Blended Learning – Dr. Rachel

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.

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.

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).

Focus and Motivation

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills 8th February 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, focus, Lightning Sessions, motivation, Procrastination, productivity, self-care, stress, time management, wellbeing, work 0 Comment

Learning how to focus well and motivate yourself are essential skills for university, as well as for the workforce and the rest of your life. If we can motivate ourselves to get going and focus intensely on our work, we can accomplish difficult tasks quickly and efficiently. If, however, we struggle to focus or get motivated, doing any work will always be a slog.

Particularly in stressful times, like the current lockdown, focus and motivation can be really challenging. Whether you find yourself with far too much to do (perhaps you’re trying to homeschool or care for an elderly relative alongside your uni work), or far too little (maybe your packed social calendar has been reduced to a string of lonely evenings), these tips can help you shake off the cobwebs and get back to productive, fulfilling work!

Watch our Lightning Session on Focus and Motivation, then keep reading for more tips!

Motivation

In essence, motivation is all about empowerment. It’s about believing we have the ability to do something that matters. After all, if we believe we can’t do something, or that it won’t make any difference, then why bother?

If you’re struggling to get motivated for a particular task, ask yourself these questions:

1: Can I do it?

2: Will it make a difference?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, ask yourself, why not? If you don’t believe you can do it, maybe you need some additional support or training. If you don’t believe it will make a difference, you should spend some time reflecting on whether completing this task with help you reach your goals.

Focus

Focus is essential to good work. When you focus on the task at hand, you can get more done in less time. So, how do we avoid distractions and focus on our work?

1: Work in Short Chunks. Strategies like the Pomodoro Method suggest setting a timer for 25-minutes, then taking a 5-minute break, then working for another 25-minutes. Whether you focus for 25 minutes for 55, working in short, focussed bursts is more efficient than hours at a time.

2: Eliminate Distractions. Put your phone on silent and close any social media tabs on your computer. Our brains are wired to pay attention to distractions, so do yourself a favour and shut them down before they start!

3: Take Breaks. Counterintuitively, breaks actually make us more productive! Taking intentional breaks away from the screen, whether that’s making a cup of tea or going for a long walk, allow our brain to reset so we can go back to our work with renewed energy and more creative ideas.

Getting the Most from Recorded Lectures

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills 8th February 20218th February 2021Academic Skills, Blended Learning, challenges, Lightning Sessions, online lectures, recall, recorded lectures, revision, university, work 0 Comment

Recorded lectures are a now-familiar feature in many modules and degree programmes. As more and more of us spend more and more of our time engaging with online recorded lectures, it’s important that we understand how to engage effectively with this ‘new’ way of learning.

Sometimes, you can both attend the lecture ‘live’ online and watch the recording afterwards. In other cases, there is no live option and viewing the recording is your only way of engaging with that lecture.

Either way, recorded lectures present both benefits and potential challenges. While they let you organise your time flexibly, it’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the volume of material you need to get through. Likewise, although looking over content again can be helpful in certain circumstances, it’s easy to find yourself spending an unsustainable amount of time on each recording.

The solution is to understand what you need to get out of these lectures and to develop an effective set of strategies for engaging with the material. That’s just what we discussed in the Lightning Talk on ‘Getting the Most from Recorded Lectures’, so why not watch the recording of that workshop now, then scroll down for our top tips?

Tip 1: Do some Prep

One way you can engage more effectively with recorded lectures (in fact with any kind of lecture) is to do some preparation to work out what you need to get out of the lecture.

For example, you might begin by brainstorming what you already know about that topic. If parts of the lecture cover things you’re already aware of, there’s much less need for you to make notes on those sections.

Doing this also helps you to highlight questions that you might have about the topic – you can then be particularly on the lookout for parts of the lecture that cover the things you don’t yet understand fully.

Tip 2: Watch Straight Through

One of the downsides of recorded lectures is that it becomes very easy to spend hours on each lecture. While it’s tempting to keep pausing the lecture replaying sections in order to make more detailed notes, this will likely result in an impossible workload.

So, try not to press the pause button. Instead, if there’s a bit you might want to go back to later, quickly note down the time in the video but keep watching. It may be that after you’ve watched the rest of the lecture it makes more sense anyway, but if not, you’ll easily be able to go back and fill in the gaps.

Tip 3: Review, Recall, but don’t Repeat

Don’t be tempted to listen to the lecture over and over. It’s good to have the recordings there as a safety net, but they’re not recorded with the intention that you should spend hours and hours on each one. Instead, review what you’ve taken from the lecture and identify any gaps in your knowledge and understanding.

For example, simply take a blank piece of paper and quickly brainstorm everything you can remember from the lecture, then use your notes to work out where the gaps might be. You can then revisit selected parts of the lecture to shore up those gaps, or you could do some additional research into the topic.

For more information on review and recall, including more suggested strategies, see our Revision Bites resource, and particularly the section on Building Recall.