Well, I've been home from Summer School in the UK for almost two weeks now. I wanted to extend my greetings to all of the students who visited me during the week of July 25-29th . I learned a great deal from every one of you. I'm hoping to make the blog more exciting and more interactive during the next year. I was very chuffed to find out how many people actually read this blog and how many of the blog users try my approaches to: reading, studying, learning, stress and organizing work.
This merely encourages me to try and get more imaginative with the blog. I'm glad people are really reading it because I want this blog to have a little more than information. It is, to a great extent, interactive. I like when people write about questions. So, for the coming year - good luck - and for those who are leaving us double good luck - the job climate requires that students present more than a smile a briefcase these days.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Studying, reading and memory: Creating a Study Schedule that Works
Last week at Summer School 2011, I had a lot of students come to me to ask about improving their study techniques so that they would increase their marks on their exams. So, this posting will be about how you can increase memory retention while reading over module textbooks and other materials and improve your performance. Planning and understanding a little bit about how memory and the mind work help a great deal in this regard. Why? Let's look the mind and memory.To the left is a beautiful drawing of the brain by Christopher Wren. What I find interesting about this is that Wren, who built St. Paul's Cathedral with all of its architectural complexities, was interested in domed structures at the micro level as well as structures at the macro level. Similar pictures of the brain exist in the drawings of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. Studying and drawing the structures of the body has been the standard method for hundreds of years in Western culture of understanding the dynamics of line drawing - particularly depth and proportion. We've been intrigued by these body structures for centuries and we understand some of them better than others. The brain still mystifies us in many ways, but we do have some pretty good understanding of the way memory works. We can use this understanding to improve our retention of materials for exams.
I have emphasized with many of my students the importance of examining the organizational structure of your textbook and connecting it to previously learned knowledge as a way to help retain information for your examinations. However, understanding how the brain itself works can help students realize more effective study strategies. Trying to improve memory function in learning is not a new idea. According to Walker and Schonwetter, mnemonics, or using acronyms, codes or made-up sentences to remember long pieces of oral or written work was developed by the classical Greeks (Success Secrets of University Students 2003: 157.) One example is the sentence: Richard Of York Goes Back In Vain - a nonsense sentence that is formed with words beginning with the first letter of each colour in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. It is used to remember the colours of the spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. The nonsense sentence is much easier for your brain to remember than a random collection of colours.
Another example is SQ3R...Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review. How and why does this study cycle work? To begin with, the technique my father vigorously adhered to - long and exhaustive study sessions leading up to a test - don't really improve the memory at all! In fact, if you study for eight hours at one stretch before your test - instead of, for example, breaking that time down into one hour cycles with 1/2 hour breaks between sessions - you will retain less knowledge than if you carefully planned to Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review. Why?
Memory is broken up into long term and short term memory. Obviously, when you first encounter information from a text, it will only go into your short term memory. A long pre-exam session over an 8 hour stretch cannot and will not allow that information to be transferred to long term memory. However, the SQ3R cycle repeated several times in one day and preferably over many days and weeks, will lead to the transference of information from short term memory to long term memory.
Let's examine this cycle:
Survey - Read the material over completely. Remember, these exams are comprehensive. Do not assume you know what will be on your exam. Read everything.
Question - Develop key questions about the material.
Read - Find the answers to the questions you have developed.
Recite - Go over the material, reciting it to make sure you understand what you've learned.
Review - Go over all the material again.
Take a 1/2 hour break!!!!!
This study cycle should take you one hour. If you can't review one chapter in one hour, break the chapters down as required. After a break, you can return to your studying again. This technique has many advantages - especially for many MBA/MSc students. Planning ahead, one hour of study time per day is not a waste of time as students so often believe. In fact, these short sessions are very helpful to memory retention and learning. Additionally, students can and should try and tie the information they are learning to previously learned knowledge.
