Study Skills - Report Writing

Me and Beth went to the study skills on Report Writing but we didn't learn much new, and Su kept repeating herself, so we called it quits halfway through.

I did make a few notes which I will post below;

• facts not prose
• short descriptive paras and sentences. Facts in bullet points if you want.
• figures= charts, graphs, images
• summary (about?), intro (detail, aims), main body (facts), conclusion (viewpoint), recommendations (optional).
• Quotes
• Logical flow.
• Figure listing @ front, biblio @ back.
• Purpose, facts, structure, objective- why, what, how, what achieve?
• Title, purpose and overall aim, facts, structure, outcome, target audience
• Research: primary- questionnaires, surveys. Secondary- books, websites...
• Specific questions to answer
• Title, acknowledgements, figure listing, contents, summary, intro, main body, conclusion, recommendations, appendices, biblio.
• Ttitle page: title, programme, module assignment title, semester (2014-15), name, level, Put as header too. 
• Page nos and headers
• Summary completed last. Main points, conc and recc.
• Research findings- how many responded and scale.
• "the aim of this report..."
• Intro: context of report and objectives, background, info, outline approach to fact finding and structure of report.
• Main body: findings, short sections with sub headers, figures, analysis of data, issues and problems. Research methods. Who is questionnaire aimed at? How many questionnaires distributed and how many back? Results.
• conclusion: final verdict. Answer questions posed.
• Recommendations: order of priority. Bullet point. How to distribute guidelines.
• Appendices: evidence of questionnaires. Copies.
• Objective view, both sides.
• Line spacing 1.5, arial or times, 12pt, page nos, A4.

These notes probably only make sense to me (sorry my note taking is weird).

Study Skills #5

Last compulsory Study Skills this week!! I can finally stop wasting Wednesday's now! The lecture was on evaluations but again I already knew how to do a strong evaluation from doing A Levels. Sue didn't even have any crazy banter for us. I was very disappointed. 

Study Skills #4

I'm getting kind of sick of saying this but I have not learned much new in this lecture since I have already done all this in A Levels. We looked at 'defining feedback' and also PDP (Personal Development Plan). At the end of each module there will be a critique to present your work. And a PDP is to reflect on your own learning (much like this blog). Also, when doing an essay, paste it into Turnitin to check for plagiarisation (if that's a word). If it flags over 10% then you will have plagiarised. 

Study Skills #3

Again, haven't learnt much new here. Seminar was about time management but I'm already well organised with my blog, notes, and from doing A Levels last year. I did learn a new expression: "you can't eat a elephant whole" suggesting that you should do one thing at a time.

Study Skills #2

This week, the study skills was about Academic Research. Again, I know already how to do this as I studied A Levels. To be honest, I'm not really learning anything new in this lecture. It is a bit pointless that this is the only thing I'm in for on a Wednesday. But it's only for 6 weeks. 

Just a few reminders for myself: quotes are not part of the word count as they are not your words, and keep focus.

Study Skills #1

This week we looked at academic referencing. It all seems pretty straight forward and similar to the style of referencing i have used in A Levels. Figures (images) are references separately to the bibliography in a 'figure listing' at the beginning of the document. Long quotes are put on a separate line and indented (much like how I formatted the Exodus passage). Short quotes are inserted into a sentence and italicised. All of which still need a footnote. Sources in a bibliography are in alphabetical order with the author, date, title, publisher and place for books, and date accessed for websites. However, only 10% of sources can be internet based- if you have 10 books, you can only have 1 web source. Honest opinion, I really don't like this. Yes it shows you're well read, have done research and books are good sources, but so are internet sources! If a source goes on for two pages, you need to reference it as "p.p. 98-101". All of this and more can be found on the VLE/Moodle.