Students often have difficulty understanding how to answer a particular question on an exam or assignment. Let's look at particular phrases and examine how they can give us clues about how we should answer a given question.
Today, the key words we will look at in exams and papers are: discuss, explain, illustrate, describe, demonstrate and outline. A question might ask you, for instance, to outline the key concepts on a particular subject in marketing or organizational behaviour. Conversely, another question might ask you to illustrate the central concepts in a particular subject with examples from your own organizational practices. How do you answer these questions?
In the first example, you will be pleased to know that key concepts, central ideas or central concepts all boil down to the same thing. The tutor wants you to pick out the important contributions from the theorists a subject such as Organizational Behaviour or Strategy. After you find these key ideas, you should describe each one briefly. Usually, questions like this also involve outlining examples of these key concepts. Moreover, you need to be clear and describe all of these major theories so that each one is clearly differentiated from the other theories. If examples are required, you need to explain how each one is an example of the theory. If you don't explain the relevance of your examples, the tutor cannot see that you know how to use critical thinking. Critical thinking, as I've explained in other blogs, is key to the educational process at University of Leicester.
You may also asked to provide illustrations, these are the same as examples. Illustrations show the module tutor that you know how to apply the theory you are discussing to real examples from journal articles or real life. You can combine ideas to synthesize new concepts and to evaluate each concept. Evaluation shows the module tutor/marker that you have considered the importance of the ideas that you are discussing relative to the discipline itself.
Let us consider the meaning of these other words:
Outline - Describe an idea briefly, showing each of its component parts or ideas
Discuss - Analyse an idea, show the reader that you understand an idea and its importance and how it works with example, this implies critical analytic thinking
Demonstrate - This assumes that you are going to provide examples. These examples must be analysed to show that you understand how they are relevant to the ideas you are discussing.
Module tutors use different words to give variety and depth to their questions. In turn, they expect that you will provide more than the facts. Facts are just the starting point for understanding and critical thinking. You need to show tutors that these goals are within your reach. If you have problems with English vocabulary, you need to get a good Oxford Dictionary. If you have problems with writing, you need to consider some of the grammar books I have cited previously in other blogs. Most of all, however, you need to maintain a positive attitude. Remember too, that there is a Skills Tutor to help you along the road.
KB
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Poor Scholarship: What's the problem?
Hi, I'm back with some new tips. This time, I'd like to discuss the issues attached to referencing and poor scholarship. These are serious problems noted by tutors on AGC forms. When a student receives a failing grade on an assignment or dissertation with this notation, what does this mean?
First, you should understand this problem cannot be solved by a simple re-do of your bibliography or your in-text bibliographic references. These may indeed be a problem, but bad referencing suggests that you have failed to account for all the source materials you have used in your work. This, as I have pointed out in earlier postings, is easy to do if you haven't created a research log of all the materials you read, used or even perused during your work. This insures you can follow the thread of your research in your assignments or your longer work, the dissertation.
Even obscure, unindexed academic work that you dig up and fail to cite will look out of place in your dissertation. Often, the worried student slips in these references because they haven't developed a clear argument or direction for the assignment or dissertation. In fact, to help you with a dissertation, an AGC form that tells you that you have poor referencing or poor scholarship is an opportunity to find books that will help you out of your dilemma and refocus your work. They are mentioned in this blog in the posting "Dissertation Tutor vs. Skills Tutor" or on Blackboard under "My courses", where a number of books are mentioned that tell you more about how your dissertation should be structured. In the case of an assignment, you should refocus on the assignment topic itself.
While you refocus, consider these points:
1. Did you take the time to gather good scholarly materials for your work? This means, did you use articles from the University of Leicester databases?
2. If you experienced difficulty here, did you speak to a skills tutor (I'd be happy to help with this part of any work) or the U of Leicester Business Librarian?
3. Once you got these articles, did you spend an adequate amount of time thinking about how they will tie back into your assignment or dissertation. Time to think is an important consideration.
4. If you had issues with writing, did you speak to the skills tutor? Did you try and get the writing resources that can help you here?
5. If you need to do all this work, have you used Refworks to help you with your bibliography at the end. This is available free through University of Leicester.