Note: SQ3R was originally developed by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1970 book Effective Learning.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Writing Resources: A list and suggestions
Hi, I've made a list of writing resources to help students who need to strengthen their writing. One of the obstacles some students encounter in our programme is a lack of sophistication in their writing. In previous posts, I've spoken about the need to make writing critical and how to use Bloom's Taxonomy. This is different from the sophistication of your sentence and paragraph structures and developing a good argument.
To begin with, I recommend a sophisticated grammar book. I suggest the following:
Hewings, Martin, 2005. Advanced Grammar in Use, 2nd ed. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Buy the edition with the answers and the CD Rom with the supplemental exercises if possible.
Additionally, every student should have a good dictionary and thesaurus. Oxford publishes both these tools. A thesaurus helps build vocabulary and word by suggesting different words with different shades of meaning. Accuracy in language use is very important as well. This is why you should use a good comprehensive dictionary with English spellings. After all, University of Leicester is an English university and English spelling is the standard here. I use the Oxford Concise which I find larger and more accurate than smaller, cheaper dictionaries.
In terms of writing, I suggest the following books as complete guides to proper essay and assignment writing:
Bailey, Stephen, 2006. Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students, 2nd ed. London : Routledge.
Jordan, R. R., 1999. Academic Writing Course: Study Skills in English, 3rd ed. Harlow : Pearson Educational Limited.
I hope these resources are useful to students with writing issues.
KB
To begin with, I recommend a sophisticated grammar book. I suggest the following:
Hewings, Martin, 2005. Advanced Grammar in Use, 2nd ed. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Buy the edition with the answers and the CD Rom with the supplemental exercises if possible.
Additionally, every student should have a good dictionary and thesaurus. Oxford publishes both these tools. A thesaurus helps build vocabulary and word by suggesting different words with different shades of meaning. Accuracy in language use is very important as well. This is why you should use a good comprehensive dictionary with English spellings. After all, University of Leicester is an English university and English spelling is the standard here. I use the Oxford Concise which I find larger and more accurate than smaller, cheaper dictionaries.
In terms of writing, I suggest the following books as complete guides to proper essay and assignment writing:
Bailey, Stephen, 2006. Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students, 2nd ed. London : Routledge.
Jordan, R. R., 1999. Academic Writing Course: Study Skills in English, 3rd ed. Harlow : Pearson Educational Limited.
I hope these resources are useful to students with writing issues.
KB
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
How to Contact a Dissertation Tutor
To Post Queries on the Support Forum
Please go to Blackboard. Log into ‘Dissertation’ on the left hand side of the screen. You should see a grey menu bar select ‘Support Forums’. Click on ‘Access the Support Forums’. Select the relevant subject area from those listed (Management of Information Systems). Once there click on ‘Create a Thread’. You can then post your query and submit it.
To Book a Telephone Appointment with the Dissertation Tutor
Please go to Blackboard log into ‘Dissertation’. On the left hand side of the screen you should see a grey menu bar. Select ‘Book a Meeting’ click on 2011 Meetings. Now select a month that you wish to book the meeting complete and submit the form.
These are the standard instructions, given to me by the office, are the standard instructions for helping you find dissertation tutor information on blackboard.
KB
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Sentences and full stops
What is a sentence? Many grammar writers, such as George Davidson (How to Punctuate, Penguin Bks) , define a sentence as a complete thought. For example:
Tuppence went to garden, selected a patch in the garden and dug up the tulips.
However, as Davidson points out a sentence like this one can be written as three thoughts.
Tuppence went to the garden. She selected a patch in the garden. She dug up the tulips.
The first sentence, about my dog Tuppence (who has not been digging up tulips in my garden), joins together several ideas using a comma and a coordinate conjunction "and". This makes reading this sentence smoother. However, there might be circumstances in which we might want to emphasize the repetition of an action for artistic effect. For example:
Tuppence went to the garden. She heard a black squirrel chatting in the pine trees. She barked again and again. When KB heard this, she rushed outside immediately.
