Week 5

This week the topics scheduled are

• Approaches to learning
• Introduction to principles of sustainability

Due to delays on the part of one of the participants of this course, Introduction to principles of sustainability will be delayed until further notice. The hand-in date for Task 6 will also be extended.

So, continue with the Approaches to learning module. This should be finished by the end of the week, and Task 5 is also due this week.

Week 4 - Approaches to learning & Introduction to principles of sustainability

This week we're starting on introducing the more traditional study skills.

Tasks for the week

• Start working through the learning module - approaches to learning. You will explore a number of techniques which will help you to become a more effective learner.
  
  
• The learning module Introduction to principles of sustainability has four parts to it. This week you should
  
• watch the video & take notes
  
• Copy the main points that stand out to you over to this Google document.

Week 3

By this stage you should be getting fairly familiar with how the technologies supporting the course work, and have submitted Task 1 & Task 2. If there's anything that you're not feeling comfortable with yet, or do not feel that you understand, please get in touch with David ASAP to clarify things.

This week the following tasks are scheduled if you have not yet completed them.

1. Visit the computer health and safety website that has been recommended to you, and that you are familiar with what it has to say about the use of a computer
   
   
2. Complete the learning module - connect to and surf the internet - unless you feel that you have fairly advanced internet literacy
   
   
3. Submit Task 3 by attaching it to an email - sorry, I realised that some of the text in the last assignment had not been changed & said to submit it to the assignment drop box. All assessment tasks that can be submitted by attachment to an email should be.
   
   
4. Elluminate session to ensure that you are able to access elluminate and use both the chat and the voice functions. Please let me know when you are available this week for this session, and I'll set one up to suit your needs. This is Task 4.
   

Introduction to Study Skills

Here is an outline of the Study Skills course for the second semester.

Alan - You have completed some of the learning modules and assessment already. As discussed there is no need to redo these.

Erna - Following is a link to the Otago Polytechnic online course hub

http://www.pageflakes.com/opmassagetherapyyr1

Please make sure that you save this website to your favorite/bookmarks. This will become more relevant later in the course, but you will need to know how to access pageflakes to get information on your assessments for now.

Alan & Erna

Have a look at the Pageflakes course hub. I'd like you to notice the box in the right corner of the screen. There's a link there called "Assessment". If you click on that link it will take you to box.net, where our assessments are now stored. There's a folder for Study Skills. If you click on that folder, you'll be able to access all of the assessment tasks for Study Skills.

To download any of the files to your computer right-click on them and select download.

To open any of them left-click on them.

You might notice a folder called marking schedules. This folder contains information on what you will be marked against. I strongly recommend that you mark yourself against these marking schedules before handing in your assessments. There are no marking schedules for the written answer tasks because giving you our marking schedule would effectively give away the answers. :-)

Something else I will strongly recommend at this point is downloading the first couple of assessments and getting started. I will be in touch early next week.

Please let me know if you have any queries or difficulties. My contact details follow

David McQuillan
ph - 479-3618
email - david at tekotago.ac.nz

Welcome to Study Skills

This is the course blog for the Otago Polytechnic Study Skills course.

Essay form

Some people have asked for some feedback on their essays.

I plan to get your assessments back to you in the next couple of days, but as the majority of the essays that I've seen have the same types of weaknesses, I thought that I would let you know what to watch out for.

Structure

An academic essay (or paragraph for that matter) has a specific structure that you should adhere to. Basically introduction, body, conclusion. Most of you are following this to some degree, but there are some things you can do to improve the structure of your essay.

The introduction should generally introduce the subject of the essay, and all of the main topics that you discuss in the body of your essay without going into too much depth.

• In general not enough linkage is being made to the topics discussed in the essay.
  
• In some cases, people are putting material into their introduction that would fit better within the body of the essay.

The conclusion should express the general gist of what you've been saying , and should relate to all of the key points that you've made in the body of your essay.

• Again in general people are not linking their conclusion strongly enough to the body of the essay.

This type of structure is not the way in which most of us think naturally. For this reason it's a good idea to start with a brain-storming session to gather information, then to decide what the best structure for your information is.

• Many people seem to have just started writing at the top and finished at the bottom
• Others have taken the bullet points on the assessment task as the order of their essay.

Once you've written your essay, you're not finished. You should go over the essay a couple of times at least to polish your language.

• Can you make the points in your essay any clearer?
• Can you improve the flow of your essay?
• Can you strengthen the linkages between introduction and body, conclusion and body?
  
  (these all become easier with practice)

APA Referencing

Most people could do with some extra focus on their referencing. APA referencing form is very specific. The only way to learn how to do it correctly is to refer to a quick-reference guide every time you do it. By the end of the course you may feel that you are able to reference some types of material without a guide, but you will likely need to refer to your guide when the source is not a common type of source. I still refer to my quick-reference guide on a regular basis.

Remember - to reference correctly you must make a reference list & must also use also "in-body" referencing. You will need to refer to your guide when you reference in-body as well as in your reference list, as the method of in-body referencing varies depending on the type of source.


Some nice work

All in all, I'm enjoying reading your work. There has been quite a bit of self-discovery going on in the class. :-)

Week starting 5 May 2008

Your group research project on the topic related to The Story of Stuff is due by Sunday of this week. I'm looking forward to seeing what you've come up with here.