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.

Week starting 14 April

No big changes this week. Your group should have met together at least once by now, and you should be making some progress towards the completion of Task 6. Remember that I've extended the deadline for this assessment to 11 May.

I realise that a lot of you are feeling under pressure at present with many assessments due. This might be a good time for some of you to reflect on your time management over the course so far, and if it would have been possible to be more effective in this. Luckily you now have the tools that you need to do this effectively going forwards given some practice.

Hang in there, and remember that there are supports available to you if you need them. As well as myself and your fellow students there are also

• The Learning Centre - Academic support
• Class reps
  
• 2 Free massages in the student clinic
  
• Student counselling service
• OPSA
• Computer support (Helpdesk, Open Access Suite, Community Learning Centres)
  

Week starting 8 April 2008

The introduction to principles of sustainability module has now moved to the group project stage. You should all have now received notice of the group that you have been assigned. If you haven't please get in touch with David ASAP.


With respect to the rest of the course, just keep on working through the learning modules and assessments.

Introduction to Principles of Sustainability

Topics

• Progress of the class
• Introduction to Principles of Sustainability
• Elluminate (again)
  

Progress

In this type of online learning it’s usual to feel a bit overloaded with information to start with. This has been coming through in some of the feedback that I’ve gotten from you - Too many different things to keep track of, hard to find your way around, etc. Luckily, this does get easier after a period of time, which some people are already finding.

On the upside, many people seem to be enjoying the fact that they can study at a time that suits them, and some people are enjoying learning about the use of computers, or having new online experiences.

I’ve started receiving assignments in from some people - thanks for that.

If you’re falling behind please take steps to remedy this now before it gets too late.

If you’re struggling with technology, please ensure that you plug into some of the support options which are available to you. Me, helpdesk, community learning centres, etc.

Introduction to Principles of Sustainability

This week we will start our Introduction to Principles of Sustainability module, and this will run over the period 17 March - 4 April.

Task 6 requires you to watch an online video - The Story of Stuff, takes notes on it, then work collaboratively with your classmates to build up a comprehensive set of notes on a page within the Google Group. To access this page log into the Google group, and look under pages for The Story of Stuff.

Please note that the task says “Add two points to the google document”.

• I have had to change the task to working on a Google group page rather than a google document (as stated in the assessment task)
  
• Do not add more than two points. You’ll make it more difficult for your classmates.

Later in the week I will assign you to the group of students which you work with in the second part of the assessment. At least one person in each group will live outside of Dunedin, so that you will need to use the online communication options available to you.

Elluminate

I sent an email out to the people who have not yet attended an Elluminate session last week, and only two of these people have gotten back to me - thanks Shannon & Hannah. I’m planning to run one more introduction to Elluminate session. So that we can organize this I need the dates & times that you are all available. Can you please answer the email I sent you ASAP.