This sentence (which Tuppence wants you to know is the truth) expresses the annoying and repetitive actions of Tuppence, the dog when she sees squirrels.
I define a sentence as a complete thought that use a subject and a verb. The subject, as you can see can be Tuppence (a noun) or she (a pronoun). Pronouns take the place of nouns in sentences when we already know the subject of the of the sentence. For example, if we repeated the subject "Tuppence" in all three sentences instead of the pronoun "she", the repetition would be very annoying.
A full stop or period exists at the end of complete thoughts to express complete ideas. A sentence with commas should join together ideas with the same subject.
Thus:
Tuppence went to the garden, heard a black squirrel chatting in the pine trees and barked again and again. When KB heard this, she rushed outside immediately.
Notice that I have joined only the first three sentences. All these sentences have the same subject, Tuppence.
Next week, I shall discuss semi colons and their use.
KB
Tuppence went to garden, selected a patch in the garden and dug up the tulips.
However, as Davidson points out a sentence like this one can be written as three thoughts.
Tuppence went to the garden. She selected a patch in the garden. She dug up the tulips.
The first sentence, about my dog Tuppence (who has not been digging up tulips in my garden), joins together several ideas using a comma and a coordinate conjunction "and". This makes reading this sentence smoother. However, there might be circumstances in which we might want to emphasize the repetition of an action for artistic effect. For example:
Tuppence went to the garden. She heard a black squirrel chatting in the pine trees. She barked again and again. When KB heard this, she rushed outside immediately.
This sentence (which Tuppence wants you to know is the truth) expresses the annoying and repetitive actions of Tuppence, the dog when she sees squirrels.
I define a sentence as a complete thought that use a subject and a verb. The subject, as you can see can be Tuppence (a noun) or she (a pronoun). Pronouns take the place of nouns in sentences when we already know the subject of the of the sentence. For example, if we repeated the subject "Tuppence" in all three sentences instead of the pronoun "she", the repetition would be very annoying.
A full stop or period exists at the end of complete thoughts to express complete ideas. A sentence with commas should join together ideas with the same subject.
Thus:
Tuppence went to the garden, heard a black squirrel chatting in the pine trees and barked again and again. When KB heard this, she rushed outside immediately.
Notice that I have joined only the first three sentences. All these sentences have the same subject, Tuppence.
Next week, I shall discuss semi colons and their use.
KB
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Plagiarism vs. Poor Scholarship
Hi, this post comes around periodically because it is an ongoing problem for some students. I'm aware that many of the students do understand about plagiarism. For those students, please bear with me because these are issues that come up frequently. This is the reason for this posting.
This is is a link to University of Leicester's page on plagiarism:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ssds/sd/ld/resources/study/plagiarism-tutorial
The following is a link to a useful site at the Indiana University Bloomington that has a useful questionnaire for students who are uncertain about plagiarism:
https://www.indiana.edu/~tedfrick/plagiarism/
To clarify, all students at the University of Leicester should be aware of the university's policy with regard to plagiarism. Once you have read and understood this policy, that may be enough information for some students. However, this is not the case for all students.
Which students are at the most risk of plagiarism or poor scholarship? I have created a list below of conditions that indicate a student is in danger of plagiarism and/or poor scholarship:
1. Students who are lost and use online sources, without clear references, such as this one to help yourself:
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
This is a poor source to use if you want to understand Bloom's Taxonomy. Notice that there are advertisements here. Notice as well that the taxonomy itself is not labeled. There are many similar websites on, for example, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Research for your research papers should come from reliable textbooks, the University of Leicester's digital library and some online sources which are reliable. Sadly, Wikipedia cannot be numbered among these sources at the present time because it contains many mistakes and is not written by scholars.
Look at this source for doing research on the Civil War:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html
Notice that this source points the way to reliable primary (first hand) and secondary sources on the Civil War. This source is updated regularly. Other such sources would include university webpages or webpages such as the Medline.
