightning Sessions, literature search, online, online tools, reading, referencing, research, revision, university 0 Comment

A key part of revision is research. Whether you’re actively seeking out new papers or just brushing up on material from the module, finding and reading the right information will be central to your revision.

Typically, we’d associate revision and research with going to the library. While we are not yet back to pre-COVID normality on campus, the Library is still available as a place of study for those who take solace among the books, provided COVID safety restrictions are adhered to. A key one of the restrictions is pre-booking your study desk before attending the Library, as we are still operating at reduced seating capacity. You will also need to abide by social distancing of two meters and wear a face covering throughout your stay at the Library.

The Library offers more than just a quiet space for study, though, as it also provides you with access to the resources that your lecturers recommend you read for your module. Most lecturers use our Resource List platform to organise the reading for a module. Revisiting this list should be on your revision agenda, making sure you haven’t skipped over anything important and supplementing your course notes with evidence you can cite in exams.

To learn more about the library and resource lists, watch the recording of our Lightning Session. Then, keep scrolling to read our Top Tips for making the most of your revision time!

Top Tips for Research

Before beginning to research, it’s important to know what you’re looking for. The questions below will help you identify how much reading you need to do and how to focus on key sources.

How many sources you will realistically need to cite or refer to during your exam? This will vary depending on your exam format and your tutor’s instructions.
What sources are key to the module and would be expected to be referred to in an exam answer? For example, is there a key theorist or expert in that area, or a core text your lecturer used?
What are the key points you can distil from an article and how do these fit into the learning objectives of the module?
Do you have any gaps in your knowledge? The recommended or further reading suggestions in the Resource List might held fill these!
Will you be expected to format references in a certain way during an exam? Having references prepared and ready to copy and paste into an answer will save time and avoid stress!
Organising and cross-referencing your sources by topic in your notes can also help you to structure your exam answers and find the information you need under time pressure.

Effective Revision

Rachel Horrocks Birss Lightning Sessions, Study Skills 7th April 20217th April 2021Academic Skills, active learning, challenges, exams, Lightning Sessions, productivity, recall, retrieval, revision, time management, university, work 0 Comment

Do you spend hours revising but struggle to retain the information? Feel like no matter how hard you work you can never do yourself justice in exams? What if it’s not you, but rather the way you’ve learned to revise that’s the issue?

Research suggests that many common and popular revision techniques, such as re-writing notes or memorising PowerPoints, are highly ineffective and inefficient. That’s because they are passive revision techniques, which lead to short-term, surface level learning.

Using more active techniques encourages deeper, longer-term learning and should (hopefully) lead to better marks.

Watch the recording of our Lightning Session on ‘Effective Revision’ then scroll down for some tips on how you can start to incorporate active techniques into your revision.

Tip 1: Don’t change everything overnight

While you want to maximise your revision and minimise ineffective techniques, it’s better not to change too much at one time. Think evolution rather than revolution.

Try out one or two of the suggested active techniques and incorporate them into your revision. Over time you can explore more of these techniques and build a toolkit of approaches that work for you.

Meanwhile, look out for passive techniques which take up a lot of your time for little or no reward, and start to replace them with the active techniques that work for you.

Tip 2: Two key concepts

Active learning is all about information retrieval or recall. Put simply, the more often you have to retrieve or recall information from your brain, the more strongly you’ll reinforce that learning.

Another key concept is spaced practice. Research suggests that spreading out your studying over a longer period of time is more effective and leads to better learning than if you spend the same amount of time crammed into a shorter period.

This means that the earlier you start revising the better, and that doing some work as the semester progresses will reduce the number of hours you need to put in come exam revision time.

But it can also help in the revision period itself. Imagine you allocate two hours to a particular topic. It will pay to spread that two hours out over several weeks, perhaps in half-hour slots, rather than spending two hours on the topic in one sitting then ticking it off as done. Hopefully, you can also see how this approach would also allow you to build in that element of information retrieval we mentioned above.

You can read more about these concepts in Revision Bites.

