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Revision Research

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Library, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 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.

 

Top Tips for Reading

If you’ve suddenly discovered you have far more reading to do than you thought, never fear! In that case, try some of these efficient reading tips: 

  • Read the introduction and conclusion first to judge if it’s worth committing to reading the whole source. 
  • Look for landmarks such as subheadings to get to the most relevant sections.
  • Make notes as you read to highlight key points and to reflect on how this might apply to an exam question.

 

If you have any difficulties accessing a resource recommended on a Resource List, have a question about using the Library for study, or want advice on referencing a source please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Library.

 

 

This blog post was written by Kayleigh McGarry, Digital Skills Librarian.

Note-Taking Online

Rachel Horrocks Birss Blended Learning, Library, Lightning Sessions , , , , , , , , , , 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

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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).

 

Successful Search Strategies

Rachel Horrocks Birss Essays, Library, Lightning Sessions, Study Skills , , , , , 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.

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