Students often don't realize good research takes time. You need to allow yourself to have this time to do the kind of research that is expected in quality work.
2. Students who have difficulty writing.
When students can't write properly, they often use the words of others. There are resources such as:
Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students by Stephen Bailey
to assist students who have difficulty in putting together a good logical argument. Additionally, the University of Leicester offers courses for students who have difficulties with English. Sometime, taking such a programme can make getting your degree easier and is a worthwhile investment.
Finally, I would add that students must understand that rephrasing the words of another author and not providing citations is a big problem. All ideas and concepts stemming from the work of others must be cited.
Students should be aware that if their work is found to be plagiarized, they won't get a second opportunity to submit it. This is why students who are told that their work has failed due to poor scholarship must be careful. They will be allowed to resubmit their work. However, their work will be scrutinized carefully for plagiarism. Additionally, module tutors/markers will expect that they have fixed this problem in the redraft of their assignment.
I hope that this is clear to all students.
KB
This is is a link to University of Leicester's page on plagiarism:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ssds/sd/ld/resources/study/plagiarism-tutorial
The following is a link to a useful site at the Indiana University Bloomington that has a useful questionnaire for students who are uncertain about plagiarism:
https://www.indiana.edu/~tedfrick/plagiarism/
To clarify, all students at the University of Leicester should be aware of the university's policy with regard to plagiarism. Once you have read and understood this policy, that may be enough information for some students. However, this is not the case for all students.
Which students are at the most risk of plagiarism or poor scholarship? I have created a list below of conditions that indicate a student is in danger of plagiarism and/or poor scholarship:
1. Students who are lost and use online sources, without clear references, such as this one to help yourself:
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
This is a poor source to use if you want to understand Bloom's Taxonomy. Notice that there are advertisements here. Notice as well that the taxonomy itself is not labeled. There are many similar websites on, for example, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Research for your research papers should come from reliable textbooks, the University of Leicester's digital library and some online sources which are reliable. Sadly, Wikipedia cannot be numbered among these sources at the present time because it contains many mistakes and is not written by scholars.
Look at this source for doing research on the Civil War:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html
Notice that this source points the way to reliable primary (first hand) and secondary sources on the Civil War. This source is updated regularly. Other such sources would include university webpages or webpages such as the Medline.
Students often don't realize good research takes time. You need to allow yourself to have this time to do the kind of research that is expected in quality work.
2. Students who have difficulty writing.
When students can't write properly, they often use the words of others. There are resources such as:
Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students by Stephen Bailey
to assist students who have difficulty in putting together a good logical argument. Additionally, the University of Leicester offers courses for students who have difficulties with English. Sometime, taking such a programme can make getting your degree easier and is a worthwhile investment.
Finally, I would add that students must understand that rephrasing the words of another author and not providing citations is a big problem. All ideas and concepts stemming from the work of others must be cited.
Students should be aware that if their work is found to be plagiarized, they won't get a second opportunity to submit it. This is why students who are told that their work has failed due to poor scholarship must be careful. They will be allowed to resubmit their work. However, their work will be scrutinized carefully for plagiarism. Additionally, module tutors/markers will expect that they have fixed this problem in the redraft of their assignment.
I hope that this is clear to all students.
KB
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Thank you to all students
Dear Students:
I was very touched by the number of responses when I was forced to go off line for a while earlier this year. As you may have noticed, there have been a number of blog postings since then. The responses of my students has made me realize that this blog is being read. As we go into summer, I'm going to try and include blogs on grammar. I had considered dropping these blog postings but find that they are very useful for most students.
Thank you again. Every posting is appreciated.
KB
I was very touched by the number of responses when I was forced to go off line for a while earlier this year. As you may have noticed, there have been a number of blog postings since then. The responses of my students has made me realize that this blog is being read. As we go into summer, I'm going to try and include blogs on grammar. I had considered dropping these blog postings but find that they are very useful for most students.
Thank you again. Every posting is appreciated.
KB
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