Tip 3: Find the active techniques that work for you

Popular active revision techniques include:

Flashcards
Past papers or sample papers
Teaching or discussing a topic
Study partners or groups
Brain dump
Creating mind maps

We discuss these – and many others – in more detail in the Lightning Session and on Revision Bites, so be sure to check both out if you haven’t already. But be aware that not every technique will work for you, and not every technique which works will do so in every situation.

Your goal is to arm yourself with a range of options which, over time, will allow you to approach revision and exams with real confidence.

This blog post was written by Dr Gordon Spark, Academic Skills Centre.

Digital Fatigue

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Lightning Sessions 12th March 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, Digital, focus, Lightning Sessions, motivation, online, online lectures, online tools, productivity, recorded lectures, self-care, stress, time management, wellbeing, work 0 Comment

After a year of lockdowns, we’re all experiencing some level of digital fatigue. Whether we’re suffering physical consequences like headaches or eyestrain, or mental symptoms like lack of motivation or depression, digital fatigue can have a severe impact upon our wellbeing.

The good news is that there’s lots we can do to combat digital fatigue and improve our wellbeing, even during this unusual year. Watch our Lightning Session recording to learn more, then scroll down for our top tips!

There are all kinds of strategies we can use to combat digital fatigue. Here, we’ve grouped them into three categories: Before, During, and After, your online experience.

Before

Fighting digital fatigue starts even before you get online. The most important thing is to make sure you have a good space to work. We may not all have the luxury of a home office, but make sure you have a well-lit place to work with a good chair. Adjust your screen brightness depending on the time of day, and, if you find your eyes get tired quickly, book an eye test with your optometrist to make sure you’ve got the right prescription.

During

When you’re working on your computer, monotasking is key. Avoid switching back and forth between windows during a class, or getting distracted by social media when you should be writing an essay. Activities like switching between tabs or scrolling on social media are actually incredibly tiring for our eyes, so it’s best to minimize them. Instead, try taking physical notes (or even doodling!) during class so your eyes aren’t glued to the screen the whole time. You should also remember the 20/20/20 rule, where every 20 minutes you look 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

After

The best way to beat digital fatigue is to get away from the screen. When you’re finished with your onscreen work, take a proper break away from your computer or phone. It’s particularly good to get out and do something physical, like taking a walk or stretching. If you’re working from home, it helps to set boundaries at the end of your day, where you close all your work tabs or shut down your laptop completely, so you’re not distracted by work when you should be winding down in the evening.

Strategies like these won’t make digital fatigue go away entirely, but they will help you to stay healthy and improve your wellbeing, even in these challenging circumstances!

Presenting Online

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Lightning Sessions 12th March 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, confidence, Lightning Sessions, online tools, presentations, stress 0 Comment

Presentations are one of the most useful- and most feared- university assignments. For most of us, speaking in front of a group of people or filming ourselves giving a talk will be one of the most nerve-wracking things we’ll do at university. While it may be scary, presenting is also one of the most relevant and helpful skills for when we leave university and join the workforce. Nearly all jobs involve some form of public speaking, whether you’re a lawyer, a nurse, a teacher, or a CEO.

In this Lightning Session, we explore various ways to improve your presentation skills, with a particular focus on presenting online.

Presentation Tips

While it sometimes feels like some people are born presenters, the reality is that there are plenty of simple tips and tricks that any of can implement to improve our presentation skills.

Keep it Simple. Academic presentations don’t have to be confusing! Having a single key point with just 2-3 clearly-signposted subpoints will make sure your listeners can follow along easily.
Use Your Voice. Avoid simply reading from a script in a monotone voice. Instead, vary your tone and pitch to create interest. Most importantly, remember to sound enthusiastic; if you care about your topic, your audience will, too!
Practice! The absolute best way to improve your presentation skills is to practice. The more times you rehearse your presentation, the more confident and comfortable you’ll be. Also, on a larger scale, the more presentations you give, the better you’ll get.

Online Presentations

Online presentations offer some unique challenges, but some aspects are actually easier online! Watch this short video to learn how to set up your presentation environment and take advantage of the online format.

