referencing – Dr. Rachel

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.

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).

Avoiding Plagiarism

Rachel Horrocks Birss Essays, Library, Lightning Sessions 14th December 2020Academic Skills, citation, Essays, Lightning Sessions, plagiarism, referencing, research, sources 0 Comment

Plagiarism is defined by Oxford University as “presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own.” It’s a serious form of academic misconduct, and major cases of plagiarism (such as copying an essay from the internet, or buying one online) can result in expulsion from the University or from professional bodies.

Most forms of plagiarism aren’t as big or obvious as stealing an entire essay. In fact, students sometimes plagiarise accidentally, simply by not checking the rules! Even “small” instances of plagiarism, however, may well come with penalties, such as failing the assignment or even the module. The good news is that, once you learn a few basic rules, it’s easy to avoid plagiarism and write with academic integrity!

To learn more about avoiding plagiarism, watch our Lightning session, the scroll down to read more.

[To jump straight to the session, head to 1:08]

Essentially, any time you use someone else’s words or ideas, you must cite them. In the recording, you’ll find a variety of scenarios, but let’s look at a few of the main ones here.

1. Using someone else’s words.

If you copy exact words directly from a source, you must put those words in quotation marks and cite them. Sometimes, students copy-and-paste a few sentences from a source and provide a citation, but they don’t put the words in quotation marks. This is plagiarism, and will be flagged up by Turnitin software. Any exact words you take from a source must be put in quotation marks, whether it’s a full sentence, or just a small phrase.

2. Using someone else’s ideas.

If you use someone else’s idea, you must cite them. This is still true even if you don’t use their exact words. Sometimes, we condense someone else’s ideas and put them in our own words instead. This is called Paraphrasing, and it’s a good thing to do in an academic essay! When you paraphrase, you shouldn’t put the sentence in quotation marks, but you do need to cite the source of the idea.

3. Citation and Reference

Citing your sources correctly involves two parts. First, you must include an in-text citation (either in parentheses, or a footnote, depending on your referencing style) right when you mention the source. Then, you must include a full reference in your bibliography at the end of your essay. Both the in-text citation and the reference at the end of the essay are mandatory in most referencing styles.

In the Lightning Session, you’ll find many more scenarios, and a detailed discussion of how to avoid plagiarism. If you want to test your knowledge, you can also try our Plagiarism Quiz for yourself!