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

1 comment:

  1. Dear KB,

    I am a Leicester MBA student. How do I find the books you mentioned on BB under "My courses"?

    Please contact me with email: ywl8@le.ac.uk

    Thanks for your help.

    Best regards,
    Simon

    ReplyDelete