[Note: this video is primarily focussed on pre-recorded presentations rather than live, but most of the tips apply to both]

Dealing with Nerves

Feeling nervous is an entirely normal part of public speaking. While presenters typically look confident up on stage, the reality is that even experienced public speakers often still experience intense nervousness!

A few quick tips to control your nerves:

Recognise that nervousness isn’t always bad. In fact, some level of stress actually provides us with the adrenalin rush we need to perform at our best.
Take deep breaths. Anything that slows your heart rate down, like deep breaths or stretching, will help you calm your nerves and prepare your mind.
Practice, practice, practice! The more presentations you give, and the more often you practice your presentations, the more confident you’ll feel and the less nervous you’ll be.

Want more tips? Check out our full Presentation Skills resource for more tips and links to helpful videos.

Developing Confidence

Rachel Horrocks Birss Lightning Sessions 12th March 2021Academic Skills, challenges, confidence, imposter syndrome, Lightning Sessions, self-care, university, wellbeing, work 1 Comment

For many of us, feeling confident at university isn’t something that comes naturally. When we’re surrounded by so many intelligent people, we might feel like we’re not as smart as everyone else, or like we don’t belong. This feeling is called Imposter Syndrome, and almost everyone experiences it at some point- even academics at the top of their careers!

Even if we aren’t naturally confident, the good news is that there are all kinds of tips and tricks we can use to develop our confidence while at university. Watch the recording of our Lightning Session, then scroll down for our top tips!

1. Get Organized

Confidence is all about having control, and the best way to feel in control of your life is to get organised. This will typically involve using a diary and/or a to-do list to keep track of your tasks and make sure you start your assignments on time. When you’ve got everything written down and planned out, then you can move forward with your work, without stressing about whether or not you’ve forgotten something.

2. Stay Positive

As human beings, we often tend to focus on the negative. When we get an exam back, we notice the one question we got wrong, not the nine we answered correctly. To improve your confidence, take steps to remember the good things you’ve accomplished, like keeping a folder of positive feedback or a “Done” list of everything you’ve accomplished that day/week/semester.

3. Watch Your Self-Talk

All human beings have something that psychologists call our “explanatory style.” For an example, when you get a good mark on an essay, do you think “I’m a good writer,” or do you think, “My marker is really generous”? Similarly, if you do poorly on an exam, do you think, “I’m so stupid” or do you remember that you had a migraine that day, so you couldn’t do your best work? The way that we explain events to ourselves has a massive impact on our confidence, so the next time you find yourself explaining away a positive event or blaming yourself for a negative event, take a moment to notice your self-talk and consider other, more positive, explanations.

In Your Own Words

Rachel Horrocks Birss Essays, Lightning Sessions 12th March 2021Academic Skills, challenges, citation, Essays, Lightning Sessions, paraphrasing, plagiarism, referencing, research, sources, writing 0 Comment

When we use other sources in our essay, we’re often told to put the other author’s ideas into “our own words.” But what does this mean? And why is it so important at university? Putting another author’s idea into your own words is called paraphrasing, and it’s a key university skill.

When you cite evidence in an assignment, you have two options – you can quote directly or you can paraphrase. Paraphrasing is a key element of using evidence effectively and ethically. In some disciplines, particularly in the Sciences, direct quotation is used very sparingly and it’s essential that you develop strong paraphrasing skills.

In other disciplines, quotation may be more acceptable, but that doesn’t mean that you should avoid paraphrasing altogether. Good writing will often combine the two, and using paraphrasing appropriately and effectively will allow your voice to come over more strongly so that when you do use direct quotation will have more impact.

So, how can you begin to develop this key skill? Have a look at the recording of our ‘In Your Own Words’ Lightning Session then scroll down for our key steps for paraphrasing.

Step 1: Understand Why

Paraphrasing basically means putting someone else’s argument or idea into your own words. As we mentioned above, it’s an alternative to using direct quotation. But when and why would you use it?

