Students’ new year resolutions: improving coursework

Paul Collins, a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, suggests ways to improve your coursework, engagement and planning To start the new year, this column will focus on three overarching sets of student resolutions. If embraced and adopted, they are likely to help make the difference between a pass and fail or a 2/1 and first in coursework. Resolution 1: Improve the way coursework is approached and undertaken ■ Read and reread course questions and briefs carefully, and pay attention to the key instruction words (eg describe, examine, discuss, assess, evaluate, compare and contrast). They are there to prompt you to answer the question in a particular way. Most coursework is designed to show your ability to evaluate and apply facts, ideas and concepts. If you have never looked at Bloom’s taxonomy, it is time to start. It relates to the hierarchy of cognitive skills: remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, synthesising and creating. If your coursework asks for a report, rather than an essay, make sure the response is in report format. Leicester De Montfort University provides useful advice. ■ Use problem-solving strategies to help understand tasks. For example, see problems as a whole and then break them into parts by using mind maps or “spider” diagrams to help organise your thoughts and ideas and structure an answer. Nearly all practice-based tasks have a legal, technical, economic, social, managerial and sometimes political dimension. Use these disciplines as “coat-hooks” on which to hang material and ideas. Edward De Bono’s six thinking hats can be helpful – especially for project work. (See https://highlandliteracy.com/reading-2/de-bonos-six-hats/ and www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php for more information). ■ Make your assumptions explicitly clear in your introduction. It is worth remembering the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, who once said: “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” ■ Explain at the outset what the work will cover and how. Lecturers should not have to guess where an essay or project report is going. And remember too that whatever you write in that opening paragraph will create an impression with the marker. This means spending time drafting and redrafting it to get it right. ■ When appropriate, use diagrams, sketches and graphs to support your work. Illustrating situations, processes or concepts can often be more expeditious and helpful to a reader than reams of written text. However, don’t forget to label and/or annotate illustrations. You must explain what they show. ■ Annotate numerical answers. When presenting any numerically-based answer, always (unless explicitly told otherwise) provide a clear rationale for assumptions, calculations and figures adopted by annotating and explaining the work – even if you think these activities are self-evident. ■ Use headings appropriately. They can be helpful in structuring answers and guide assessors through the text. Assessors don’t like being confronted with pages upon pages of unbroken text. ■ Beware of “Been there, seen it, done it”. For students who have had relevant work experience of some kind, be very careful about being too anecdotal. Your experiences may be interesting and entirely valid but, equally, they may not. ■ Beware of generalisations and wild assertions, using vacuous terms, selective evidence and making illogical deductions. ■ Answer the question. It is so easy to lose the particular direction of an answer. Sometimes it is a good idea to repeat or restate the question or particular phrases or words in it within your answer. This reminds the assessor that you have paid attention to the question or task. ■ Acknowledge and reference everything. No matter what referencing system you use – Harvard is the most commonly used – acknowledge and reference everything you have used in the preparation of a piece of work. Many students quote sources as if they all have the same value and relevance. But the better students distinguish who in particular has said something, what their background and experience is, the context in which it was said and when it was said. Background information on sources is very important. A quote from 10 years ago is of value only if it still has contemporary relevance or is part of an historical context of an issue. ■ Provide a proper summary and conclusion. Remind the assessor of the main points covered, what your conclusions are and how you arrived at them. If you don’t do this, the assessor may think you do not recognise or know what is important or that your thinking is so muddled you can’t come to a conclusion. ■ Leave time to revisit your work after completing it to amend and correct it. You should assign at least a day before submission to read back through your work to make corrections and amendments and avoid plagiarism. The product of such a review might mean the difference between a pass, better classification or fail. ■ Executive summaries are not introductions. Executive summaries are abstracts of the whole work presented. They contain a précis of the aims, objectives, scope, methods and findings of a piece of work and are typically written in the past tense. An introduction is just that: a guide to what a reader will find as they read a piece of work. Resolution 2: Improve engagement and attendance “Eighty per cent of success is showing up” – Woody Allen. The correlation between attendance and engagement and the level of grades achieved and end-of-year progression is strong. Some students, of course, don’t attend much, but still achieve high academic attainment. But these are the exception. Those who consistently do not regularly attend often end up with lower grades and at worst, end-of-year referrals or failure. Good attendance must also be accompanied by good engagement. Your attendance might be good, but that may be more about being there physically and not mentally. So what resolutions might students adopt to improve things? ■ Become an active rather than a passive learner. This means a whole raft of things. For lectures, it means listening attentively, turning off mobile phones, taking notes, asking questions, making comments and/or at least keeping a record of questions to ask in seminars. Lecturers are amazed at some students who sit an entire 45 minutes without making a single note. This might work for the few, but never for the majority. Making notes helps and there is a lot of scientific evidence to support the view For examples, see tips provided on lifehack.org and medicaldaily.com. For seminars, undertake some work beforehand. This need not be much to make a difference. Twenty minutes but ideally 30 minutes’ preparation will put you in the driving seat of what is going on rather than just being a passenger. ■ Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You should always seek the advice and guidance of staff, however difficult it is to initiate. If you don’t approach your lecturers in the first instance, you should approach your university’s student support services. They are paid to help you. ■ Develop a growth mindset. The work of Carol Dwek is someone you should give time to explore. She is one of the world’s leading thinkers on motivation and success and can demonstrate how a positive mindset can make a very real difference. Her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, is worth a read. Dwek writes: “In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success — without effort. They’re wrong. “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work —brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” Resolution 3: Improve planning and preparedness If you don’t already, you should: ■ write lists of what have you have to do and keep them up to date; ■ don’t leave things to the last minute: start early and commit to steady progress; ■ produce a coursework timeline graphic showing dates, progress and deadlines. This can be done electronically, but nothing beats doing it on an A1 sheet and sticking it on a wall; and ■ have in mind the Scout motto “be prepared”. But, on the other hand, as John Preston of Boston College allegedly once said: “The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise… and is not preceded by a period of worry and depression.” Remember, failing to plan is planning to fail. Mainly for Students is edited by Paul Collins of Nottingham Trent University. He is also an external examiner at other universities and an RICS APC assessor. Paul welcomes suggestions for the column and can be contacted at paul.collins@ntu.ac.uk Pic credit:VOISIN/PHANIE/REX/Shutterstock