Support for your studies
1 hour session with activities
- Group: anything up to around 50 students
- Room: anything appropriate to the group size
- Discipline: any, can be tailored
- Level: UG/PGT, any stage
Materials:
- PowerPoint slides
- Flip chart paper and pens.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of this session you will:
- Identify and use key databases in your discipline
- Identify and use relevant specialist information common in your discipline
- Identify relevant sources from a list of search results
- Develop strategies for assessing the appropriateness of sources to use in your assignments
- Understand the conventions for citation styles and bibliographies required for your assignment
- Adapt your writing style to suit your purpose and audience
Suggested online resources All disciplines
- Start to finish: dissertations
- Finding the good stuff: evaluating your sources
- Get a grip: understanding your task
- Original thinking allowed: avoiding plagiarism
- Citing it right: introducing referencing
- Being critical: thinking, reading and writing critically
- Better safe than sorry: proofreading your work
Session outline: (slides 1 and 2)
- Identifying relevant information
- How to access information
- Your key subject resources
- Your training support : My Learning Essentials
Taking a systematic approach (slide 3)
This introduces the next activity about why its important to be systematic when you are looking for information for your studies.
Activity 1: Map your keywords (slide 4)
Working in groups of 3–4, the students are asked which keywords and phrases they could use to enable them to find relevant evidence for a suggested title.
Flip chart papers and pens are handed out to capture the process and the students are asked to create a mind map to represent the terms they they would use in the search.
Topic title (slide 5)- example of topic title from the academic
Activity 2: Rank your words and phrases (slide 6–9)
The groups are next asked to use the Traffic Light Approach to highlight the terms that they don’t want (red), terms they might want (yellow) and terms that they definitely want (green) on the mind map.
TIP — If you don’t have red, yellow or green pens then ask them to cross out for red, write a question mark for
yellow and a tick for green.
This activity is designed to get students refining their search terms so that they only using the specific ones they need to quickly find relevant information.
Seek out key concepts (slide 7)
Students are asked to think about what they are looking for and following on from this is a breakdown of the processes you can use to find relevant quality information on the library resources.
What other keywords could you use? (slide 8)
It is important to not just stop at the key concepts and to think about what other words could be used to find the information you need for your topic search
Search strings can expand/refine/exclude (slide 9)
The facilitator talks about using OR, AND, NOT to build a search.
Activity 3: Mentimeter Quiz (slide 10)
At this point they only answer the first question — Where do you currently look for information?
How to access information (slide 11 to 17)
This section of the presentation introduces the cohort to the key resources for their subject. Explain that it is important to use a wide range of information resources.
Library Search, the subject guide, subject database are introduced and their uses outlined to the cohort when locating information for their dissertation.
- Library Search
Key access point for information, easy to use and locate relevant information — i emphasise that its important to use the advanced search option to refine the results and increase relevance.
- Your subject guide
2nd key access point for information — all your resources in one place. I emphasise that all subjects taught at the University of Manchester have a subject guide and that they can find specific databases for their subject.
- Your subject databases
Here I emphasise that its important to not search in isolation e.g. never use one resource to find information. In a comprehensive search the student should use a wide range of resources in order to find relevant and high quality articles for their studies.
- Google Scholar
3rd key access point for information — In addition to the library resources they should also use Google Scholar. I ask them if they use it as a key resource and there are always some that hold their hands up. I emphasise here the nature of Google Scholar and its access to information that we don’t necessarily have in the library such as pre-prints, research material and grey literature.
Activity 4: Searching with your keywords (slide 18)
In this activity the students are tasked with finding 3 articles that are relevant to their dissertation using the techniques and resources outlined in this session.
Discussion (slide 19)
Ask the 3 groups to feed back on the success of the searches and quality of the information they found on their allocated resource.
My Learning Essentials: Blackboard (slides 20 and 23)
These slides refer to the support that is available in the students Blackboard space, My Learning Essentials workshops and shows specific examples that they will find particularly useful e.g. Start to Finish Dissertations.
Activity 5: Mentimeter Quiz (slide 24)
At this point they are reintroduced to Menti and are asked a number of questions about what they have learnt in the session such as:
- Where will they now search for information?
- Can you trust the information you find?
- Why should you only use resources from “trusted” sources for your dissertation?
These questions are testing on them on the information in the session and also asking them to think about evaluating the information they find — being critical of the information and not just accepting it at face value.
What if I am still stuck? (slide 25)
This reminds the students that they can get support in our 1 to 1’s at the AGLC and the Main Library and through our MLE service.
Thank you for listening and happy writing! (slide 26)
2018 SOAN40000 (R18–0469)
2019 SOAN40000 (R19–0623)