As we’ve already seen, it may simply be the convention of your discipline to paraphrase evidence rather than to use direct quotation. In such disciplines you really don’t have much option other than to develop your paraphrasing skills.

In other disciplines there’s more choice. Often, paraphrasing allows you to express or show understanding of an idea or argument more clearly or concisely than the original quote, particularly if that quote is lengthy and you can summarise it effectively.

One useful way of thinking about whether to quote or paraphrase is to ask yourself why you want to use that evidence. If there’s something important about the way the idea or argument has been expressed, you may wish to quote directly (if your discipline allows). If it’s just the idea itself that you’re drawing upon, paraphrasing may be a more suitable option.

Step 2: Avoid ‘Word Substitution’

One important thing to avoid when paraphrasing is word substitution. As the name suggests, this occurs where you leave the original structure of the sentence intact and simply work your way along substituting words of the same or similar meaning.

This invariably results in clunky, clumsy prose. More importantly, it’s not good paraphrasing – indeed, it may be considered a form of plagiarism, even though you’ve cited the source. So, move the original text out of sight and instead focus on the idea or argument and try to express or summarise that in your own way.

Step 3: Practice Techniques

Okay, so you’ve hidden the original and now you want to try to summarise or explain the idea in your own words. One useful tip here is to imagine explaining it out loud to a friend, a fellow student, or your tutor. How would you explain it without having the quote in front of you?

Remember, we’re focused on the idea here and why you want to use it, so another helpful tip is to think carefully about how the paraphrase will fit into your wider point or argument. What will you go on to say about this evidence? Thinking about that may help you summarise the key points in an effective way. Just be careful not to change the meaning – when paraphrasing we must be careful not to twist the evidence to suit our own arguments.

For more useful advice, check out our video on paraphrasing (below). And one final point – paraphrasing may sound like a lot of work but with practice and experience it will become second nature and you’ll do it almost without thinking. So stick with it, and before long you’ll have this important skill mastered.

This blog post was written by Dr Gordon Spark (Academic Skills Centre).

Note-Taking Online

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Library, Lightning Sessions 1st March 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, library, Lightning Sessions, literature search, note-taking, online tools, referencing, research, writing 0 Comment

Now more than ever we consume information digitally, through e-books, electronic journals and websites. This adds an increased layer of complexity in research, since you don’t have the physical item to highlight, cover with post-its, and file into a neatly divided folder (unless of course you are willing to print a small rainforest’s worth of paper).

There are many online tools, often freely available or already incorporated into online databases, available to help you take notes just as effectively online and we could on physical books!

Watch our Lightning Session to learn more about note-taking and see a few of the best tools in action! Then scroll down for our top tips, and for links to access these tools.

Top Note-Taking Tips

Organising notes by subheadings/topics

Keep related research notes together. You could organise by module topics, or by the essay subheadings. Colour coding and folders/tabs are an excellent way to visually organise your notes! By grouping notes together, you can build a clear picture of the key ideas and authors in your subject. You could even try organising chronologically, so you can see how research within you field has developed over time.

Write notes in your own words

Summarise the source’s main points in your own words. Not everything in an article or book will be relevant to your own work, so you should pull out and highlight the most applicable points. This ensures you understand what is being said and how it fits into your own research. It’s also a good habit to annotate as you read, such as points of interest, facts to check, sources to follow up on etc.

Record and save your research notes

Have a system in place to record and save your research notes as you go. It’s all too easy to forget where you located a source, especially when researching online. While this takes time initially, your hard work will pay off when it’s time to write your bibliography, and you’ve got all the information at your fingertips!

Online Note-Taking Tools

Accessing information online presents many challenges in organising, annotating and recording your notes. That said, there are so many opportunities to work in a paperless way. You can access your notes at a click of a button and save notes to the Cloud to lessen the risk of loss or damage.