6. Okay, now that you have failed an assignment or a disseration, it is time for a fresh focus. If you said you were going to write about the banking system of Malawi, was this a doable project with a clear focus? Think about how to make your project doable. Remember this is not "War and Peace", you can expect to have it done within a reasonable amount of time. This is something that I'm sure a dissertation would be happy to discuss.
7. When re-working a project, get it focused with an outline of what you intend to do using clear points.
There is a difference between outright plagiarism and not having a clue what you need to do next. Most students are aware that outright plagiarism will result in trouble. Dissertations or assignments with these problems cannot be salvaged. Foggy thinking, that often starts with keeping poor track of your references in research and ends up with a mish-mash of misty thoughts that are not backed up by clear citations from good business literature, is often because students are misdirected. They don't know what they are trying to do whether it is a dissertation or an assignment. A great deal of work here will need to be redone.
Understanding your topic will come by diligent research, time to think and a strong understanding of the philosophical issues underpinning your topic. Even writing problems can be helped by the right texts, as many students have found. A student who gets an AGC form that says they have 'poor scholarship' and 'poor referencing' ends up on the right track with good scholarly habits, an understanding of the nature of their assignment (or dissertation), good writing skills and grammar and the will to work. Good writing for this week.
KB
First, you should understand this problem cannot be solved by a simple re-do of your bibliography or your in-text bibliographic references. These may indeed be a problem, but bad referencing suggests that you have failed to account for all the source materials you have used in your work. This, as I have pointed out in earlier postings, is easy to do if you haven't created a research log of all the materials you read, used or even perused during your work. This insures you can follow the thread of your research in your assignments or your longer work, the dissertation.
Even obscure, unindexed academic work that you dig up and fail to cite will look out of place in your dissertation. Often, the worried student slips in these references because they haven't developed a clear argument or direction for the assignment or dissertation. In fact, to help you with a dissertation, an AGC form that tells you that you have poor referencing or poor scholarship is an opportunity to find books that will help you out of your dilemma and refocus your work. They are mentioned in this blog in the posting "Dissertation Tutor vs. Skills Tutor" or on Blackboard under "My courses", where a number of books are mentioned that tell you more about how your dissertation should be structured. In the case of an assignment, you should refocus on the assignment topic itself.
While you refocus, consider these points:
1. Did you take the time to gather good scholarly materials for your work? This means, did you use articles from the University of Leicester databases?
2. If you experienced difficulty here, did you speak to a skills tutor (I'd be happy to help with this part of any work) or the U of Leicester Business Librarian?
3. Once you got these articles, did you spend an adequate amount of time thinking about how they will tie back into your assignment or dissertation. Time to think is an important consideration.
4. If you had issues with writing, did you speak to the skills tutor? Did you try and get the writing resources that can help you here?
5. If you need to do all this work, have you used Refworks to help you with your bibliography at the end. This is available free through University of Leicester.
6. Okay, now that you have failed an assignment or a disseration, it is time for a fresh focus. If you said you were going to write about the banking system of Malawi, was this a doable project with a clear focus? Think about how to make your project doable. Remember this is not "War and Peace", you can expect to have it done within a reasonable amount of time. This is something that I'm sure a dissertation would be happy to discuss.
7. When re-working a project, get it focused with an outline of what you intend to do using clear points.
There is a difference between outright plagiarism and not having a clue what you need to do next. Most students are aware that outright plagiarism will result in trouble. Dissertations or assignments with these problems cannot be salvaged. Foggy thinking, that often starts with keeping poor track of your references in research and ends up with a mish-mash of misty thoughts that are not backed up by clear citations from good business literature, is often because students are misdirected. They don't know what they are trying to do whether it is a dissertation or an assignment. A great deal of work here will need to be redone.
Understanding your topic will come by diligent research, time to think and a strong understanding of the philosophical issues underpinning your topic. Even writing problems can be helped by the right texts, as many students have found. A student who gets an AGC form that says they have 'poor scholarship' and 'poor referencing' ends up on the right track with good scholarly habits, an understanding of the nature of their assignment (or dissertation), good writing skills and grammar and the will to work. Good writing for this week.
KB
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