library – Dr. Rachel

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.

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).

Referencing

Rachel Horrocks Birss Essays, Library, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills 15th December 2020Academic Skills, challenges, citation, Essays, library, Lightning Sessions, plagiarism, research, sources, writing 0 Comment

Referencing can be one of the trickiest parts of essay writing. It can be hard to find the various components of a reference, or to understand why they’re even necessary in the first place. Difficulties with finishing up a bibliography are also one of the main reasons students submit essays late!

The good news is, referencing doesn’t have to be painful. If you invest a little time in learning how referencing works, it actually can become one of the most straightforward parts of your assignment.

To find out more about referencing, watch our Lightning Session! In this workshop, we challenge Kayleigh McGarry, one of the Digital Skills librarians, to use CiteThemRight.com to cite all kinds of sources. If you’ve ever struggled with referencing, this session is for you!

[To skip the intros, jump to 1:35]

In a hurry? Here are the main three things you need to know about referencing:

References have Two Parts

The first thing to know about referencing is that it consists of two parts:

The in-text citation (either in parentheses, or a footnote)
The reference in the bibliography (at the end of the essay)

To reference correctly, you must include both these parts. They each look slightly different, but don’t worry. If you use CiteThemRight.com, it will show you what each part looks like.

Use CiteThemRight.com as a Guide

There are all kinds of referencing guides on the internet, many of which are excellent. However, there are also many referencing generators, which are websites that ask you to input the information, and then they create a reference for you. This may sound too good to be true, and, sadly it is. Most of the time, reference generators make mistakes, so if you use one, you must check your references yourself before submitting.

To get it right the first time, we recommend using CiteThemRight.com. The University pays for a subscription, so you can sign in with your UoD credentials and get free access to all the information! The site shows you how to cite pretty much anything in all sorts of referencing styles, and it even offers templates you can use to create your own references.

If you’re new to CiteThemRight.com and you’re not sure how to use it, watch the recording above!

Start Early and Be Consistent

The best way to make sure your referencing is correct is to give yourself time. Work on your bibliography as you go along– don’t wait until the end! It’s no fun trying to proofread your bibliography just minutes before the deadline.

The other important tip is to be consistent. Sometimes, it can be hard to keep track of the fiddly little things, like whether or not there should be a full stop after the author’s name. While you should try to get these things right, the most important thing is to be consistent. If you have a full stop in one reference, make sure you have it in them all. Your marker may not notice if a full stop is in the wrong place, but they’ll definitely notice if you’re inconsistent!

Finally, if you’re struggling with referencing, it’s okay to get help! While we can’t “check” your references, our team is happy to help you find the information you need. Feel free to contact us at asc@dundee.ac.uk with any questions you may have!

Successful Search Strategies

Rachel Horrocks Birss Essays, Library, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills 26th November 2020Essays, library, literature search, research, sources, writing 0 Comment

When you’re at university, you have to do research. Whatever you study, chances are you’ll spend some time looking through books at the library– or, more likely, browsing the online catalogue searching for sources.

For some of us, research may be exciting: it’s a time to learn more about a new topic, and dive deeper into a subject we love. For others, research may be incredibly confusing, time-consuming, and difficult.

Wherever you fall on this spectrum: you’re not alone. The truth is that even students who love research sometimes find it challenging to find just the right sources for their upcoming assignment.

In this Lightning Session, our colleague from the Library walks us through two of the most common research struggles:

Too Many Sources
Too Few Sources

Watch the video for a full explanation (complete with a screen-sharing demonstration), or keep scrolling for our top tips.

[Note: To skip the intro, jump straight to 05:25.]

Challenge 1: Too Few Sources

Sometimes it’s hard to find enough pertinent sources for our essay. Especially when we’re working on really specific topics, it can be difficult to find sources that directly address our topic.

For instance, if your essay question is: “To what extent is Draco Malfoy the archetypal antihero in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child?” then a good first step would be to type the keywords, “Draco Malfoy,” “antihero” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” into the library search.

If you did this, however, you wouldn’t come up with a single result. It’s far too specific. Instead, it’s better to use just a few of the keywords, or to modify them slightly. For instance, you could try “Draco Malfoy” and “Harry Potter” or “antihero” and “Harry Potter.”

If you can’t find enough sources, use fewer keywords or make them more general. Then, be open-minded with the sources you find. Maybe an article on “Heroism in Harry Potter” doesn’t look like exactly what you want, but give it a skim-read anyways. There’s a good chance at least part of the article will be relevant to your topic!

Additionally, once you’ve found one relevant article, make sure to look at its footnotes and bibliography. Chances are, at least some of these sources will be relevant to you, and they might not have immediately come up in the search engine.

Challenge 2: Too Many Sources

Perhaps a bigger problem is too many sources. Especially when we’re assigned quite a broad topic (perhaps, “Is Harry Potter a Hero?”) a library search for our basic keywords can literally return millions of results!

The good news is that the Library search sorts results automatically by relevance, so there’s no need to scroll through every source (though it is worth going through at least a few pages, to make sure nothing important has gotten buried).

If you’ve got too many results, you can use the filters on the right side of the library search to cut your results down to only the most relevant. Helpful filters may include:

Peer Reviewed journals (only journals that have been properly vetted by other academics)
Resource type (books, journals, conference proceedings, etc…)
Subject (Humanities, social sciences, etc…)
Date (select a date range)

Using filters can cut your results down from thousands to hundreds. They can even reduce your results to nothing at all, so it’s good to be careful! Don’t immediately apply certain filters, and it’s always worth experimenting with different combinations of filters, rather than putting them all on at once.

If you’re still struggling with too many sources, it’s worth trying some of the features in the advanced search function, such as limiting your search to article titles, for instance.

We hope these tips are helpful as you start researching your next assignment! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email us at asc@dundee.ac.uk.