Some of our favourite online tools which can help organise your notes digitally include:

OneNote

Part of the Office 365 suite which you can access for free as a University of Dundee student (see this Guide for more details). OneNote allows you to replicate the structure of a physical notebook with different tabs and pages which can be used to organise notes by topic, lecture or any other way which is helpful to you. Microsoft have created free training resources on their Office Support site to help you get to grips with OneNote. Once you get your head around the basics you will have lots of flexibility to organise your notes, back up notes to the Cloud, and share them with other people.

PDF Annotating

Free web-based tools can help you annotate PDF documents, such as Kami or Diigo. You can also do this on most reference management software, such as EndNote. These tools allow you to highlight and add notes directly on a PDF file which can be saved and downloaded for future use.

Bookmarking and adding notes to eBooks

While many people dislike reading books from their screens, some tasks are actually easier this way. For example, most platforms allow you to bookmark pages and add annotations which will be saved for next time you access the book. You can also keyword search within the whole text. For easy access you can create your own bookshelf within the eBook platform and save a link to the book in your OneNote.

Mind-mapping

Displaying the connections between your notes in a visual way can be helpful when planning an essay or revising a topic. Coggle is a free online mind-mapping tool which is simple to use and can help you organise the your research, either by creating a mind map for a single journal article to summarise its main points or creating a more complex topic map linking different information sources. Coggle also allows you to download your mind map in a PDF format, so you can save it locally or embed it within a OneNote.

Whatever tools you decide to use for your online note-taking, make sure that the system you build is sustainable. Everyone is different, and you should focus on the finding tools that work for you, ensuring they streamline your processes and enhance your notes, rather than making things more complicated.

There’s nothing to lose in trying out a few of the of the tools mentioned in this post, though, and indeed, you may save a tree or two!

This blog post was written by Kayleigh McGarry (Library and Learning Centre).

Report Writing

Rachel Horrocks Birss Essays, Lightning Sessions 24th February 2021Academic Skills, Lightning Sessions, reports, research, university, writing 0 Comment

Report writing is a skill required in many disciplines, such as Life Sciences, Engineering, Business, and some Medical disciplines. It is different from essay writing in a number of key respects but follows many of the conventions of academic writing.

We normally write reports in response to a problem: something has gone wrong and we require a solution. This is particularly true in industry and business where processes can break down and solutions need to be found and evaluated. Reports are very rarely written when everything is working perfectly!

Most reports that students write will be relatively short and normally be part of a response to a particular experiment or situation you have been presented with.

Watch our Lightning Session to learn more about report writing, then scroll down for our top three tips!

Tip 1: Know the Purpose

What is the purpose of your report? Before you start writing, it’s important to know what your report is for, and who will be reading it.

Here are a few reasons why we write reports:

To describe something
To specify (technical)
To evaluate options and make recommendations
To enable discussion

It is worth considering who your audience is for your report, and to be aware of their needs in terms of how technical (or otherwise) your report ought to be.

Tip 2: Know the Format

The format of a report varies depending on what’s known as the “House Style” of your discipline. I’ll outline a generic report writing format below, but I always advise students to become familiar with the requirements of their discipline: this will often be outlined on your Module Handbook or in the VLE Module for that subject.

In very broad-brush terms, here is a standard format for a report:

Abstract
Introduction/background/aims & objectives
Methods & Materials
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Recommendations for future action
Bibliography
Appendices

Tip 3: Know the Style

The style of writing adopted in a report can be more factual than you might use in an essay, and be more to-the-point, i.e., less discursive. However, particularly in the discussion and conclusion sections you will still be expected to discuss and analysis the results of the work you have presented, so there will still be elements of essay writing style in your report.

Reports rarely use the 1^st person, and lists, tables and bullet points are perfectly acceptable as part of your writing. Headings are also encouraged in report writing whereas they are discouraged in essays. Appendices may be used as a way to include more detailed information that is useful for your reader, but not required for the main part of your report, i.e., the questions for a survey or data tables, for example.

There are examples of reports in all walks of life, but the best way to improve your report writing is to read academic reports in your own discipline. Reading published reports in your discipline will give you a better idea of the expectations your tutors will have of your work.

This blog post was written by Michael Allardice (Academic Skills Centre).

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